Landlord Troubles

Jan 27 19:26 UTC 1999

Grex originally rented the Pumpkin from William VanFossen.  Unfortunately
ownership of the building containing the Pumkin has been in dispute for a
long time, and when Mr. VanFossen died in 1997 the dispute was still
unresolved.  We don't know the details of the situation, but through some
agreement between the disputants a company called Flying Dutchman
Management came to be in charge of managing the property, though the
inheritors of Bil VanFossen's estate are his family.  We have had some
favorable dealings with his widow, Marcia VanFossen.

Monday I got mail from Flying Dutchman saying that we were in arrears
for $162.64.  It was easy to see what the discrepancy was; $129.36 was the
check I wrote December 23rd which they hadn't deposited yet, and the
remaining $33.26 was twice the difference between our new electricity
payment and our old one.  They had charged us the old rate for August and
September because they hadn't gotten my letter about it until October 9th
(despite the fact that I wrote it September 11th.)
 
So I called them up to straighten it out.  Unfortunately I was connected
with Susan Watrous, whom I had dealt with last summer.  I tried to explain
the problem to her, and she was rude and belligerent just as I had
remembered.  She wanted to know what made me think we got to determine our
own electricity payment, and I explained that it was in our lease, of
which she has a copy.  It seems to make her angrier whenever anyone gives
her a non-submissive reply, and when she read our lease she flew into a
rage.  She declared it "ludicrous", and said "Well how am I to know if
you're telling the truth?" about our electricity usage.  I explained that
we were sharing a meter with someone else so we couldn't use that, and of
course that just made her angrier.  Finally she declared that she could
not stand to abide by this lease, and she was notifying me right now that
in 4 months (at the end of May) it would be null and void.  She's not
kicking us out, she eplained, but we will either have to go without a
lease or sign one that she likes better.
 
I asked what the terms of the new lease would be, and she said we could
expect another 5% increase in our rent.  I asked what she would do about
the electricity, and she said she would have to think about it.  I said we
needed a copy of the lease ahead of time, so we could decide whether or
not to sign it, and she said "Oh, I'll give you a couple of days".  I told
her that was not enough, and she said "You'll get it when I'm ready and I
have nothing more to say on the subject", at which point I said goodbye
and hung up, because I couldn't take anymore.
 
I called Valerie and Jan, and then went over to their house to explain the
situation.  They had some good ideas, and we decided that Valerie would
call Marcia VanFossen and try to get her on our side.  Jan thinks that
being as our lease is as simple as it is, there is legal justification in
interpreting it in terms of the intent of its clauses.  Clause 4 says: 
 
(4) This agreement will remain in effect until it is terminated by either
party.  The party wishing to terminate this agreement must give
notification ot the other party four (4) months in advance, except by
mutual agreement. 
 
It was in there in order to give us time to move if the landlord wanted
to change the conditions.  Unfortunately it doesn't say explicity that the
landlord has to give us the new conditions at the time of the
notification, but Jan's feeling is that that was clearly the intent, so
since this is a simple lease they might be obliged to.  I don't know; I
think we need a lawyer's opinion on that.

response 2 of 220:

Jan 27 20:02 UTC 1999

It would appear to me that Flying Dutchman, in the form of Susan whoever, has
given us notice.  Whether it is adequate notice, whether it must be in written
form, etc is not clear.  Two clarifications need to be made.
1) Let's strengthen our bargaining position by having a new place as a
default. In the worst case interpretation of this clause, we will be faced
with a "take it or leave it" offer shortly before the end of our four month
period.  
2) If we really want to keep dealing with Flying Dutchman, then we might want
to enlist a lawyer to deal with them for us.  If we want to disagree with
Susan about what notification implies, and whether we need to see the new
lease before we are officially "notified", we're going to need a lawyer
anyway.  She's clearly not going to listen to us.  

response 4 of 220:

Jan 28 04:00 UTC 1999

I think at this point, unless we hear from the owners that they are
planning to change management companies real soon, that we should assume
the question is not if we have to move, or how much it would cost to
stay, but when we'll be moving, and where to.  At this point, the
management company has given us notice -- it would be better if it were
written on paper [ and perhaps we should send something on paper to
clarify this ], so unless something changes, I think we can assume the
clock is ticking and that we'll be out by sometime in the middle of
april, and if we don't move before then, that Susan Watrous will be out
there in person with the sheriff ripping our hardware out and dumping it
on the curb.

response 6 of 220:

Jan 28 06:00 UTC 1999

I don't know if it would help, but I'd be willing to donate a used
watt-hour meter, so that we could pay for our exact usage, and not have to
negotiate around estimates.

response 8 of 220:

Jan 28 15:03 UTC 1999

Actually, I think that might help a lot, Rick; could we plug that into the
wall and then plug everything into that?  We use about 8.3 amps of power.

response 10 of 220:

Jan 28 16:00 UTC 1999

We have another meter (don't ask where it came from) and box to plug it into.
The meter may not be accurate but the box is.  Presumably.
As an official nonprofit, would we have better chances of getting a donated
windowless closet somewhere else now?  (I would love to see grex in the space
now being used by the Kiwanis electronics department, if they follow through
on the promise to give us a larger upstairs space and get some more
cooperation between the groups.  Kiwanis can only benefit by having more
computer nerds in there.  Actually it would make more sense to have the new
electronics dept, if it ever gets built, shared with grex, since we would have
a separate entrance with a key.  In exchange grex members might be able to
maintain a kiwanis webpage and give lessons to members on how to use the web.
But this building project is a year or more off, if at all.  How much actual
floorspace, not counting chair space, would the grex computers occupy?)

response 12 of 220:

Jan 28 18:18 UTC 1999

We would need 24hr access, though.

response 14 of 220:

Jan 28 20:28 UTC 1999

   Let us not fall into the trap of thinking that 24 hour access is "nice".
It isn't only nice, it is vital.  As Grex grows so does the need to keep it
running.  If we are routinely denied access to the hardware there will come
a point where we will sorely regret that.

   Right now its easy to say that access isn't a problem.  Right now there
are days at a time when no one goes to the Pumpkin and all our work on the
system is remote.  Times are good right now, hardware wise.  I'm not
entirely surprised at the reliability of the 4/670, but I am thankful.  As
we grow we'll be adding more hardware for services (mail machine, kerberos,
etc) and however good things are there is still the need to have physical
access to thinks.  For me, right now, I can't normally get to the hardware
during the day.  I could take a day off, or perhaps spend a little time
before my morning commute, but the vast majority of my time to work on
stuff is at night.  Thats true for at least other staff, too.

   For a commercial venture I would agree with you Steve that the space is
unrealistic, but not for a group like ours.  We don't have the money to
do things as efficiently in some ways--we can't spend the time as a real
world company does when working on a problem, as one example.

   This is why I partly shudder when I think about relocating next to an
ISP.  Unless we're really lucky we're going to lose some access to our
hardware, and even if we don't we'll not be in the same position to store
things, etc that we have with the Pumpkin.

response 16 of 220:

Jan 29 02:13 UTC 1999

When grex first started up, we didn't have 24 hour access.  For a while,
it didn't matter.  Then something happened to the hardware, and it
became flakey.  And it stayed flakey, for over a year, because we
couldn't just go in when it died and hack at it until we got it fixed.
That hurt us, after a while.

24 hour access isn't just "nice".  It *is* a necessity for us.

response 18 of 220:

Jan 29 03:01 UTC 1999

When we moved to the Pumpkin, we did not have the 501(c)3.  Now that we do,
there might be some better and/or cheaper places we could go.  Maybe it would
be worth negotiating for a lease where the rent includes a reasonable amount
of electricity.

response 20 of 220:

Jan 29 03:52 UTC 1999

Does any grex member have an underutilized basement?  Maybe with an outside
entrance to it?  And no windows in one room?  And enough electric power?
Jim does not think Kiwanis would allow access to anybody unless we were there
to supervise, they are already making an exception for us nonmember of K.
But we might be able to store some grex stuff there eventually.  Not now.

response 22 of 220:

Jan 29 05:20 UTC 1999

Way back, it was suggested that Valerie had a more optimistic
continuation of the story...  we'd better get it in here before 
Grex starts packing...

response 24 of 220:

Jan 29 10:54 UTC 1999

(It would have to be a shopper who is into weight lifting...)