Who should pay for a manager?

Our condo community consists mostly of renters. Only a few owners are here steady. If there was no renter, we feel there would be no need for an onsite Community Association Manager at $66,000 per year. And there is another charge for HOA "Management" in the amount of $27,000 per year. The board consist of owners who own multi units and who use the manager to take care of their renting business. We all pay the same monthly assessment. We feel that it is not fair for us who own only our own unit to have to pay for a manager we dont feel we need. We know that owners do no trash property but renter do; they don't care. So we also have a maintenace person at the cost of $52,000. Total $145,000.
We feel that the owner of rental condo should be paying extra for those expenses.
Is there anybody in the same situation? The meeting of the board is alway at a time where we mostly are at work. It must be convenient for the board but not for us and they don't seems to want us to show up anyway..
Any suggestion would be greatly appreciated.

PS: We are in the dessert and our water bill has doubled in five years mostly due to waisted water, our sidewalk are
black! Our trees are dying from over watering. The manager and the board are never seen on property.

What you describe is a problem for a lot of communities. I'm in a townhouse community and the majority of the homeowners rent out their property. That has caused a number of problems over the years, such as bad renters running amok, landlord-homeowners who don't give a rip as long as the rent check clears - and then when they can't make a profit, they abandon the property and then we get into that long sad trip on suing the owner, filing a lien and hoping the bank will pursue a foreclosure and sell the property so we can get some of our money back (we already know we'll have to take a bath on much of the cost).

In fact, the Indianapolis Star just ran a series of articles on abandoned property throughout the city and how investor-owners have brought the houses for cheap, don't take care of them or pay property taxes and in the end, no one's sure who's responsible for the property, which has deteriorated to the point the crackheads, vandals and other ilk have taken over. And taxpayers end up taking it in the ass.

In recent years, we do seem to have a better set of renters - I guess homeowners got tired of paying through the nose to clean the place up after a renter leaves (sometimes in the middle of the night because they're about to be evicted). They may not care much about the association, but they do care if more money besides the assessment has to be paid out and reducing their profits even more.

Ideally, you shouldn't be able to tell if a renter or owner-occupant lives in a house because everyone should be complying with the rules. That's part of your problem - if you know a renter is trashing the common area, why aren't you holding the owner accountable?

I have heard of some communities who require a fee whenever people rent out their homes to help cover some of the problems you describe, but it usually requires a change in your documents. If you have a majority of homeowners who are renting out their units, you can probably forget about enacting such a rule. Ditto for rental caps or other rules that could slow down the process, such as requiring homeowners to live in the unit for a year or two before renting them out. And you still have to figure out a way to keep track of all this and since the average homeowner won't do it, you'll have to pay someone to do it (and there's guarantee they can keep up because people lie.)

As for the management company, they work for the association, not the other way around. If they aren't doing what's required in the contract, your board should be holding them accountable and be prepared to hire another one. That's when you can shop around for another management company. If you don't want one, you'll have to figure out who will collect the assessments, send out late notices, run the newsletter and website (if you have them), walk or drive through the community every week to identify problem areas and CCR violations, etc., etc. etc. If you don't have a set of homeowners willing to do all this, you're back to hiring a property management company to do it for you.

So, what have we learned? YOU and the other homeowners ARE the association, for better or worse, so if there are conditions you don't like, ultimately, it's up to everyone, including you, to address them. Homeowners elect the board, so if you're not happy with them, vote them out or recall them - but you'd better be sure there are other homeowners willing to step up and run the community the way you want. In your case, that may mean YOU have to step up to the plate? Do you have the will and the patience to get it done?