Personal deck a condo liability?

I live in a 4-unit condo building in Philadelphia. Two of the units have outdoor decks which sit on top of the roofs of the bedrooms in the units below. Two years ago, the roof over my bedroom began to leak. The deck that lay over the top (which is the personal deck of the 2nd floor residents) had to be demolished so that a new roof could be put on. The roofer said the deck had not been constructed properly---was built directly on top of the roof, instead of floating---and was the cause of the leaks. It was essentially sinking into the roof.

At the time, the four owners agreed that the work had to be done. The 2nd floor owners mentioned they would just rebuild the deck themselves and we all agreed the condo association would finance the materials needed to rebuild. The old deck was about 20 years old, built with arsenic treated wood and was falling apart.

Several months went by after the demolition of the deck and soon the 2nd floor residents were asking the condo association to pay for a carpenter to rebuild their deck. They were asking for over $8000 with no written estimates to even back this cost. After much dispute, it was agreed that the association would pay them $3000 for their loss. I agreed begrudgingly, thinking that 1) the misconstruction of part of their unit was causing damage to a common part of the building 2) the condo association was financing a improvement to their individual unit!

Now, the exact same situation is happening with the other deck in the building. They want to handle this the same way, but I am hesisitant to finance yet another improvement on an individual's unit! Our condo docs do not specifically address this situation as they were merely copied from another assocation!

Can anyone help on this?

There is not mention of the decks in the docs (Like I said, our docs are xeroxes from another association).

We have a "capital reserve fund" with 3K set aside each year for emergency repairs to common areas. Every year this reserve is exhausted and special assessments have to be made for various repairs.

I guess there is no answer if the docs do not explicitly state whether or not the decks qualifty as common areas.

TimC2: I would suggest going to your local municipality office to learn what the developer recorded with them re condo unit consisting of ....?

The fact that your docs are 'xerox' copies of another assn. is something I would also question with the local office to learn if the document they have is the one you have.

Since you do have a capital reserve fund for repairs to 'common areas', is this also in your docs? and, what are the common areas the assn. is bound to repair?