Property Managers Husband

Greetings,
Is it legal for the property management company also be the owner of the towing company for the hoa?

What Tim said.

You don't say if this is a new contract or has been in place for awhile - better take a look at that contract and previous board meeting minutes to get the back story. If the contracts already been signed, you may have to wait until the end of the contract period and not renew it - or come with a huge wad of cash to cancel it

You've asked several questions about your property manager in previous conversations, but you also know the BOARD is responsible for overall direction of the property manager. Have you taken any of your questions to them? If not, why not? It may be time for a movement to vote them out and get vote in people who understand and work to avoid conflict of interests. That will take time and lots of work and YOU may need to step up and run for a spot.

You have an answer to your question- now what are you going to do?

PS - While you're figuring that out, it might not hurt to get a copy of the property manager contract to see what it's supposed to do for the association and then 5aje a look at all vendor contracts to see if there are conflicts of interest you shoukd be aware of.

The husband of one of our previous property managers was our irrigation vendor. He owned the company and we had a written contract with him. This happened before I was on the board, but we kept him on even though we got criticism from some board members. The treasurer had to approve his invoices, and they were never out of line with our previous vendor's costs. Could he have cheated and charged for work not performed because his wife was the PM? Of course. However, any vendor like that who isn't supervised in the field could do that too (and the next vendor, unrelated to anyone, did do that to us). The optics weren't great, but he was a good vendor and was honest. It wasn't a conflict of interest because we had additonal approvals for the invoices.

I might not allow it to happen again, but we didn't break any statutes or any of the rules in our governing documents by allowing it.

Here is the question I have for her.

Dawn,
Does the board pay a fee to have the tow company remove towed vehicles? When I was on my board in Ca. we had private streets and also many fire lanes. We contracted with a Tow company and when our security company called them, they came out and towed vehicles and the expense was the owner of the vehicle not the board or the HOAs. If this is similar to her situation all this tow company has is the right to tow improperly parked vehicles. Typically, signs should be posted in high traffic areas letting people know that if cars were towed this is the tow company that can be contacted to collect the vehicle. This signage was the responsibly of the tow company to post. We also had to give our security company written authority to act as the board's agent.

I guess the real question is how many units are in this HOA and how many vehicles are being towed annually. If this is a 100 unit HOA and 2 vehicles have been towed in 2024, it is not even an ethics thing in my view.

The property manager should not be the one calling for a tow or billing the homeowner.

If there are properly adopted parking rules and sufficient signage, it shouldn't matter who calls besides the interested party.

That’s not the way it works. You want your car back, you pay the tow company and daily storage fees apply. The HOA is not billing.

Our PM would be the one to call th tow company for car parked in any of our common areas in violation of our rules. This is all posted legally, etc.

If cars are irking in our deeds parking spaces, the authorized resident must call the tow company.---if it goes that far. In our underground P-levels, this usually is an error. The car will have gotten a windshield pass from our gated, 24-7 staffed vehicle entry with a space # on other, but accidentally parks in the wrong space.

So the unit occupant is phoned and the car gets moved pretty fast!

I suppose if you are the person whose car is been towed you think it is a conflict of interest. As far as the HOA there is not conflict of interest because there are no HOA funds involved or a contract.

The board sets the policy on towing. As long as the PM is conforming to the policy, it makes no difference who tows the car.