Residents of Governor’s Park, the largest housing complex in Winthrop, have opened a new round of warfare over the behavior of their governing board, alleging a broad set of failures in maintenance and transparency.

Governor’s Park, a 400-unit condominium complex built in 1971, is led by a seven-member board of trustees. Most unit owners have now signed a petition seeking the removal of six of those seven trustees, their attorney said.

The six trustees of the Governor’s Park Condominium Trust have violated “the fiduciary duties of loyalty, good faith, and due care owed to all unit owners,” the protesting unit owners said in the recall petition last week.

Evidence sought

The trustees responded Monday by criticizing the handling of the case, saying that any removal effort has to be considered at a formal meeting of residents, where the trustees can address any allegations against them.

“This important issue should be decided by the community through a fair, transparent, and properly conducted vote — not by recording a petition and declaring the matter resolved,” the six trustees said.

Governor’s Park is a collection of about a dozen plain brick buildings of mostly three and four stories connected by a strand of parking lots in the north-central part of Winthrop. The complex stands in contrast to much of Winthrop, which is largely a mix of higher-income single-family homes, apartment buildings, and multi-family homes.

The complaint against the six trustees listed the complex’s problems with them as including unreasonable fee increases, poor facility maintenance, misuse of resources, violations of recordkeeping, interference with elections, and a lack of communication with residents.

One exception

The petition sought the removals of Governor’s Park trustees Todd Decost, Biljana Nezic, Christine Cochrane, Arlene DeRosa Dascher, Dragan Joksimovic and Jared Marshall.

It excepted one current trustee, Blerta Balla, a signer of the recall petition, saying that “she has continued to uphold her fiduciary duties to the unit owners.”

Neither side detailed the history of the dispute. But the residents seeking to remove the six trustees alleged in the summary written by their attorney, Edmund Allcock, that the management group has taken steps to undermine removal votes in the past.

“A majority of the owners have spoken,” Mr Allcock said. “The former trustees and their property manager want to conduct yet another vote. The last time they did that the property manager manipulated and changed ballots. There is no need for another vote. The majority has spoken.”

Negative implications

The six trustees said in their statement that they would schedule a meeting for residents to consider the allegations and to vote on the removal question, and denied any interference with prior voting. “Those allegations have not been proven and are not accurate,” the trustees said. “The board remains committed to conducting any future vote in a manner designed to ensure fairness, transparency and confidence in the result.”

The two sides did agree, however, that all residents of Governor’s Park will be harmed by the impasse.

“Until this standoff is resolved,” Mr Allcock told residents in the note announcing the recall petition, “units will not be able to be bought, sold and/or refinanced and association funds should be effectively frozen. It will also likely result in an expensive lawsuit.”

The six trustees included a similar warning in their letter. The act of submitting the recall petition to state officials could, “unfortunately, cloud the title record for the community,” the six trustees said. “The board is concerned that this could interfere with unit sales, refinancing, lender inquiries, insurance matters, and other ordinary condominium business. These issues could have been avoided by following the process required by the governing documents.”