Page 14 - WFL Cooperator Winter Expo 2020

14 THE WESTERN FLORIDA COOPERATOR —EXPO 2019 FLCOOPERATOR.COM An Ounce of Prevention in Condo Facilities Management Is Worth Much More Than a Pound of Cure BY BARNEY WEINKLE For building owners and property man- agers who may soon be facing the 40-year it comes time for a 40-year property assess- building recertification process in Miami- Dade and Broward Counties, Benjamin tice that an inspection is due. At that point, Franklin’s advice on prevention is fitting. The 40-year Building Safety Inspec- tion Program was created in 2005 and tion of the building and submit a report to further notice to your board or manage- has become effective throughout Broward either the city or the county. The report will ment, and referral of this matter to the County since January 2006. It’s modeled af- ter Miami-Dade County’s program, which need to be repaired or replaced. The prop- is now more than 30 years old. Broward’s erty owner will then have another 180 days liable for payment of a maximum fine of program calls for structural and electrical to complete the necessary repair work. Fol- safety inspections for buildings 40 years lowing the completed repairs, the structural enforcement costs incurred by the depart- old or older and every 10 years thereafter. engineer will then prepare another report ment once unsafe structures enforcement One- and two-family dwellings, U.S. and verifying that the initial findings have been proceedings commence. Even more alarm- State of Florida government buildings, remedied. schools under the jurisdiction of the B.C. School Board, and buildings built on Native pecially vulnerable because they are con- American reservations are exempt. Under stantly exposed to the increased effects of molish the building. Section 8-11(f) of the Miami-Dade County saltwater oxidation and corrosion, as well as code, Miami-Dade County exempts build- ings under 2,000 square feet; the Broward left exposed to the elements can cause re- County code excludes all buildings under bar to expand up to seven times its original have not yet received a Notice of Required 3,500 square feet. These inspections are designed to pro- tect people from possible building failures. Building owners and property manag- ers should consult with structural engineers tion. Hundreds of thousands of dollars can recertify the building every 10 years there- to have a proper inspection completed as be saved in building repair costs alone by after. their building nears 40 years of age. When following a regular maintenance schedule, ment, the property owner will receive a no- the property owner will have 90 days to find cation report will result in the issuance of a structural engineer to complete an inspec- indicate what parts of the building (if any) Unsafe Structures Unit for the initiation Buildings on or near the ocean are es- minor concrete and masonry cracks. Stucco ty Inspection Program, no news does not size, exerting a force of 10,000 pounds per Inspection by the code compliance depart- square-inch (PSI). This condition—com- monly referred to as spalling—can neces- sitate extremely expensive concrete restora- applying early detection methods, and prac- ticing aggressive prevention techniques. Failure to submit the required recertifi- a Civil Violation Notice or ticket without of condemnation proceedings. You may be $10,510—and in addition, you must pay all ing, upon issuance of an unsafe structure Notice of Violation, the building must be vacated, and you may ultimately have to de- In the case of the 40-year Building Safe- necessarily mean good news. Even if you ment of your county or city, it is the prop- erty owner’s responsibility to acquire the initial 40- or 50-year recertification and to If you want to verify the age of your building, your town or city should have a folio number for your building that will provide this information. If your build- ing is not 40 years old, you are not legally required to do anything. Historically, the Property Appraiser’s Office transmitted the building age information via a “property re- cord card.” A property record card was pro- duced annually for each property making up the local tax roll. Prior to the advent of electronic data, the property appraiser’s of- fice would literally deliver a box of property record cards to each municipality annually. Sometime in the early 1970s, the informa- tion on the hard copy property record cards was transferred into a computerized records system called the Virtual Storage Access Method (VSAM), which generated an an- nual property record card that included the year a given structure was built. Building of- ficials could then request a special report of buildings in their jurisdictions that were of a certain age. However, even if this specific information was not requested, each mu- nicipality would have building age informa- tion by virtue of them receiving a copy of the tax roll every year. The property appraiser’s office consid- ers the Certificate of Occupancy status of newly constructed buildings, as this sig- nals that the value of the structure (as dis- tinguished from the land) be added to the tax rolls. However, while the recertification certifies that a building is safe for continued occupancy, that status is not relevant to the official record-keeping responsibilities of the property appraiser’s office. While the lack of “year built” information on a prop- erty record card may have affected the City’s notification to the County since the early 1980s that a recertification inspection was due, building owners are still responsible for complying with the safety inspection program. An owner’s or association’s approach to preventative maintenance and to forecast- ing capital improvement costs is of para- mount importance in prolonging the useful life of the infrastructure and critical build- ing components. n Barney Weinkle is a Managing Director with AKAM On-Site, Inc. He may be reached at: bweinkle@akam.com MANAGEMENT