By Dan Baldwin, Editor
951-251-5155 email
Being a member of a home owner's association or HOA is an inescapable fact of life for most of us. And while most of us (me included) would like to be invisible to the HOA (and have the HOA be invisible to us), at some point you're going to need to communicate with them to get them to take some action (or stop something they're doing).
As a past president of my own HOA board and a long-time HOA board observer, I recently wrote the following for my fellow HOA neighbors up here in Tuscany Hills in advance of their intention to seek resolution for a challenge they perceived.
I'm pretty sure the information below can be applied to almost any HOA. If I've left anything our or you have a polite, positive or professional comment to add please forward it to me at [email protected].
How to Get our HOA Board to Do What You Want
"It appears that there are at least a few people in our group that will attend tomorrow night's 7pm HOA board meeting at the clubhouse. Some have in mind to speak to the board during the open comment session.
If you've never been to a board meeting before you may want to note the following:
1. The doors generally open about 7pm or a couple minutes after and then all the residents that want to sit in on the meeting sign in and then sit in a group of chairs facing the board and the staff.
2. The board meeting is NOT interactive. The audience simply watches the board conduct the items on their pre-published agenda. To get an idea about current HOA issues you may want to read past meeting minutes which can be found at the HOA website www.TuscanyHillsHOA.net.
3. Twice during the agenda, usually at the beginning of their meeting and then again towards the end, the board will invite comments from the audience. If you have something to say you then step to the podium and try to keep your statement to under three minutes. These two "open comment" sessions may be limited to 15-minutes each.
4. The board is not required to respond to your comments or answer any questions you pose however they may do so if they feel so inclined. If you are presenting information to the board which you want them to respond to at a later date, you should have your comments and/or questions printed, give a copy to the General Manager or Board President and ask if your matter can be placed on the agenda of a future board meeting.
5. "Business casual" dress is recommended if you plan to speak. "Casual" is fine if you just plan to observe.
6. I will be at a table in the pool area from 6pm to 6:45pm if you want to meet and/or discuss anything prior to the meeting.
*** The Best Way to Get Items Discussed and Resolved (IMHO) ***
A. GET IT ON THE AGENDA: Scheduled HOA board meetings generally only discuss and decide on items placed on their meeting agenda before the meeting started. Don't expect much satisfaction or immediate action on items that you have not previously arranged to get on the board's agenda.
B. WRITE IT DOWN: If a matter is important enough for you to comment about at the podium, write it down in advance and then give a copy of your comments to the board so they have something to start with if they decide they want to do something about what you said.
C. USE A SPOKESPERSON: If many people have the same general comments to make, choose a spokesperson to speak for everyone and have the spokesperson introduce all the people in the audience that he or she is speaking for. (Writing your comments in advance helps the many make sure the spokesperson represents their comments correctly.)
D. CONFIRM ASSUMPTIONS: It's not unusual for people to speak at the podium only to learn at the podium or later that certain assumptions they held about a matter they have a strong opinion about are incorrect assumptions. The reason some things take a long time for HOA's to resolve is the history, background and general assumptions about an "important matter" are not correctly understood by residents hoping for change.
E. ASK FOR SPECIFIC, LEGAL AND MEASURABLE ACTIONS: Don't just ask for change, ask for specific actions that the board can 1) put on an agenda, 2) legally vote on, and 3) measure resolution effectiveness. It's not the board's job to make us happy, safe or rich. Their only real job is to analyze information, predict the effectiveness of certain actions, vote on specific action items and then measure their effectiveness. Study your own matter and then recommend specific actions that the board can actually do.
P.S. The reason it's called a board meeting is it's usually really boring!
All HOA boards meet in accordance with the "Brown Act" which you can read more about at http://bit.ly/RgMB3g.
Except for the homeowner comments part, the rest of the HOA board meeting is about as exciting as watch paint dry.
Which means...
Unless you like to spend about 20 hours a month actively talking about watching paint dry (and not getting paid) you would most likely not enjoy being a board member.
I did it for about a year and 99% of the time it was VERY UNFUN.