Meeting Attendance - Data Analysis

Started by DjB2 • 5 replies • 1605 views

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DjB2 (Pennsylvania)
Posts: 49

Posted:

I had some free time, so I analyzed our meeting attendance data for all of the meetings that our 32-unit 33-year-old condominium development has ever had. As I recall for the first 20 years or so our BOD had 5 members. For the last 10 years or so we have only had three members. For many years we held quarterly meetings, then we switched to semi-annual meetings, and in more recent years we rarely meet more than once a year, as we conduct almost all of our business via email. Anyway, as the current President I was amazed to find that our average attendance per meeting - including the BOD in attendance - was less than 4 people per meeting!

And who says nobody wants to participate in HOAs?

GenoS (Florida)
Posts: 4,276

Posted:

The trend here has been downward since the start in 1994 when developer turnover occurred. Not quite as bad as what you have, but not good either. We have about 8 residences that are represented at the regular board meetings and a few others that are occasional attendees. Essentially the same cast of characters every month.

The last 2 annual meetings have barely reached quorum whereas some of the really old minutes from 15-20 years ago show almost 50% attendance in person and another 20% represented by proxies and absentee ballots. One of these years we're not going to make quorum if the trend continues.

JohnC46 (South Carolina)
Posts: 14,265

Posted:

Usually the only time many will participate is when they are upset about something otherwise they let others run things. For your next whatever meeting put something on the agenda like: Dues increase discussion. That will bring them out.

DjB2 (Pennsylvania)
Posts: 49

Posted:

Quote:

Posted By JohnC46 on 09/08/2015 11:01 AM
Usually the only time many will participate is when they are upset about something otherwise they let others run things. For your next whatever meeting put something on the agenda like: Dues increase discussion. That will bring them out.

Funny you should mention that JohnC46.

We publish extremely detailed annual financial reports, containing every dollar in and every dollar out. They are updated at the end of each month, and distributed to all of our 31 owners at the end of each quarter.

Our BOD had a private meeting in May 2015 to discuss our financial situation, including our dramatically increasing repair and landscape costs combined with our massively underfunded Reserve Fund; and we decided at that meeting that because we can not cut any further any of the very few services that we do provide, nor have we ever been able to find lower contractor costs for any of those services - that because of all of that we must increase our monthly dues on 1/1/16 by $25 per month to $150 per month, to rebuild our Reserve Fund, which has fallen from $50K to $30K since 1/1/13. We raised our monthly dues from $100 to $125 on 1/1/15.

By email in July we announced the increase scheduled for 1/1/16, with a detailed explanation as to why it is needed. Of course the owners are not pleased with these back-to-back increases -- but only just one of our 31 owners has complained about it to the BOD. We plan to send out a reminder of the coming increase on 10/1/15, and we'll include the YTD 2015 financial report, as well as an even more detailed explanation as to why our dues are increasing again.

So no JohnC46, not even increasing our dues got a response from our owners -- but maybe it will be enough for sometime to finally step forward and replace me as President after nine years. I can hope!

GeorgeR8 (Arizona)
Posts: 182

Posted:

Have a door prize. We did that and got a few more people to come to regular meetings. Once we had wine after the meeting and that worked very well. I think we may go with the wine from here on in.

We usually have decent attendance. For our annual meeting almost everybody that is in town shows up, maybe 3 or 4 don't come, and those people send in their ballots. Arizona is a no proxy state. A quorum is never a problem.

Our budget meeting is the exception. Last year no one came.

KevinK7 (Florida)
Posts: 1,343

Posted:

My old neighborhood claimed nearly 900 homes as their own. Attendance was close to 20. The most people attended when the big lawsuit started. Close to 100 people showed up. The HOA restricted access and refused entrance to homeowners. They had a sheriff stand guard. Once the lawsuit had some rulings showing the HOA had no authority membership plummeted, people stopped attending, and the HOA went broke.

Shows that people only get involved when they think they will be affected monetarily

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