How to add committees

Hi,

I have discussed to the Board that we create committees for things like community events and we also want a Fining committee. I am looking for any opinions, advice on setting this up. How do we do it? What is the best organization/structure for it?

Thank you.

Say, Emily, our Board is our "Fining Committee," but have I read that FL requires a separate committee for levying fines? Does your HOA already have a Schedule of Fines? Who calls violators to hearings and fines them or otherwise disciplines them now?

Get at least three homeowners together and write a proposal to the Board suggesting the formation of a Social Committee--the three of you are willing to serve. You three think about what you might want to do in terms of activities and make a list for the Board. I think the best way is for Board to assign you an annual budget. Members would buy items for social events and submit receipts to, say, your property mgr. or Board Treasurer for reimbursement.

Check your bylaws and you'll probably see that the Board approves the formation of committees, its members and its chair. You serve at the Board's pleasure and they can "fire" you, disband you. So you three (let's say) want to suggest a committee chair to the board. You want to specify that you'll meet once a month, write minutes to submit to the board and present a monthly report to the Board. If your board's set up this way, you may want to request a "Board liaison," or the board might appoint one who'll attend your meetings to present the Board's approach to your ideas.

Whatever the committee, you need to sell yourselves to the board--why do they need you? How will you benefit your community?

I came to the board through our committee systems and am a strong supporter of them--it's a great way to groom future board members and the more residents who're involved in your HOA the better.

But some boards or a majority on them, worry that committees might get too sassy, too influential--they worry they'll lose prestige or something when committees' accomplishments seem more pronounced than the board's. So, Emily, watch out for that!

You're welcome, Emily. By the way, in our HOA, Social Committee members are not required to be homeowner. Often there are renters with good ideas. How it and other committees are set up also depends on the structure of you HOA. We, for example, have a prop. Mgr. and an assist. mgr. The latter makes reservations for our lounges, collects deposits and returns them, etc. Our PM does all of the communications re: violations, "invitations" to hearings,, send the letters of the results of hearings to the alleged violators.

But in self-managed HOAs or HOAs where the Board does most of the work, show them that you will not cause them yet more work. Show them that you can relieve some of their burdens.

Emily

It has been a running dicsussion on here about spending association money on "social" events versus spending it on common association expenses only.

Some have even objected to spending association money on get well flowers to the BOD President when one was in the hospital.

I say no social budget but a good social committee might just be an income producer and if not income producing, at least a break even deal.

Be very careful when requesting to spend other peoples "common" money.

Hope this helps.

Carol, I am as puzzled as you are. If it wasn't for the events we started having, they wouldn't have had any volunteers for the fining committee. It wasn't until the events that people started getting involved in coming to the meetings and volunteering. So you are right when it says it gets the community involved and caring and that is why I started bringing back events to the community again. I really don't see what the PMs reasoning is.

Carol,

No, not that I know of. Whenever we complain about her controlling she says she has to do what we tell her and that it is up to us. But then we have moments like this. I don't get it. I think she is moody. She likes to add things to the agenda that she finds important and says anyone can add anything to the agenda but when it is something she has an opinion against she says only the president can add to the agenda. I honestly don't know what her issue is.

Emily,

You've touched a hot topic. The property manager's fiduciary responsibility is manage HOA assets efficiently given the common basic expectations of HOA operation - maintenance of common areas, replacement of equipment and enforce of commonly-agreed covenants. You can't fault the PM for advising against spending HOA cash on social functions. I'd fire a PM would advocated putting the "beer money" above utility bill payment.

That said, the board decision is final if it chooses to spend on social events to increase neighborhood participation The PM is on the record that it's negligent use of HOA dues in his/her opinion as a professional manager of properties.

Committees, to me, are pretty pointless. It's a group of people who sit and talk and then expect the one (or two) active people to do their bidding. Been there, done that. Charge a new committee to implement its own proposals and the proposals die.

I respect everyone's opinions on here and I think that they are all great. I just wanted to summarize everyone's points and address what should happen, what is considered normal here in our area, and what my opinion is (because we are all entitled to one).

1. Social events bring together the community:

This doesn't seem to be argued against by anyone.

2. Social events should not come out of HOA assessments because it is not the responsibility of the HOA:

In a perfect world no, and a lot of other things that are paid for should either. Having a playground, clubhouse, basketball hoop, and other recreational areas are not needed by a community and is not considered common areas required by any laws, but we still have them and spend a considerable amount of the budgets on them. Perhaps we need to get rid of these recreational areas as well since it shouldn't be paid for by the HOA because it goes beyond the description of "common areas" and not all the homeowners us these areas, need them or want them. The city and county already provide these recreational areas and is paid by our property taxes, so why should we pay for it again in our neighborhood which is open for any outsiders to come and use if they pleased.

Spending 18% of our budget on a county sheriff to patrol our neighborhood shouldn't happen either because security is also not the responsibly of our HOA. Not everyone wants it or wants to pay for it. We shouldn't use our budget for this either. Btw, we spend $32,000 on the sheriff and $1200 ($2.70 per homeowner per year) on special events.

Of course, my past two paragraphs take HOA responsibilities to the extreme, but if we are going to follow the documents to the "T" then that is how it would be. And I don't agree with any of it, I am just playing devils advocate. And I guess we can all argue that yes, recreation areas are considered common areas as well, but in reality they are not all that "common".

In my opinion, I don't agree or disagree with HOA fees paying for the social events or the sheriff. The reason is that I think if the majority of the homeowners want it, they are paying for it and agreed to pay for it, then why not. But it would be nice to set up the social events to pay for themselves and we have been experimenting with that but it will take sometime to figure it out. If we went house to house to collect $5 from each homeowner once per year, we would have more than what we are currently allowed in the budget for events. Perhaps this is an idea. I wish the sheriff can pay for itself as well!

In our area in Florida, it is very common for HOAs to have a couple of parties/festivals throughout the year as well as Community Garage sales. Our homeowners I think expect it because it is so common. I have got comments from them that they don't see the use in a HOA if they don't see any events. Some who are paying into the HOA expect to see it used to have events. When they don't see us doing events, they say the board is lazy and don't do anything. They wonder what our money is being wasted on when there are no events. These are just comments and feedback I have gotten from homeowners. Of course I go on to explain our budget and where all the money goes and what else the board does. But it is perceived in our area by the homeowners that the HOA is there to provide community events as well.

3. Insurance:

That is a great point Bruce. We are however fully covered.

Basically, everyone is concerned about where the money comes from. In our situation, it is only $2.70 per homeowner per year. That is way less than 10% of our budget, it is 0.70% of our budget!!! It is like pocket change.

No one in our board has a problem with the events as long as it doesn't take up too much of their time. There is only one person who doesn't want to spend money on it, but he says that about 100% of everything that comes up in the board, but he was still supportive at the events.

REGARDING THE PM:

The PM encouraged me doing the events when she first come to us about a year ago. Her NEW opinions came out of no where as a personal attack on me. She had an issue with an email that I sent out to all the board members saying that she and a couple other board members felt insulted/offended by it. I explained to her that she misread my intentions in the email and we spoke it out. However, she felt that I should address it at the meeting because she and others were offended. Well, I didn't want to be scolded at a meeting by other board members in front of homeowners, so I decided to call each board member individually and apologize if they misunderstood my emails intent. I called everyone and spoke to everyone but one person who's number I don't have. No one I spoke to expressed talking to the PM about the email and didn't find it offensive and agreed with my email.

So, I after talking with everyone, I spoke with the president, we went over some items to discuss at the next meeting and he asked me to tell the PM to add it all to the agenda (these included discussing the events and the "social" committee). I emailed her the list of items but I didn't tell her that the president told me to do it. I also told her that I spoke to all the board members and no one but her and possibly that person I couldn't reach had felt offended and that if that person did I don't think we need to take up the board's time at the meeting over it and that he can approach me individually like a professional adult and speak about it.

Now, previously she said anyone can add to the agenda. But this time she sent out a copy of my email to the board and asked if everyone agreed. Of course the person on the board who we call Mr. No, said no to several items that we had already discussed in past meetings but he wasn't there and said that since we didn't discuss it we can't decide on it.

She decides to take this one person's opinions and takes out the items that I had discussed with her that I would like to add, and had discussed with the president about without her knowledge. She then tells me that only the president can add to the agenda.

I emailed her back reminding her that she had previously told me that anyone can add to the agenda and quoted Robert's rules Q&A about that misconception that only the president can add to the agenda. I also wrote that they were discussed with the president and that he agreed with them and that I asked him to call her to confirm.

She, wrote back saying that it seems like all I seem to be concerned about are special events and that she doesn't think the board should have them or pay for them and she added those items back to the agenda anyway. I wrote back that our past events have been a success, that it has increased homeowner involvement in the HOA and that the board was happy with the results and wanted to do more as well as us having comments from homeowners that they would want more, that I respect her opinion but that I don't understand why she is bringing this up and that is seems counter-productive. After that she didn't seem to say much else.

Now, I spoke with her over the phone about that first email that she said offended her. She really read into it more than she should have but I respected her opinions and thought that everything between us was fine. No one else had an issue with that email. So, I don't know why she would behave the way she has been.

Sorry, for that long story, but I thought maybe it would shed some light on maybe why our PM has had a sudden change of heart regarding social events. I doubt it is the budget, liability or her having to do more work.

Update:

So, I followed all the advice given here and was successful in getting the Event Committee voted in.

Here is what I did:

I contacted as many residents as possible to get "committed" volunteers. I was able to get 5, more than I had anticipated. I collected all their contact information.

I looked up studies done showing the need and benefits of having community events and summarized those studies and included links to the studies in the proposal.

I made a list of pros and cons of having community events and went over solutions to the cons.

I created a mission statement, objectives and 2013 goals for the Event committee.

I added all this information to a proposal and had the volunteers look it over to agree to or comment.

I then at the meeting summarized the first parts and read the pros, cons, solutions, mission statement, objectives, goals and volunteer names, then asked for a motion to vote it in.

It was voted in unanimously and this morning the manager said I did a fabulous job.

Well done, Emily. You did a lot of work, but the board appreciated it, I'm sure, and your whole community will benefit!