HOA Oversight Committee

I have seen something like this done in business. Take your loudest union supporter and promote them to management. They often then turn on the union.

Seems like it might be a pretty good idea. Looking forward to hearing how it works out. The most education about hoa operations, the better imho.

its' worht a shot

but lets face it you are just bored

they will not do this

use your time for bette rthings
happy holidays.

It'd help if MichaelT would add this detail: One of the group is a former board member and ,lawyer, who, according to MichaelT, screwed up their finances. Apparently she has a couple of cronies. Given this back story, I don't see how this veery loose plan of Michel's would do anything beneficial for his HOA.

If you think it would, MichaelT, why not tell us what these possible benefits might be.

I agree with Mark. If you read his posting carefully:

1) He believes that those who complain to his board would love to serve on an oversite committee.
He is not advocating that one be made.

2) He defines that the responsibilities of the committee might be everything the complainers are doing now.

3) He believes that such a committee would be "utter nuts".
Hence, I think he believes those who complain to his board are utter nuts.

Michael, in my opinion, can't see things from any other perspective then his own.
I also believe that when his perspective is challenged by overwhelming numbers he tends to flee rather then consider another perspective might have some valid points. One doesn't have to agree with another perspective but should be aware that there may be some valid points - at least one of them being his actions are being perceived differently then he intended and he should, perhaps, consider another way to explain his perspective so the actions might be perceived the way he intended.

While I believe MichaelT has worked hard for his HOA an improved it, a few things about him bother me. For one, he dumps his own threads when he gets answers he doesn't like. When he's asked certain questions, he also just quotes the thread. I' ve asked him 3 times now: MichaelT: Who collects the absentee ballots for your upcoming election? Who's tabulate the votes and absentee ballots?

These are a couple of things that seem to Bothe his critics. But MichaelT refuses to answer. Instead he starts a new thread.

I don't mind all of the different threads since I think that some are of interest to others who vist this site. Why hs just does' refer to himself as MichaelT of WA is baffling.

In an earlier post on this thread, I pointed out that I believe that Michael can not see potential valid points in a perspective that a complaining member has.

I thought I would give an example with a simple solution to said example:

In an earlier thread, Subject: Board drama, a member brought to the board that they believed the board was not following their bylaws because of Michaels' electronic absentee ballot system. The bylaws specify in person or by proxy and a new statute allowed absentee ballots.

Michael, to us, defended his system by citing statute. Michael, in my opinion, was correct that the statute allowed for absentee ballots. However, he couldn't see how this action can give to perception to some that bylaws were not being followed. Perhaps a mistake in failing to fully explain to the membership ahead of time how this new option is authorized by statute.

However, a simple solution would be calling the system a directed proxy vs an absentee ballot.
This simple solution would also remove the concern of who was collecting and had access to the "ballots" prior to the election (a question that was asked but never answered).

Again, one doesn't have to agree with another persons perspective but if they could try to see the issue from that perspective they might find simple solutions that would satisfy everyone vs. creating more drama.

Legal counsel has advised that the new state law that allows for absentee ballots applies to all HOAs in our state.

If there are further concerns regarding this, our association should hire our legal counsel to review our election process and issue an opinion about whether our system is compliant with the legal framework that surrounds HOAs. I personally don't spend my time reading state law, I just trust that the opinions of HOA lawyers who provide free advice during weekly sessions is accurate.

Yes.

With regards to our communicatins strategy on adopting the new system, we tried it last year. I listened for complaints from homeowners and heard none. Heard many compliments about how easy it was and how nice it was to not attend meetings.

This year caused a ruckus because of the names on the ballot and because we needed to collect names earlier, and it surprised some homeowners. I agree that "we as a Board" could have done better had we put some more effort into it. I don't agree that I'm the only one that could put the effort into it, rather, anyone on the Board could have identified the concern and developed a better communications strategy. None volunteered to do so. Not all work has to fall on my shoulders.

I do feel badly that I am running the election at this point. It turns out that we have had at least one additional homeowner running as a write in candidate. The system was setup to be under my control when I thought the election was uncontested. Now that it is contested, I agree I shouldn't be running it. Too many opportunities to use data that is not available to the whole community in running my campaign to get re-elected. However, I have a heck of a time getting someone to volunteer to take meeting minutes. It's simple task to take meeting minutes...jot a few notes during the meeting and spend 30 minutes putting them into a PDF format.

If I can't get someone else to take meeting minutes, how in the heck would I get someone to run an entire election?

To this point, not one person has mentioned that they'd like to be in charge of the election next year. I fully expect that ultimately, I'll run the election again next year.

Our by-laws do not reference electronic voting. They were written before the era in which electronic voting is a thing.

Yes. Her company would charge $135 for her time to attend the meeting plus an additional $90 to write the meeting minutes, so it would cost a total of $225 per meeting. We have 12 meeting per year, so it would cost us $2,700 per year to have our property manager write meeting minutes. Unfortunately, she is unable to attend 12 meetings per year because of her personal life commitments and she is not sure if another staff member would be available for those meetings that she cannot attend.

We did get a Board volunteer to agree to be Secretary but he was unable to attend a recent meeting. He let all other Board members in advance that he would be gone, and asked for someone to step up and take the meeting minutes. No one offered to do so. My wife took the minutes (she enjoys attending).

----

You may have been thinking about the election, not meeting minutes. Yes, she can handle portions of the election as part of our management contract and she has offered to do so next year. However, there are a number of things that she needs Board direction on, and it still would require involvement from someone. Examples of where the Board needs to step in and provide direction include:

- Decision on software vendor to use to collect absentee votes, if we accept electronic votes (the Board needs to ensure that the platform will work for our community based on our demographics)
- Decision on when and how to solicit names of candidates
- Decision on when to send, and how many to send, e-mail blasts to the community about the election process
- Approval of the candidates (obviously anyone can run, but a Board member has to say "ok")
- Decision on the wording to use for any advisory vote items
- Decision on when to send follow up e-mail blasts to encourage voting
- Releasing the results to the HOA president night of annual meeting.

None of this is "hard" it takes someone dedicated and willing to pay attention to the overall process to ensure it runs smoothly and to ensure our property manager is doing the right thing. It doesn't happen by itself. And if I can't get someone to take meeting minutes for a single meeting, I have a hard time believing that someone is interested enough to coordinate the process. Absentee ballots / electronic voting is more work that just voting at an in-person meeting, but I don't think our community will ever go back to in-person meetings and only voting at the meeting.

It is a true statement that we do not have an opinion from our legal counsel as to whether the state statute allows for collection of absentee votes by an electronic means. I have asked other Board members for authorization to check with legal counsel, and no other Board member felt it was a worthwhile use of funds and thus we have not inquired.

I've said a few times before that Michael is a great worker bee and does add value to his community. What would be ideal is to have a strong president take over so Michael could work on the projects that he is interested in and leave the management responsibilities to someone who is well qualified to lead the HOA.