President wants a phone

Our President wants to receive a phone for Hoa duties and I feel that she knew there was no provide phone when she took the position. Just wondering what HOAtalk members think.

This delves into Directors receiving compensation, 1099 filing, No, No and NO.
too much of a hassle and honestly, how much business does the president do to warrant
a special phone for just association business.

Are you on the Board? Does your HOA have a property manager?

William,
I find this interesting. Not the phone request but the keeping HOA business separate from personal business.

Many years ago, when Hillary Clinton around 2012 or 2013 had all of the personal information on Government phones and computers. At the time I was president of a Ca. board and we decided that we would purchase laptops for the 5 board members. The main reason for this we had a few members who shared an email address with spouses. When we sent communications to the board member the spouse had access. If you think about it this can be tricky since this person can share confidential information without any fiduciary duty.

These laptops were used for all board related emails and communications. They were used to get board packets without having to print the large packets monthly. It also saved shredding the packets once they are no longer needed. Once this person leaves the board the laptop is handed to the next elected official and the laptop has the new board members email address added. The new board member had all of the emails going back to time before they were on the board if they wanted to do research. We did this for my last 4 years on that board.

When I was elected to my current Texas board I did not suggest the same setup, but I do see the benefits still.

William,
As a very active board president I only get a handful of call a week. I think this is a crazy request and I would quickly say no.

Mark that reminded me of something that happened to me once. Think it helps see how easily the personal and business can be easily misconstrued. One day I was printing out my resume to apply for a job inside our company. Did not know at the same time our President of the company was printing out a power point presentation. I get a tap on my shoulder and turn around to see the President of the company hand me my resume! He says "I think this is yours...".

I think I squeezed out the words "I was applying for a job here...". However, at this point it was too late. Mind you it was for a possible promotion. It came across as "I am currently looking for another job".

Someone seeing you with a cell phone talking HOA business even if it's your spouse who wants to know why your not home... It doesn't read across to others as a necessary item to conduct HOA business. Plus it's not a conversation that HOA would approve on their dime. It just is not a win win situation no matter if you talk business only.

Post-o. Change the last sentence of my last post to:

A director or officer's reimbursement, by the HOA, for reasonable HOA-related expenses is lawful. Your not knowing this is a problem, IMO.

I would have to know more about what the President does to determine whether I thought the expense of a phone was reasonable and HOA-related.

OP is in California. How much "official HOA business" is going to be conducted via phone?

There's your answer.

In that case, why doesn't the president present some numbers to justify needing a phone? How many calls does she get in a day, week, or month? How long are those calls? How many follow-up calls would be necessary to address association business? And how do you know which calls were HOA business (management vs. board) - are you going to require her to keep a log of every call made or received (for documentation and audit purposes and all that)?

And why stop at the president - why can't the vice president, secretary and treasurer also get paid? I suspect they may make as many calls doing their jobs as she does. This may or may not get pricey and then I can see some homeowners griping or only volunteering so they can get a free phone.

I agree with William that this president knew there were no phones provided - she could have asked about this when she took the job. I'm sure the position does require a certain amount of time, and since you're self-managed, it's probably past time that the rest of you (officers AND at large members) need to carry more of the load instead of expecting the president to do everything (starting with you, as vice president). Why not designate certain people to handle certain types of calls, develop a procedure for handling emergencies, and tell the homeowners what warrants a call vs. what should be addressed via email? I suspect most questions can be handled this way - be sure to set up an email account where all board members will receive them, so there's no confusion as to what the president said vs. an at-large member.

Nonetheless, if she can prove she spends A LOT of time on her personal phone (landline, cell, or both) with board/HOA management business, why not take, say three months' worth of her bills, average them, and then come up with an amount she'll receive every three months as compensation. Of course, this may be considered income and therefore paperwork will need to be filed with the IRS as LetA noted. Or give her a cheap burner phone that only does talk and text (yes, they exist). Talk to your tax accountant for more information on the tax piece and to see what would be most cost and time effective for everyone.

I accept an actual former president's word that he rarely needed a phone as an "active" president of his former HOA, MarkM.

I too was president of my HOA for a year during a very hectic time winding up our construction defect legal action and beginning to solicit bids for very complicated defect work. I simply did not need a phone much at all. With 200+ high rise condo units in a complex building, we have a full-time onsite PM who has an asst. My interactions with her were indeed frequent and almost entirely by email. Today, they'd be by text message. IMO, for many reasons a paper trail is always wise.

When our PM had an emergency and needed to proceed quickly she'd maybe phone me. In a year that may have happened 3 times.

Similarly, rigidly in support of the CA Open Mtg. Act, I never phoned or emailed a quorum of the Board. Email among individual directors, our VP, for instance had a strong background is purchasing for a large org, so was helpful in our defect correction projects, did occur, but not phone calls generally.

I guess in an HOA with no property manager, many homes, many amenities or other complexities and a small board that doesn't delegate tasks very well, the Board might consider voting to provide a phone to the Board president. Even then, what would she need it for?

Her request to the Board to vote to to spend owner's dues on a phone is not reasonable.

So, William, what size is your HOA? Detached homes or condos? Your board's size? What are your amenities?

When I was President, one of my jobs in real life restricted the use of phones. We had to lock them up in a secure locker or leave in our cars. Wireless Phones were NOT allowed in the building. Let me tell you it was a pleasant break from all the non-stop phone calls I got during the day. I let people know that after 3 PM my phone was shut off. I'd only check for messages occasionally.

There is a point where you need to cut off the phone. The job doesn't own your personal life. If it does, you need to get a personal life. Let me tell you having a phone number out there can suck the life out of you.

Here is what I suggest. Have the HOA get a landline installed. Hook it up to answering machine. Let the board members have the code to retrieve messages. Otherwise your going to burn yourself out if you can't step away from the phone.

There was one time I literally was on my landline, my cell phone, and talking to a neighbor/board member all at the same time. That is when I realized this needed to stop. If I can't step away from a crisis and have others with the ability to handle it, then I am not doing my job. My job should be to make sure others involved in the HOA be involved. The phone can be a tool of "micromanagement".

Or do as little as possible and lobby for a paid HOA manager. Or you should do as little as possible and lobby for a paid HOA manager.Or you lobby for a paid HOA manager and if one is not hired, you resign or at least refuse to do the work for liability yada reasons.Nailed it.

Self-managed HOAs are extraordinarily uncommon. From my 20+ years of experience with HOAs, including board service, and the posts here in the last several years, what is common is for a single board member to be the only person communicating with vendors.

We have 74 single family homes and which Homeowners maintaining their own property and the H.O.A. maintaining the mall, pool, and
clubhouse in which we have a mall chairman, pool chairman, and clubhouse chairman.

This is an interesting question.....if the HOA is very active in the sense that daily attention is needed for operations, then a cell phone could be a legitimate expense for the position of President, especially if the expectation is that the President needs to answer HOA-related calls as if they are "on duty." I would not personally request an HOA phone for this very reason; there would be an expectation of instant service and sometimes I let the phone simply ring.

I would not open an account on behalf of the president nor allow the president to open an account and bill the HOA. Since cell plans (modern ones) no longer have a defined number of call minutes or texting caps, I'd argue, personally, that HOA volunteerism is not intrusive enough to warrant the expense of a new phone for any HOA board position. We know what we're doing when we sign up and agree to volunteer.

Should a presidential position morph into a pseudo-property manager position, then separation of communication contact points makes a lot of sense. Otherwise, go to email for HOA communication and control the flow that way.

i just bought a phones for my kid. $39 nokia on amazon. bought the redpocket plan on ebay for $30 for the entire year. 200 minutes month, 1000 texts month, 200mb data. I dont think it’s unreasonable to spend $2.50 month to give them a dedicated phone.

You are free to donate money in this fashion to your HOA. I would never begrudge any director for seeking reimbursement for reasonable expenses incurred in the performance of board duties.

In the past, people have spoken of the board going out for a meal on the HOA's (and so the owner's) dime, or buying directors gift cards or paying for plaques (gawd) when they come to the end of their term. I completely oppose all of the latter.

But I also completely oppose any suggestion that directors should have to pay one cent of their own money for performing director duties. Applying peer pressure, as KerryL1 does, on any director so that she/he will not seek reimbursement of reasonable expenses is sickening.

Why should the reason for the President being denied reimbursement for a phone be the possible fact that they are "so cheap"?

Kerry, asked and answered.

As usual, I'm sorry I'm late to this conversation. ElleN is absolutely correct: I've been extremely busy. I owe y'all a post about it sometime soon - trespassing incidents have gone through the roof; last week we had 7 incidents in 6 days. But I confess I'm extremely happy to know that I'm not forgotten here.

I personally would not want a separate cellphone. And at first take, I can see how an HOA Board member wanting the HOA to pay for a phone for them to use for exclusive HOA business makes it sound like they have a very high opinion of themselves.

But - MarkM mentioned the Hillary Clinton thing (which essentially hinged on mixing personal biz with politics biz)(I think), and when I was working in the computer biz I had some involvement with "Bring Your Own Device" (BYOD) efforts where many millions of dollars were spent to build encrypted and highly secure special-purpose virtual environments on phones and tablets, such that a person could keep all of their confidential{1} work stuff inside of these 'containers'. And if your boss thought you were selling them out, the container could be directed to auto-erase. Or - it was sometimes rumored - even brick the device{2}.

I'm kind of going off the rails, sorry, but a very basic (but often overlooked) difference between a desktop computer and a 'personal device' is that the 'personal device' *really is* personal - most device operating systems are designed and built with absolutely *no* support for anything like "multiple users".

My point is: yes, I can definitely see someone wanting to separate their Personal Phone from their HOA Phone. The first thing I did when I was elected to the Board was create a separate HOA email account, and wow was *that* ever worth it. Having separate phone devices is pretty much the same. Although I would hate having to switch between 2 or more phones. I really don't remember much about the Hillary thing, but I can relate to the frustration that would come with "drat, I need to make a really important call but I can't use this phone and I left the phone I need at the other office and it'll take me an hour." It sure seems like it would be easy - even probable - that someone would 'slip'. Not trivializing it - just saying it seems like a stupid way to do things.

As for paying for it - policies would vary from company to company, but often there was some kind of monthly allowance when people could argue a genuine need for a separate business phone or service. Receipts were required and there was monthly paperwork; it wasn't any kind of casual "hey, here's a free phone!" sort of deal.

If it were me, for an HOA? I think I'd develop a policy for all Board members, such that if they had sufficient and *specific* justification, I'd offer them some lame amount like $200 towards the phone purchase and then another lame amount like $50/month for service. Oh - I don't think a 'flip phone' would work for this; years ago one of my kids wasn't doing well in school because he and his girlfriend were texting each other thousands{3} of times each month. And you can't just take away a kid's phone these days - that's tantamount to child abuse. What if they get into an accident?! Also: you can't just disable text messaging. I mean: it is not possible.

But what I *could* do is take his iPhone away and give him a Motorola RAZR *evil grin*. He could still do text messages. But it was significantly less fun.

Bill

{1} lemme tellya, tech companies big and small take "confidential" ***very*** seriously. Sharing a 'business device' with a wife, or even letting your kid play games on it - don't even think about it.

{2} my involvement was, umm - this was some years ago but I believe it's still true - if you're a big company, you can pay Apple a lot of money and get a special thing called an Enterprise Distribution Certificate, which essentially allows you to set up your own private App Store from which employees can download internal use only iOS apps onto their iOS devices. This EDC was *very* sensitive information - for instance, if it leaked, some rogue developer might make a pr0n app that seemed to be an official product of a big tech company that had no sense of humor about such things. This made developing those special internal use only iOS apps something of a challenge and one of the projects I worked on long ago involved figuring out how to let developers develop without also letting them see the EDC. Are you still awake?

{3} not an exaggeration.

I think it is fine. I dont' use the phone that much as my job as president, but I sure as hell use the intnernet a lot. I should be compensated for having to pay $50 for internet every month to conduct HOA business. I'll go so far as to say without internet running the HOA effciently would be a lot more expensive and cumbersome.