Independence Harbor

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IH county appeal re: fire department

Hello residents,

We all want the same thing… a safe place to live! To that end, your board and management company have been working with the fire department to improve our ability to prevent and combat fires in the community, including scheduling a walkthrough and meeting with the association’s fire safety contractor and the Fire Code Official to discuss options for improvements.

However, the fire department recently issued violations notices for our community, asking us to improve in both small ways (insulating pipes) and major ways (installing in-unit sprinklers in all units). While we would love to ultimately upgrade to meet all of these asks, it is simply not affordable given all of the other critical infrastructure projects we have going on.

In addition, the board and the association’s attorneys believe the violations were not proper, as the noted conditions are original to the community – as it was approved by the Borough of Edgewater when it was converted to condos, including “grandfathering” principles which provide that the association is not obligated to upgrade to current fire safety standards.

Although the association has appealed the violations, the fire department is requiring that a new disclosure be made to potential buyers about our fire safety situation which is available at our management office.

While we are moving forward to implement some of the fire department asks (complete and in-progress on a few of them), we have filed an appeal with the County Board of Appeals to both stop the financial penalties and ensure we have documentation stating that we are not in violation of fire safety given the prior agreement.

If you are looking to sell your unit, please feel free to download and attach the two documents below to the new required disclosure. We want potential buyers to have both sides of the story.

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