Posted:
Not at all! But, it is rewarding to see your efforts having made positive changes. It is a very thankless job in general and not every board member gets involved equally so some take on more stress than others and end up sacrificing more personal and family time while serving on the Board. Furthermore, I guess the answer to your question depends on your association and the type of people you work with. In my case, itās been a curse because we have been a self managed condo association for over 15 years(not by owners choice but by the choice of our past Board President and Treasurer who wanted to stay in control). Both finally resigned in 2019, and I took over as the Board President and found out what a great mess I had taken over, not just financially(they were stealing for years but apathetic owners self managed cdangerous and disasterous combination), but, other people who were on the Board with me were neither interested in doing any board work, nor had any knowledge nor interest to learn about our CC&R. But in my position, I learned and continued to learn while serving so that I can steer our association in the right direction, finally! Like a fool, I did Tresurer and Secretaryās duties including my own, when there was a Treasurer and Secretary( who had served with prior President and Treasuer) didnāt want to help out while being on the Board with me.
While some of our owners became supportive of me and my efforts, others(who benefited from prior Pres and Treasurerās no question asked attitude and using our Association money to upgrade their apartments) still continued to carry a well lit torch for these two. In short 17 months as Board President, I increased the value in our Association(cost cutting, contract negotiations, increasing reserves) by $100k just with my own efforts alone because I didnāt have the support of my board members, as stated above. So here was my outcome when came election time last November:
1. One Board Member At Large, who didnāt get along with me because I didnāt want to go along his wish for fixing his apartment using association money(no fault of the Association requiring fulfilling of such demand), threatened me verbally the night before our annual meeting, that, if he wants to he can get rid of me with the snap of his fingers and there is nothing I can do about it. He berated me for about 45 minutes with some other nonsense, then he just left.
2. On the night of annual meeting, this BM at Large, Bd Secretary, Tresurer and a newly appointed BM at large, took the help of previous Board Treasurer who showed up with proxies in favor of the one who harassed me the night before and the Treasurer(both were up for re-election).
And booted me out with the help of owners who still follow every word of the previous Treasurer.
Thereās a lot more to this story which is moot to share here, but, I wanted to get the point across that while I felt the high of doing something good for our condo association after 15 years of ādarknessā, with some owners banding together for the status quo, in seconds, I was removed like a fly in the milk. And as CathyA3 and Melissa shared that their good efforts were undone, well, in my situation thatās happening too, but even worse, because the association has reverted back to status quo- nothing getting done, no violations being addressed, no improvements being done, heck no snow being removed. So kudos to who get to enjoy being on the Board because you might have a much better function Association.