Barbara Egner
In 2017 then governor Chris Christie signed the Radburn Act into law. It was designed to protect the residents of the Radburn Association in Fairlawn New Jersey. The Radburn Association is a condo HOA that was dealing with a corrupt board of Directors. The law mostly concerned itself with how Board of Directors were elected to office. At that time we were told by our council woman, Judy Noonan that our governing documents would override the Radburn Act, and that as long as we abided by our governing documents, we would be OK.
In May of 2020, when everything was closed due to the pandemic, the Department of Community Affairs (DCA) issued amendments to The Radburn Act, which we later found out, directly affected us. In fact, these amendments superseded our governing documents. The main function of the DCA is to oversee low income housing and Section 8 housing. We as a board, were still abiding by our governing documents, assuming that they would override the DCA amendments. It turns out we were wrong. Ignorance is no excuse for not obeying the law.
At the end of 2020, when 3 Directors seats became available, we sought out our existing governing documents to fill those seats. My (Barbara Egner) 3 year term was up, John McGuinness’s 3 year term was up, and Mary Paterno-Mihalko (who was appointed to Henry Reinhard’s resigned seat) her term was up as well. We three submitted our resumes. Along with our resumes, Peter Mathus submitted a resume and later rescinded it. Michael Alegre submitted a resume and was informed that he was not eligible to run due to the fact that he had not attended 5 shareowners meetings. This was in accordance with our governing documents. We were oblivious to the fact that the DCA (NOT a legislative body) had overridden our governing documents. There was no election held in 2020 because the 3 seats were unopposed.
Now we know that we were wrong. In order to correct the error that was made during the 2020 election, we are vacating our seats along with Terry Ristaino, Mario Pettinio and Joe Friscia (who replaced Barbara Benson, who resigned in May of 2020) That’s why six members of the current board will be running for reelection.
It was an unintentional oversight on our part, and we are now trying to make it right. The 2021 election will be quite different than any of us has ever seen. It will also be much more costly than any other election has ever been. We have to abide by the rules. We intend to do just that.
There are some that will try to convince you that we intentionally violated the law. That is simply not true.