Number of board members

Started by ThomasD2 • 9 replies • 2384 views

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ThomasD2 (California)
Posts: 208

Posted:

I live in an HOA in Southern California of 22 units. I am not on the board.
In a different subject thread people asked why we had so many board members -- six. (Ours bylaws state it is supposed to be five members, but let's not get into it.)
How many board members do most HOA's have for 22 units? How about for 50 units? How about for 200 units? Is there a normal number?

RichardP13 (California)
Posts: 3,868

Posted:

Thomas

My rule of thumb is 3 for up to 100, and after that only 5. I have seen 7 to 13. There are only 4 officer positions, President, Vice President, Secretary and Treasurer. What are the others going to do. Committees are what makes any association successful.

MelissaP1 (Alabama)
Posts: 13,836

Posted:

We originally had 9 out of 107 homes. That was not reality. So we reduced the number in our documents down to 5. We had the officer positions of President, Vice-President, Secretary, and Treasurer. You are voted in as board members but the office positions are voted on amongst the board elect. In our HOA we were lucky to get 5 people to attend a meeting never the less be on the board.... The more your HOA members participate and care, the number of board members can reflect that IMO.

Former HOA President

KerryL1 (California)
Posts: 14,550

Posted:

Our Bylaws state 3, 5 or 7. If the board goes up to 7, whig it did in '06, it cannot go back to 5. Crazy, but we're stuck at 7 till we amend our bylaws. With a full-time onsite PM & her half-time asst., we truly need only 5 directors. We're 200+ high rise condos intwine towers, so a lot of complexity here.

JohnC46 (South Carolina)
Posts: 14,265

Posted:

112 homes. Our Docs call for a BOD of 3 to 7 and the BOD can decide how many. During the transition to owners we were at 5 and quite busy. Since the transition with things running smoothly, we are at 3 and that is sufficient.

LarryB13 (Arizona)
Posts: 4,099

Posted:

My association had 3 to 5 board members while under developer control and the actual number was three. When the owners took over the first five elected directors were so clueless that they felt the solution to their lack of knowledge was to add four more clueless members. We have been stuck with nine board members ever since.

My experience with serving on a nine-member board was that no more than three or four brought anything to the table. There was one member who felt his job was to second all motions; he never spoke at any other time.

When I am anointed king, my first dictate will be to limit all HOA boards to three members.

TimB4 (Tennessee)
Posts: 21,059

Posted:

Quote:

Posted By LarryB13 on 12/08/2016 2:36 PM

When I am anointed king, my first dictate will be to limit all HOA boards to three members.

Well, for self managed HOAs, 3-5 seems to work best as it spreads the workload around better.

ThomasD2 (California)
Posts: 208

Posted:

Quote:

Posted By TimB4 on 12/08/2016 3:10 PM

Posted By LarryB13 on 12/08/2016 2:36 PM

When I am anointed king, my first dictate will be to limit all HOA boards to three members.

Well, for self managed HOAs, 3-5 seems to work best as it spreads the workload around better.

I notice this thread has an awful lot of odd numbers! I think this has to with voting.

RichardP13 (California)
Posts: 3,868

Posted:

The number of directors and inspector of elections are in odd number to avoid ties.

BobD4 (up north)
Posts: 1,002

Posted:

If your jurisdiction provides for a statutory progressive transition of Board control (instead of 'all Board seats at once' ) it may be handy to have 7 Board seats instead of 3 or 5 Board for a 100 or more unit community.

But later it could be murder even getting 5 warm bodies into those seats. . .

Some NFP groups like charities, animal rights etc may have Boards of 11 or 15 etc. Do such big numbers mean better or more responsive governance ? More skills on board ? Does it help fund raising ?

I accepted that until last year when an outlaw group seized control of one such here, a group with some spiritual links to the terrorists who bombed the Oklahoma Federal building ! The 'big numbers' allowed a shell game of unrecorded numerical changes & voodoo floating quorums without government filings to revise them.

The big numbers there did NOT protect lawful due process. If anything it provided a voodoo shield for hijacking. Hell of a mess for stakeholders to finally regain the rule of law . .

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