Are you one of the 600 Board members who are Certified? If not an on-line class is now available!

After three lectures at the Century Village Theater, more than 600 Century Village Board members have been certified through Becker and Poliakoff’s Board Certification Course titled, “Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Condominium Law but Were Afraid to Ask.” However, with 309 condominiums in Century Village we have definitely not certified everyone. This blog post is designed to help you understand the significance of this class and to give those Board members who are out of State a one-time opportunity to take the course on-line (click on the title of this article to be taken to a registration page).

In 2010, Section 718.112, Florida Statutes, was amended and now requires that within 90 days after being elected or appointed to the Board, each newly elected director has the following options:

1. certify in writing to the secretary of the association that he or she has read the association’s declaration of condominium, articles of incorporation, bylaws, and current written policies; that he or she will work to uphold such documents and policies to the best of his or her ability; and that he or she will faithfully discharge his or her fiduciary responsibility to the association’s members; or

2. in lieu of the foregoing written certification, the newly elected or appointed director may submit a certificate of satisfactory completion of the educational curriculum administered by a division-approved condominium education provider. (Becker and Poliakoff is a division-approved condominium education provider and the substantive materials in our presentations have been pre-approved by the Division for use in this program.)

A copy of the certification, whether it is the affidavit described in number 1, above, or the certificate from a Division-approved class, must be kept as part of the official records of the Association for 5 years after a director’s election.

If you were unable to attend one of the three lectures given at Century Village and would like to take the course on-line, on Thursday, June 30, 2011, please click on the title of this article, which is a link to the registration page.

For those who attended the class on Friday, June 10, 2011, at the Century Village Theater, your certificates should be in the mail to you by the end of next week.

Mark D. Friedman is a senior attorney at the West Palm Beach office of the law firm of Becker & Poliakoff, P.A. You may contact Mr. Friedman at CondoLaw@becker-poliakoff.com.