Yeah, f that guy. He is trying to pull a fast one. It depends upon how far you want to take it, but you could just refuse to pay and have him sue you, at least that leaves the decision about whether it’s owed up to the judge. He would also have to explain how he arrived at that exorbitant fee. That’s my initial inclination, but it depends upon how you and the other HOA members feel. At the amount of money we’re talking about here, it could be worthwhile for you and the other owners to split an initial attorney consultation.

Personally, I feel that he is violating his fiduciary duty as a trustee. As long as he is a trustee, he is supposed to be acting in the best interests of the HOA. All of the things that were mentioned in the $500 are the basic tasks that a member of an HOA. Was he contributing anything toward that $500 cost when he owned the unit or was he expecting you and the other unit to split between yourselves?

We had a similar issue buying our condo in a two-family that had been recently flipped by an absentee investor who used a property manager company. The property manager was charging about $350 per month, but to be honest, that seemed about market rate. The issue is that with triple deckers in Boston, you are only splitting that cost 3 ways instead of more at a bigger building where it would be affordable.

We ended up just volunteering ourselves as the HOA trustee and handling all the paperwork to get rid of the property manager ; the other resident has been cool with it. It was a little bit of a pain with getting all the paperwork where it needs to be at the beginning but things run on autopilot for the most part now. You should do the same because there is no reason to pay a property manager that much on a smaller place. Our fees for a two family are $250 per month, which includes water, common area electricity, snow removal (most expensive cost in the budget), landscaping, and $1k in reserves per year.

P.S I would advise you to read through your HOA bylaws. I am not a lawyer, but my understanding is that it is not ethical for a trustee to essentially award money like that to themselves. If they had a legitimate cost, such as they bought lightbulbs for common areas, that’s one thing, but the developer should not be reimbursing themselves for lost time. Do your bylaws also not state anything about automatically becoming a trustee? Ours makes each unit owner a trustee within 30 days of purchase automatically.

Depends upon your definition of a “good deal.” Are you including all aspects of teachers’ working conditions? I’ve never seen any teacher claim that Massachusetts teacher salaries aren’t above national average?

The issue is that, due to HCOL, many towns and cities still don’t pay enough for teachers to live in the communities in which they teach.

If it was such a good deal, you’d think that you’d see tons of people signing up for this job, but in fact, 50% quit within 5 years. I can only imagine what is the actual percentage of teachers who make it the complete length of service to receive a full pension.

Charlestown and East Boston are all part of the same district. BPS may not be highly rated as a whole but it does have a couple of the best public schools in the country, if your kid can get into them. Prices are high everywhere though, so unless you are fine with a long commute or don’t work in the city, people are willing to pay $$$.

Schools have rightfully been concerned about contributing to the prison to school pipeline but they have veered completely to the other end of the spectrum where there is no accountability whatsoever for students. It’s an anything goes environment. Kids are not dumb, they know there are no consequences.

As a former teacher in two urban school districts (quit my job earlier this year), students who were real hazards to others were constantly let off the hook. One student would constantly sexually harass other female students; he would touch them and corner them if he ever found them in a hallway or room alone. The most that was ever done was a couple days of in-school suspension and then he is back to the classroom afterwards.

We have created a perverse system of incentives for schools. The feds look at suspension data, especially based on race and IEO status. Principals have gotten around this by deciding not to suspend anyone at all. Everything falls on the teacher’s shoulders to handle.

Similarly, my experience has been that we have over-interpreted “least restrictive environment” for students to mean that every student should be placed in a general education without really addressing the issues at hand. “Oh hey Mr. History Teacher, here is this student who we are transferring to your class because he was physical with a student in his previous class. Anytime he needs a break, call the counselor and social worker. Just make sure you don’t call too much or it’s going to be marked as needs improvement on your evaluation.”

And I am not saying that everyone needs to be suspended. To be honest, I’m not sure that solves much of anything. But I do think, if we are going to try this, we need to fully fund schools so they can get appropriate levels of staffing for counselors and crisis responders. I do think there is a happy medium where we are not excluding kids (although there are some who I think will benefit from a separate placement) from their peers, but also making sure that students with severe behavioral needs are getting the support they need.