Paid liaison and a managememnt company

We have a paid liaison who is a member of condo association. She was president of the Board for many years, then stepped down and was given a paid position as liaison. Her compensention is over 30,000 a year, and we are paying the management company
on top of her salary. Is this common practive?

Liaison between whom and whom? Are you saying she is the liaison between the board and the manager? If yes, this is highly unusual practice.

But I cannot say I reject it outright. The amount of expertise these all-volunteer boards often end up needing to have is staggering.

This could actually be useful if your board is made up of newbies, especially if the association has been dealing with some serious or unusual issues. Thirty grand a year isn't much in terms of a yearly salary. On the other hand...

The optics sure aren't good, and I'm not sure how effective this will be. It's normally the board's job to oversee the manager's work, so there should be a compelling reason to delegate this to a third party. The board is still ultimately accountable for what happens, and now they've added another person that they're responsible for managing.

And there's the issue of a possible conflict of interest since a homeowner may have a vested interest in some of the things that the board and manager are dealing with. If it's the board with a conflict of interest (eg. the manager has financial ties with one of the board members), I don't think hiring a third party to work with the manager will eliminate this since all decisions are still up to the board.

I agree about requesting records to see if this was discussed in a board meeting. However, since this would probably be considered a personnel issue, it's possible all discussions were in Executive Session and thus confidential. It also would be appropriate to ask at the next board meeting what the rationale was behind this decision and why it is a paid position.

Yeah, I'm not liking this.

Nita, with Shelia, request a copy of the agreement or contract with this woman. Board Decisions, discussions,, etc. could be. behind closed doors, but executed contracts may be reviewed by owners. Make sure your written request follows your Documents and FL condo statute.

I've never heard of this either. But I don't dismiss this role out of hand. Maybe you're willing to reply to the following:

1. How many condos in your HOA? How many buildings?

2. What are the amenities?

3. Is your manager full-time onsite? If not, about how many hours a week does the MC work for your HOA?

4. Do you have onsite staffers like custodians, or security or maintenance engineers?
$.A Does your "liaison" supervise any of them?

5. Are your condos multi-story?

Size really doesn't matter a whole lot but complexity does, and our 200+ unit multi story twin towers comprising a city block has a huge amount of mechanical equipment and plumbing & the typical amenities, pool, gym, two party lounges conference room + large lobbies & underground parking garages with storage locker rooms and Bike storage rooms and Assoc. owned motorcycle parking spaces. These all must be managed. The PM manages about 10 custodians & security personal and an asst. & chief engineer. We have many contracts with vendors, whom mgmt. also supervises e.g. pest control, hardscapers, pool guy, gym guy, etc., etc. Window washers on scary equipment are doing our windows at this moment, which takes a couple of weeks.

Frankly my HOA, due to very green management staff --2 full-time onsite--has a lot of administrative weaknesses. I was on the Board for 14 years and know stuff they need to know exceedingly well. The president often seeks my advice on the content of memos that need to be accurate, etc. I estimate that I could work 10 hours a week for maybe 4 months to get the duo educated and up to speed. But that's due to our complexity.

So..tell us more!

The way it was explained to me was, she fields all questions complaints and then decides which the management co must deal with.

She basically conned her way into being paid to be President of the HOA. Having dealt with a similar personality type we will say... They got everyone conned. They no longer wanted to do the job without being paid or in control. The board should be interacting with the MC directly. There is no middle man.

It is a good gig if you can convince others to play and pay along...