New HOA Needs Guidance

We are a new HOA in a small (yet unfinished) +55 Community in PA. Our developement has compleated phase 1 (of 3) single family homes, with phase 2 (townhomes) and phase 3 (single family homes) under construction. We are 30 owners in phase 1 who have elected one of us to sit on the board, (under control of the builder until phase 2 and 3 are completed and board members elected). This past spring we were informed by the builder that they had hired a Property Management Co. to represent our HOA. Since they control the Board we had no say in the selection process. We know nothing about this Property Management Co. their qualifications to manage an HOA or the qualifications of their employees. The person assigned to represent us by this company seems nice enough but we know nothing about her qualifications. Must she be certified by the State? Does she meet certail educational requirements? The reason I'm concerned is that she prepared our our annual budget and aside from the fact that there is an operating defecit, she only insured our HOA for 1 million in liability with no umbrella or D & O coverage that I'm aware of and she just doesn't come across as very professional.
We also have no formal organization among the owners. Some believe in addition to our represenative on the Board and our Management Co., we should have our own officers, ( President, VP, Secretary, Treasurer, etc to call meetings, approve expenses, etc.). Is this customary among HOA's? We really would appreciate some feedback and guidance from those of you out there who have fought the battles and stopped the bleeding. Thank you in advance.

I live in the suburbs of Philadelphia as well. My strong suggestion is that your community hire a management company on its own. WIth our community, we only began to understand how our HOA should work and what we really needed to do once we hired our own management company. We even retained an attorney who told us that the builder had no legal right to force us into a contract with a management company the builder selected. Our 1st move was to go out and hire our own property manager. That is what we did and we have been glad that we did so.