Tag: Meetings

There’s good news for community association managers across the country: For the seventh time in 13 years, Americans living in homeowners associations (HOAs) and condominiums say they’re satisfied in their communities. According to the 2018 Homeowner Satisfaction Survey, conducted by Zogby Analytics for the Foundation for Community Association Research (FCAR), the majority of survey respondents say their association’s rules protect and enhance their property values.

There’s always turnover for community association boards. A board member might move, retire, want to travel, or become too busy for some reason to fulfill her responsibilities. When a board member gives up her position, the association has the sometimes difficult task of replacing the outgoing member. There are certain qualities that some people have that make them more suitable for the role than others. Experience, of course, helps too. After all, the more a new board member knows, the more she’ll be able to contribute to the association in a meaningful way.

By Carolyn Zezima, Esq.

Buying a home in a community association is a serious investment, so many homeowners and members live in their units for an extended period of time. Although it sometimes seems like an on-site association manager is part of the community because she’s on the property continually, this is a job and, at some point, the manager or the management company will inevitably leave. The question that concerns owners and the board of directors at that point is whether the transition to a new manager and company will be smooth and productive.

As a community association manager, a large part of your time can be taken up with questions from directors and members that require a response. While you might want to provide as much helpful information as you can, be aware that this area can be fraught with risk for you and your management company. That’s because giving what you think of as a detailed and helpful response could be seen as “the practice of law” under certain circumstances, which could subject you to penalties.

If your community association has a hard time getting enough board members to attend monthly board meetings to form a quorum, consider meeting by telephone conference call. Meeting by conference call makes it easier for directors to attend, increasing the likelihood that they will. This is especially true for vacation communities, whose board members often live far away from one another and are rarely all present at the community at the same time.

Q: The board of the association I manage has been conducting meetings that aren’t very effective and are unnecessarily long. The president has served on the board for several years and has become frustrated with the situation. How can I help her to streamline meetings and get control over the board members who drag out the agenda?

by Jim Slaughter, Esq.

There are more than 320,000 community associations in the United States, according to the Community Associations Institute. Think of all the membership, board, and committee meetings that take place! Since statutes and governing documents often require such meetings to follow certain rules, it’s important for managers and board members to know about parliamentary procedure, which, when used properly, can also serve to streamline meetings and make association life easier and more productive for everyone.

If a hearing-impaired member in your community asks for a sign language interpreter to be present at a special meeting or at an annual meeting as a reasonable accommodation, be sure to provide one. Without a sign language interpreter, the disabled member may not be able to participate in any meaningful way at the meeting. As a result, your refusal to provide an interpreter could lead a hearing-impaired member to claim that you discriminated against him based on his disability.