Anonymised, illustrative composite. A 90-unit Ontario condo corporation's routine reserve fund study came back $200,000 short of its own 30-year plan, and the Condominium Act's clock started the moment the board received it.
At a glance
An Ontario condo corporation, registered 11 years earlier, was due for its periodic reserve fund study — the required alternation between class 2 and class 3 studies that follows the first class 1 study done in year one. Nothing about the trigger was unusual; what came back in the study was.
A roof replacement priced into the 30-year funding plan four years out came back higher than the prior study had assumed, largely on material cost inflation. The Condominium Authority of Ontario describes exactly what that funding plan has to include: “a recommended funding plan projected over a period of at least 30 consecutive years”, and this update showed the fund would fall behind that plan unless the board acted. The current balance of $410,000 was $200,000 short of the $610,000 the study said the plan called for at this point.
Two ways to close a $200,000 gap across 90 units: a one-time special assessment of $200,000 ÷ 90 = $2,222.22 per unit, paid once; or a phased increase to the reserve contribution spread over the two fiscal years CAO’s timeline allows, $200,000 ÷ 2 = $100,000/year, which across 90 units is $100,000 ÷ 90 = $1,111.11 per unit per year — roughly $92.59 per unit per month for two years. Same $200,000 closed either way; the phased path just spreads the same total differently.
CAO sets the clock the board has to work inside: “condo boards must review the reserve fund study within 120 days of receiving it and propose a plan for future adequate funding”, with that plan required to make the fund adequate “by the fiscal year after the study was completed.” Once a plan is proposed, owners are owed a specific, regulator-mandated notice: “boards must send owners a notice of future funding within 15 days of proposing a plan,” using a specific form the Condominium Act requires. Treadstone Law’s guide for owners frames the same shortfall from the buyer's side — the reason an underfunded reserve matters even to someone who was not on the board when the study landed.
The clock doesn’t stop at the owner notice, either: under the Condominium Act, 1998, s. 94(10), the board cannot actually implement the funding plan until 30 days after that notice goes out — a real window for an owner to raise a concern with the board before the increase takes effect.
The board reviewed the study in 95 days, inside the 120-day window, and proposed the phased $92.59/unit/month increase rather than the lump-sum assessment. The mandatory notice of future funding went to owners 11 days after the plan was proposed, inside the 15-day requirement. Owners approved the phased path at the next meeting, and the fund is now tracking the 30-year plan again. For the corporation’s other governance fixes the same year, see clearing a records request backlog and ending repeat common-element damage with a chargeback policy. For the broader toolkit, see condo management built for Canadian rules.
Had the board missed the 120-day review window, or proposed a plan without the 15-day owner notice, the corporation would have been out of step with the Act on a fund thirty-year plan basis — exposing the decision to challenge from any owner who could point to the missed procedural step, regardless of whether the funding math itself was sound. Getting the numbers right and missing the clock would not have been a smaller failure than getting the numbers wrong.
Calendar the 120-day clock from the date the study is received, not from the date the board first discusses it on an agenda — a study that sits unread for three weeks before its first board meeting has already spent a meaningful fraction of the response window on nothing. Here the board used 95 of 120 days (79% of the window, 25 days of margin) and 11 of 15 days for notice (73% of the window, 4 days of margin) — both real deadlines, both cleared with room rather than at the wire.
Both paths closed the identical $200,000 gap, but they were not equivalent in practice: a $2,222.22 one-time special assessment concentrates the collection risk into a single invoice some owners may not be able to pay on short notice, while $92.59 a month for two years spreads the same total across a payment size closer to what owners already budget for monthly condo fees. CAO's own guidance frames the funding plan requirement around restoring adequacy "by the fiscal year after the study was completed" — a deadline the phased plan met without requiring the board to also manage the collection risk and potential arrears a lump-sum assessment of that size would have introduced on a 90-unit building.
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