In most Massachusetts buildings the first wreath appears the weekend after Halloween, and the last string of lights comes down somewhere around Valentine's Day. Boards that have not settled this in advance spend the next three months handling it one complaint at a time, which is the most expensive way to do it and the most likely to end badly. Twenty minutes at your October meeting is the whole fix. START WITH EGRESS, NOT WITH TASTE The genuine risk in decorations is fire and exit obstruction, and it is the one part of this that is not a matter of preference. Nothing goes in a way that narrows or blocks a corridor, a stairwell, a landing, a doorway or an exit route. Nothing obstructs or conceals exit signage, fire extinguishers, pull stations, sprinkler heads or standpipe connections. No live cut trees in common areas. No open flame - no candles in corridors or lobbies, ever. And watch extension cords specifically. Cords strung across a corridor floor, daisy-chained together, or run under a door are the most common decoration hazard in a condominium, and they combine a trip hazard with an electrical one. Require UL-listed lights, no daisy-chaining, and nothing plugged into a common-area outlet without board approval. Massachusetts fire codes govern combustible decorations and the obstruction of means of egress in residential buildings. The specifics depend on your building type and your local fire department's interpretation, which is why the genuinely useful move is a phone call: ask your fire prevention office what they expect in a residential common area. They answer that question every November and they would rather answer it now. THEN HANDLE DOORS AND BALCONIES Unit doors and door frames are usually common element surfaces even though they feel private, so decide what attaches and how. The practical rule most boards land on: command strips or over-the-door hooks yes, nails, screws, staples and anything adhesive that strips paint no, and the owner is responsible for any damage. Say it in writing rather than discovering it in January.

Open your reserve study to the summary page and you will find a percentage. Thirty-eight percent funded, or sixty-one, or twelve. Most trustees have seen it. Very few have been told what it measures, and almost nobody has been told that the study also contains a choice the board is supposed to make. Both are worth understanding before you adopt a 2027 budget that depends on them. WHAT PERCENT FUNDED ACTUALLY MEASURES It is a comparison between what your reserve account holds today and what it ideally would hold today, given how much of your components' useful life has already been consumed. The logic is straightforward. If your roof costs $300,000 to replace and has a thirty-year life, then after ten years roughly a third of that roof has been used up - so an ideally funded association would be holding something near $100,000 against it. Run that across every component and you get an ideal balance. Divide your actual balance by the ideal and you get percent funded. So the number is not a measure of whether you can pay for next year's project. It is a measure of how far behind you are relative to the wear your building has already taken. A useful rough reading: above about 70 percent is generally considered strong and carries a low probability of special assessment. The 30 to 70 band is where most associations sit, with real but manageable risk. Below 30 percent is where special assessments start becoming likely rather than possible. Treat those as orientation, not law. A 25-percent-funded association with a brand-new roof and a credible plan may be in better shape than a 55-percent-funded one facing three large components at once in 2029. THE CHOICE YOUR STUDY CONTAINS Here is the part that catches boards out. A reserve study does not produce one answer. It produces a recommended contribution under a funding method, and there is more than one method. Full funding aims to keep the reserve at or near that ideal balance - targeting roughly 100 percent funded. It is the most conservative and it costs the most per month.

If your association owns a Boston building of 15 or more units, there are two dates in the next three weeks and one event in November that your board should know about. OCTOBER 15 - ANNUAL REPORTING WITH APPROVED EXTENSIONS The annual BERDO reporting deadline was August 15 this year, after the Review Board extended it from May 15. Buildings that received an approved extension have until October 15. If your association filed on time in August, this does not apply to you. If your association requested and received an extension, this is the date, and it is this Thursday. If nobody on your board can say for certain which of those is true, that is the thing to resolve today rather than Thursday afternoon. OCTOBER 31 - THE REC PURCHASE DEADLINE This is the one most boards have never heard of, and it only matters to a specific group - but for that group it matters a great deal. October 31 is the deadline to purchase Massachusetts Class I renewable energy certificates through the City's REC Connector Program. The certificates have to be ones generated between January 2024 and June 2026, and they are used by building owners who want to apply them toward meeting their 2025 emissions standard. Put plainly: if your building exceeded its 2025 emissions limit and your plan for closing that gap involves RECs, the window to buy them through the City's program closes October 31. Miss it and you are looking at the other compliance routes, which are slower and, where a building is already over its limit, more expensive. Remember the penalty structure we covered in August. Emissions standard violations run $300 to $1,000 per day, with a 30-day grace period after a violation notice. That is what a compliance gap costs when it is not addressed. NOVEMBER 5 - A WORKSHOP FOR CONDOS AND CO-OPS This is the useful one. The City is holding a compliance workshop specifically for condominium and cooperative buildings on November 5. There is also a BERDO Review Board public meeting on October 13.