Minnesota CoA and HoA of community at odds.

The only thing done wrong was "the HoA president had told them they would have no problem getting the CoA contract." There wasn't any authority or basis for making that statement.

The President of the HoA verbally made the statement to the PM that the HoA voted in. Yes the CoA board members believe that the HoA contract was taken with the intention of recieving the CoA contract.
To your statment about not letting it hit the PM on his way out I am in agreement.

As a board member I had the feeling of being pushed into a corner to make a decision fast and only to the views of the HoA. The CoA contract is not up until Mar of 2008 where as the HoA contract is up in Oct 2007 and the HoA board is wanting the CoA board to cancel the agreement with our present PM and go with the HoA PM, but the CoA board feels strongly that our new PM is fulling their job functions extremely well. I was just concerned the CoA was violating a Condominuim state law by hiring a different PM.

I wish the HoA would consider the PM that services the CoA, however, the board will not even consider it, and HoA told the CoA board members we are creating havoc amounst the community where the association will never recover. Not a pretty site right now.

I am personally trying to play a little devils advocate and find the means to make both sides happy and work towards a comprimise that will assist and help both sides.

Thank you for your time.

You stated,

“The HOA Board President was irresponsible in committing to bind the COA to an eventual contract without the consensus and written agreement of the COA Board."
-- Yes, any verbal commitment by the HoA for the CoA was done irresponsibly in my opinion, as the president or anyone on the HoA board would have no vote or the authority to commit to a binding agreement on behalf of the CoA.

“The COA and HOA budgets should be independent of eachother.” -- To answer this, yes, we have separate budgets. “Sounds to me like there is too much crossover and input between Boards.” – And again yes, there is, and according to the associations’ by laws, we have a master association, a HoA association and a CoA association, in which on the HoA 3 members of the HoA board need to be from the CoA, and on the master association 4 members 2 are from the CoA and 2 are from the HoA. The crossover occurs because 2 members of the CoA BOD are also on the HoA board as well as the master association board.

“Why did the HOA and COA not have the same origination and termination dates on the contract with the original PM?” – The reason for the difference of dates is that with the problems we had with the PM, who was brought on by the developer. The HoA cancelled their contract with that PM, paying a fee for early cancellation, where as the CoA followed the guidelines of the contract by giving adequate notice to the PM that the CoA would no longer renew the yearly contract.

“It's best if sister associations have the same PM, probably reduces the bottom line for both.” – Here again that is true, however, having the same PM the CoA would have to go through every itemized expenses due to the fact of consistently finding errors where the CoA was paying bills that belonged to the HoA. This alone was a problem, until I came on board a few years back, as none of the board members was accountants and they had no full understanding of accounting procedures. The manager, who was also the manager for the HoA, was always coming up with excuses as to why and how it happened. As an accountant, I began to find the managers’ excuses unacceptable.
In addition the CoA had been paying the PM almost 4 times the amount the HoA was paying, and the CoA board had to consistently increase monthly dues to it members to help pay the expenses and to build the reserve to help cover for future improvements that would arise.

“Since the COA members pay to both Associations the COA Board has a vested interest in reducing costs to it's COA Association.” -- Again this is a true statement, however, the CoA members do not realize this since all monthly payments are made to the CoA association, with the CoA management group paying one lump sum a month to the HoA management fund, no matter if monthly dues are not paid to the CoA.

“The HOA PM contract may increase now that it's PM didn't get a piece of the COA pie.” – This I cannot honestly answer, since I have not inside knowledge of what will happen on the HoA side. However, that statement has been made by one of the board members that is on both boards.

Again thanks for your input; you have given me some things to think about.