Board members need to prepare and be attentive

In order for Homeowner's Associations to succeed, owners must be responsibly involved and boards must be competent and willing to fulfill their duties as fiduciaries.

One of the aspects of being a board member is to be prepared for meetings. At BLMH that required careful reading of a monthly packet provided by management. That packet may be 100 or more pages in length.  It also requires that all board members be attentive at meetings and it may also require that they take notes and use critical thinking skills.

However, I can say as a former HOA board member and president that one cannot make board members do what they refuse to do. I learned this the hard way over a period of years and the lessons learned and the intransigence of some board members was instrumental in my decision to depart from the board in September 2018.  The issues were far reaching and had I stayed in 2019 there would have been open warfare.  That would not have been good for the Association.

An example of a failure to be prepared

During the January 2019 HOA meeting the board reviewed the letter from the city pertaining to transitioning control and responsibility for our water mains to the city.

This letter was included in a packet provided by management to the board about six months ago. That was specifically at my request, as president. During the meeting I gave a brief explanation and also gave the board an opportunity to study the letter, deferring deeper discussion to a later meeting. The letter was subsequently discussed by the board at a later meeting, but was tabled due to lack of interest and enthusiasm by some board members.

I provided a brief explanation of the letter in the August-September 2018 Newsletter to residents, owners and of course, to the board.  I pointed out that certain decisions would have to be made by the board of 2019. I also acknowledged that I was departing the board and would not be one of those  making the decisions.

During the Annual meeting in September I provided a summary of the state of the association to owners and to the board. That address included the water main issue and numerous visuals I prepared on my PC and projected on a screen (I provided the technology).  Several owners asked questions about the water mains and this project, which I answered.

Yet, when the board decided in January, 2019 to discuss this,  it was reported by an owner that one board member complained that he/she did not  understand where this letter came from, etc.  That board member had been in attendance for all of the presentations listed above.

So what happened?

One issue is most board members did not keep notes of the meetings; when the meeting is over, it is up to individual memory to keep track of "to-do's", issues, etc. Furthermore, for some time, there have been two concurrent meetings going on. This was not intentional by the board. However, a faction led by a previous president decided to ignore the current president and would conduct side bar conversations. This occurred intermittently during meetings from 2013 to September 2018. That group refused to alter their behavior.  This occurred again during the annual meeting. While I was giving my presentation several board members were facing away from me and the screen. Two were engaged in a conversation distinct from the presentation. This was captured on video.  As a consequence they did not get the benefit of my explanation about the issues facing the board in making a decision about the water mains.

I would suggest that a lack of preparation and inattentiveness is why some board members don't understand critical issues and even some of the forms provided in the management packet. There have been numerous explanations to the board during the my eight years of service. But some board members were more interested in running their personal agendas.

Those agendas showed up in many ways, from lack of attention to belligerence and even issues pertaining to rules enforcement.

I had very good reasons for departing the board, some far more consequential and serious than the water main project.