How can I rally homeowners to run for our Board of Directors?/

By default, we pretty much have the same board year after year. Our cc&r's do NOT have a limit of terms which is bad and we are in the middle of getting our cc&r's updated to reflect s few guidelines for our officers.

My concerns? We 2 very long serving board members who I feel are perhaps a real liability to our HOA. One had lived here 25+ years, does not know the local law and often speaks out of turn. He is not approachable with suggesting a reviews of the law or our governing docs.. in a sense a bit of a cowboy. It's pretty embarssing that just about every meeting we have to open up our state law book or open docs to read to him. EXAMPLE ?? Last meeting we found that there is some unexpected pool issues to the tune of about $5k that needs to be done to bring to local state and federal standards. ( this is unexpected we are proabably going to special assess the amount ) The pool vendor also included suggestions on upgrading the pool with resurfaceing etc which brought the total to $13K. Mr old timer in open session stated we should special assess the whole amount because it's been a long time since our HOA has done this? Our governing docs clearly state that our upkeep, upgrade, replace an etc of expected wear and tear come from a certain item on our budget.. He was fighting that we should just special assess the whole item just becuase its been awhile. We read verbatim the HOA bible to him again..

I think you get the idea. it's tough our other board member is not far behind him on issues and DOES NOT practice decision making under our guidelines or laws even.

What can one do in order to get fresh blood and a rally of attention for a NEW board member??

All board members can't be all things. Perhaps this person has some other kind of expertise. You don't mention what he brings to the table.

I realyy don't see anything wrong with offering an alternative idea once in a while. That's not reason why he should be removed from the board.

Why isn't this issue at the committee level? Why must the entire board go thru all this discussion?

A committee would have investigated the entire project, made a presentation to the board, including listing all funding options - in a report that could have been given to the Board before the meeting, for each member to digest. That really helps with the "off track" discussions that take up time and exasperate the other board members.

I appreciate your input.. however the issue that is a concern is that we don't have homeowners who wish to head such committees. It's typically an apathetic response when we try to get HO invovled for committee work. Beleive me we tried. The current board is made of 5 diverse individuals.. however.. when 2 out of the 5 board members must be read the cc&rs and local laws almost at every board meeting it does wear thin.

Please be aware that it is our responsibility to keep the HOA running on a whole legally..... we already had a board 6 years ago deplete our reserves to the tune of 100K... becausee they did not know that the issues they were "paying" off should of been a special assessement. It's scary what lack of knowlege regarding hoa laws can do. The reserve 6 years ago was left with just about 25k...... because our novice board did not know what they were doing.. and at that time.. yes, I was ONE of them..

In our POA, BOD members will ask others who appear to have the right frame of mind to join the board. You get to know someone and can pretty much tell if they would make a good board member. Try asking at a social event. Thats how they got me, several BOD memebers at a party came over and asked if I would be willing to be on the board. Do the old butter up trick, "We think you will be real good, or we need someone like you". Next annual meeting, have someone nominate this person. Its hard to refuse when there seems to be a number of people who want you on the board.

This really strikes home with me because our condominium has been "ruled" by the same bunch for many years and it's been difficult to dislodge them. The most important thing to remember on a board is that to get new ideas going, there must be a MAJORITY vote on the board. If only one person runs for the board, that person will be routinely outvoted by the entrenched board members. Therefore, there must be a block of like-minded people willing to put themselves forward for a board position. If a group of people can take seats on the board, they can outvote old members on association issues. As it's been stated, you have to rally the troops to affect a change of governance!!!!

What I did when running for the board is cold call as many other owners as I could, first to introduce myself and secondly to ask people to run for a spot on the board with me. It worked wonders. I found that a surprising number of people were as fed up with the old board as I was, and that they thought they were the only ones! When they realized there were people with similar concerns, they were very receptive to becoming involved. Try calling. It's not as scary as you might think, and you will make friends along the way.