099 | HOA Board Heroes: When the HOA Rules Are Clear… But No One Wants to Follow Them

Calvin Ball 00:00

Be patient and careful in how you communicate things. If we don’t know what the answer to a question is, we we tell them, you know, we’re very upfront and say, hey, look, we’re not sure. We haven’t run into that issue before. Let’s let’s look. Let’s wait until the next meeting. Give us some time to either reach out to the lawyer if it’s a legal question, or let’s go through the rules, and you know, rules and regulations or bylaws for that,

Announcer 00:29

a regular highlight of the HOA insights podcast is our board heroes feature, where we dedicate one episode each month to celebrate the remarkable efforts of HOA board members. To us a board hero is one of the 2 million elected volunteers who deserve recognition for excelling in a role that often goes unnoticed. Today, we’re excited to spotlight one of these exceptional board heroes and share their inspiring story. If you match our definition of a board hero, or know someone who does, please reach out to us. Our contact details and those of our sponsors are provided in the show notes.

Robert Nordlund 00:59

Welcome back to Hoa insights, common sense for common areas. I’m Robert Nordlund, and I’m here to share the story of another returning board hero named Calvin Ball. This is episode number 99 and if you missed meeting our other board heroes, including Calvin’s previous appearance in Episode 48 you can find them easily on our website, Hoa insights.org on our YouTube channel, or by subscribing to Hoa insights on your favorite podcast platform. Now let’s reacquaint ourselves with Calvin and hear a bit about the story he’d like to share. Hi,

Calvin Ball 01:34

I’m Calvin. I’ve been a proud volunteer board member for my HOA for about six years total. I’ve been the board treasurer for about three years, and the Secretary for one year. When I’m not immersed in board responsibilities, I’m adding to my accounting credentials currently studying for the CPA. You know, in addition to studying for the CPA, I just kind of hang out with my with my wonderful cat, Gigi. So some of my experience on the board in three words, it would probably be transparency, planning and focus my time in the community. It’s been, it’s been quite a while. Now been at six years, and we’ve been trying to trying to increase our ability to communicate with the entire community, so that they’re aware of what goes on, what the board’s responsibilities are, what their responsibilities are as the unit owner, and how we can both work together to build more of a relationship with the community and, you know, keep Property Values high and make sure everything’s well maintained. Well. Calvin

Robert Nordlund 02:43

community is 168 unit condominium association located in Maryland that’s about 30 years old and has an annual budget of around $700,000 the last time we spoke to Calvin, he and the rest of the board were intent on making sure that their community lasted another 30 years and emphasized the importance of transparency and communications to their homeowners. It’s been about a year since that conversation, so we decided to follow up and ask Calvin if he and the board had made any changes to the ways that they communicate to their community. One of

Calvin Ball 03:19

the things that we’ve actually implemented within the past year is as we’re preparing our agenda for the next meeting, we actually put together a list of kind of reminders for the community of things that are in the rules and regulations and or the bylaws, just to keep people informed of what They’ve already signed up for in purchasing their unit, they need to follow these rules and regulations and the bylaws and and before each meeting, we actually put specific items that we’ve noticed over the past month since the last meeting that residents haven’t been following or unit owners haven’t been following, so that They can just be reminded that, hey, this is actually the proper way of handling this situation, or you shouldn’t be doing this. You you should be doing it a different way. Or, you know, the reverse side of that, you should be doing this and you shouldn’t just be sitting idle.

Robert Nordlund 04:15

Maintaining a simple list of reminders to the community is a great way to keep homeowners informed and involved with the community, especially if like Calvin’s board, keeping track of that list and updating it as needed at every board meeting. However, reminders exist because there are habits that either need to be reinforced in the community or eliminated entirely. We decided to ask Calvin if there was a specific incident that prompted this solution?

Calvin Ball 04:43

Yeah, I mean, most of it has been general. The biggest things that we’ve had issues with are parking. A lot of residents our buildings are really unique. When people think of condos, we actually have several buildings. But. Our buildings are very much smaller than most condominiums. A lot of a lot of people, when they think of a condominium, they think of a high rise and there’s a parking garage, and so there’s only one in and out. We’re kind of more in a suburban environment, so there’s a lot more road. There’s a lot you can pull up to each one of these buildings, and kind of just kind of park there, but it stoke can block, you know, half the road we only have, you know, two lanes, one for each direction. So a lot of people tend to pull up to the front of the building and just kind of park there at, you know, regardless of, and without any regard of how long they’re going to be there. So we’ve, we’ve had people park there for an hour, two hours, overnight, you know, and just leave the car just on, park there with South keys in it, just off, no flashers. And we have no idea whose vehicle it is. We don’t know if it’s a unit owner or a visitor. And so that that’s kind of been a concern for us. And unfortunately, we have plenty of parking. So it’s not like parking spaces are, you know, at a premium. We have several parking spots that are open for people to use, but they simply don’t use them out of pure laziness, or they just, they’re not aware that they can just, they can park there, even though it’s clear that there’s parking spaces. And then the second issue we’ve kind of run into, that was a big issue is our dumpsters. We have two dumpsters for the entire community, and a lot of people just kind of throw anything in the dumpster. And kind of, like a lot of your commercial dumpsters, there’s usually a fence around it and some walking space. A lot of people feel that they can just leave things outside of the dumpster, and they can be rather large items, like, you know, furniture, if they’re remodeling, or a kitchen I’ve seen, we’ve seen kitchen cabinetry, mattresses, all sorts of things that people just kind of leave outside of the dumpster. And we actually have to pay our trash removal service to come back a second time for, and it’s a separate charge every time to remove these items. And so we’ve committed we that was part of an engine item. We told people is, hey, this is an extra expense that you’re paying for your dues and your future dues. If you continue to put things outside of the dumpster, it’s, you know, more trash expense for us. So it’s it’s been an interesting journey to communicate that. And I guess the third point I’d like to add is our community is a private community, so we’re within a small city limits, and so a lot of people think that we are entitled to city services, when, in fact, when the community was created in the late 80s, early 90s, they actually took the city to court to try to force them to provide services to our community. But the city actually won the case, because we declared ourselves a private community, and when you declare yourself as a private community, your private services are no longer provided to you, so you have to provide them as as a community. And so that’s why, through our assessments, we have to pay for things like trash, snow removal and other maintenance items.

Robert Nordlund 08:17

Hearing Calvin describe the inconsiderate behavior of some of the homeowners in his community was disheartening, but it did validate something that Julie Adam and and I have discussed numerous times on this program, that some people are just plain not well suited for Community Association living well given that Calvin’s community was originally established as a private community, there appeared to be a disconnect between what the homeowners felt entitled to and what they were willing to give back in turn. So we next asked Calvin if he knew what the original motivation for establishing themselves as a private community was.

Calvin Ball 08:53

It’s difficult to say if I if I had to make a good guess, it’s the community has a history of wanting to be very private, not wanting to be in the spotlight. And so they’ve kind of, they kind of, I guess, they took it upon themselves when it was created, or at least the people that put it together decided we want to be a private community and not want to deal with public services and not have to rely on public services, you know, to keep the community maintained. And they believed that in the future, I guess, you know, future unit owners would want the same thing. Unfortunately, as time has kind of evolved since the late 80s, early 90s, a lot of people tend to not want to do things themselves, so they they kind of like to outsource. And unfortunately, people have kind of felt like they they’ve been in just by paying fees. They think that they’re entitled to quality service while not receiving and they get frustrated if they don’t receive that quality service. And. Right? So it’s just through that transparency, as I talked about, the three main points, being transparent, letting people know that unfortunately, our community is not in the same boat as other communities where they might be getting public services. Unfortunately, we have to pay for those services, and sometimes the fees have not kept up with the price of those services, and so if you expect services to be high quality, then the assessments will have to match that. Transparency

Robert Nordlund 10:28

was not only a common thread in our conversation with Calvin, but lack of transparency is also a common thread among complaints we hear about community associations in general. We discussed this with Carol Lawrence in our last board hero episode, homeowners new to community associations often feel like there isn’t enough communication from the board. Many of our board heroes feel like it’s the homeowners who need to get involved and engage with the association if they want to stay in the loop. We asked Calvin how he felt about this dynamic, and if he felt there was a way to maintain the balance between these two perspectives, kind

Calvin Ball 11:04

of a balance. It’s a two way street, because when, when you go to purchase your unit, you kind of have to do the research as a home buyer to say, Hey, okay, this, this, this unit isn’t an HOA. What does that entail? You know, when you purchase a unit, you should be you should have the, you know, bylaws and rules and regulations available to you so that you can read through them and understand what you’re kind of buying into. One issue we’ve run into is that a lot of realtors actually are not being very transparent with home buyers, at least in at least in our neighborhood, a lot of our unit owners, when they buy a unit, you know, they come in and some of them don’t even know how much their fees are, who to pay um, and they’re oftentimes very confused, which is kind of odd, because you think the real estate agent would tell them, and It’s actually illegal for the real estate agent to not, you know, disclose that information, at least in the state of Maryland, they have to disclose certain information. So it’s kind of alarming, and we don’t really have much recourse for that which, which is kind of where the board has to come in and fill in the gaps where the real estate agent didn’t. And that’s kind of where we have to inform this new unit in order. Hey, this is how much your fee is. This is who you have to pay. And these are the services that you’re getting. Do you have a copy of, you know, the bylaws, rules and regulations, you know? And if you have any disagreements, you can come to the meetings and discuss them with us, or you can decide to just, you know, sell the unit immediately after buying it. If you don’t agree to the terms, if you’re a unit owner and you disagree with the terms, you still have to pay the assessments. It’s not an optional thing. That’s kind of some interesting I guess. I don’t know, for lack of a better term, a threat that we’ve gotten from some people is, look, I’m not getting the services I want, so I’m just going to withhold my payments. And we tell people, well, if you withhold your payments, we might slap interest in late fees on you. We can legally do so. So it’s, it’s really interesting to try to have that conversation, to let people know what they’re really getting into. Calvin’s

Robert Nordlund 13:23

recommendation of doing your due diligence as a home buyer ties into another great tidbit from our last board hero episode, and in that episode number 95 Carol mentioned that any prospective home buyer looking to purchase a home in an association government community should do their due diligence by reading their publicly available board meeting minutes. Now, if those are unavailable, it says a lot about the lack of transparency from that community Association’s board. We next asked Calvin if there was anything else that the board can be doing to improve their transparency towards prospective homeowners. Yeah. I

Calvin Ball 14:01

mean, I think that’s kind of another avenue for accountability in in condo law and HOA law that could happen at the state level, because obviously, there’s not many federal regulations on homeowners associations. Most of them are state. It’s going to vary greatly by state. What’s required to be provided by boards and what’s what’s required to be communicated by real estate agents. I think that the number one thing is accountability. I think, unfortunately, Hoa and condo law can be very comprehensive, but if there’s no enforcement behind it, then it’s kind of, it kind of just sits there and doesn’t really get a lot accomplished. I know in the state of Maryland, we have a quite a comprehensive HOA and condo law, which, to their credit, is great from a legislative standpoint. But unfortunately, enforcement mechanisms of it are very weak, and so the only, the only avenue that is available is if someone reports you to the State of. Um, and a lot of people don’t, don’t think that it’s their obligation to report you, even if they disagree with you. So we’ve had a lot of unit owners say, like, hey, we think you’re doing something that’s against the law, or what, or whatnot. Sometimes they don’t even understand what the law is, which is really interesting when they tell you that you might be breaking it. And sometimes you look into it and turns out you’re not breaking any law. People just kind of use it as a threat, because that’s in the condo laws real estate agents, you know, sharing that information. So unless that unit owner decides to rat out, so to speak, their real estate agent, we’re not really, there’s not really gonna be any way to enforce it. You can report real estate agents. You can report boards for certain things, but a lot of the times, the state doesn’t see it as a priority, or they just decide not to enforce it. So it’s really, I think accountability at the state level, is kind of critical in making a significant difference.

Robert Nordlund 16:06

Accountability is another topic that Calvin had a lot more to say about, especially as we circle back to discuss how his association tried to resolve the garbage situation in their community. But before we get to that, let’s take a quick break to hear from one of our generous sponsors,

Russell Munz 16:22

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Robert Nordlund 16:55

and we’re back before the break, Calvin spoke at length about the need for accountability, not only at an association level, but at the state level also, we decided to circle back and discuss this topic more at the level of individual accountability, with regards to the garbage collection issue in his community, we asked Calvin if most homeowners were receptive to those assessment increases, even Though those increases were the result of the behavior of only a few individuals in their community?

Calvin Ball 17:26

Yeah. So it’s really interesting. It depends on who you talk to. You know, a lot of the pushback is coming from people that are obviously doing the right thing, you know, putting their trash in the dumpster, and we have no issues with them. It’s usually those, you know, the small percentage of the community that’s that’s abusing it, and unfortunately, we have no way of enforcing it. That’s kind of what a lot of homeowners kind of bring up, you know, they’re saying, Well, why can’t we start enforcing this and start giving them a reason to use the dumpster properly so that, you know, we can’t, yeah, because it because even if we say, hey, it’s an extra charge of the community, some of them still think, well, it’s going to be cheaper for me to pay. You know, we have 168 units. They figure, okay, if I’m paying 168 of the community’s budget, if we got to pay an extra $100 for this to be removed, I’m only paying less than $1 to get it removed, because I’m they break up the cost through the community, whereas if they took it to the dump themselves, it would take extra time, extra effort, to drive it. And then the pay the, you know, pay whatever dumping fee. And so a lot of people actually see it financially, a financial incentive to throw it in the dumpster or put it in the area. And then we pay the extra, unfortunately, as a community, so they kind of take advantage of it. It’s kind of a selfish thing. And we tell people, Hey, if you see somebody doing it, let us know who it is. Because if you know who it is, and we can connect it to a unit owner, we can start enforcing it, and kind of back to the accountability and enforcement. Sometimes regulations can actually be a hindrance and can actually make it very difficult to enforce things. So in Maryland, the condo law is very comprehensive, and you have it takes a lot of red tape just to get, just to send a, you know, a violation, and actually send a a fee to that unit owner for doing so, if I read Maryland condo law correctly, and I’m a legal expert or anything, so I don’t want to make sure this advice isn’t, you know, 100% but I believe my interpretation is that you have to one send a violation notice in snail mail, they specify in the in the law that it needs to go through regular mail. It cannot be just an electronic communication. So we have to send a notice in the in the mail to tell them that they violated this part of the bylaws, the rules and regulations, things like that. That is basically a. You know, a first time Hey, kind of slap on the wrist, like, Hey, don’t do this again. You know, kind of thing, if they do it a second time, or if the activity continues, then the board must to, must to set, must set a hearing they have to set an actual hearing date to meet in person with that person with that individual that’s violating something, and so the board gets to decide what that date is. That’s a second letter that has to be mailed to the internet or saying, hey, you’ve been violated you violated this once. You’ve now violated it a second time. You must attend this meeting. If you attend this meeting, you can try to defend yourself, you know, and then the board votes at that meeting to decide whether they can send a actual, you know, a fee or violation in accordance with your bylaws. And so the state actually doesn’t tell you, the state of Maryland doesn’t tell you, like, what kind of B you wanted to assess. That’s the where your bylaws come in. So our bylaws does have a fee mechanism, but you still have to follow what Maryland law says in giving all this notice, that you have to send that first letter of notice, and then the second violation actually has to happen within 12 months of the first notice. So say they violated something, and then 18 months goes by and they do it again. You technically have to start over and send them the first notice again. So as long as somebody can just delay it for more than a year, they can actually avoid, you know, doing hearings and and and all that. So it takes a very attentive board to enforce these policies in the state of Maryland, which is kind of kind of a hindrance for us to to prevent people from abusing the situation. I can’t say

Robert Nordlund 21:51

that. I’m envious of Calvin or any association board member in Maryland for that matter, because volunteer board members shouldn’t have to become politicians in order for their state laws and association bylaws to complement each other. We asked Calvin if he and the board would come up with any immediate solutions for this accountability issue.

Calvin Ball 22:11

The solutions to accountability is very difficult to come by. You know one, one option that we’ve come up with is security cameras. They’ve looked at that in the past. I actually propose, sent a proposal to the board to say, Hey, should we reach out to vendors to get get a quote, to see what would it take to get in some security cameras around the community to to hold certain people accountable? Because at some point, you know, this becomes unsustainable. We’ve discussed it in the past. And kind of similar to how the community was declared a private community, a lot of people are against these security cameras. You know, they kind of, they kind of fear that, oh, well, Big Brother’s watching me, or the board’s watching me. We actually did have we had a unique situation? We actually had a camera in our clubhouse, not the not any of the other buildings, but just the clubhouse, because that is a purely shared environment. So when we had one in there, before we actually the board members had access to the live feed, we rent out the clubhouse. And one incident happened where someone rented a club, rented the clubhouse. We don’t really have any restrictions on who you can bring to the clubhouse, as long as you don’t damage anything the clubhouse, you know, abuse anything like that. You know, you can rent it to have a party or some other gathering. Unfortunately, we’ve had a board member in the past who no longer lives here, but she was a very controlling board member, and so she would actually tap into the feed while people were renting out the clubhouse for these parties, parties that she wasn’t, you know, invited to. And she then went around the community after the the events, and would say, Oh, do you know so and so was, you know, inviting this, this person, or these people to the to the clubhouse, and they were doing this. And it’s not like the people at the the event were doing anything illegal or doing any damages. It was simply a personal, like she had a personal out, you know, AX the grind against this person. I guess she just didn’t like who was renting the clubhouse and was and just wanted to like, you know, try, try to start trouble. And unfortunately, unit owners found out about this, and that’s why a lot of people now, we have since removed the camera, and a lot of people are very hesitant to put any camera up anywhere now, because of this, you know, this abusive person in the past where they just wanted to tap into the feed and and kind of, technically, I mean, technically the clubhouse is a public space. I mean, it’s not like she was breaking. Any laws, but it’s kind of, it’s just that gray area of trust where the community doesn’t have trust in a board now, because one person decided that they wanted to tap into, you know, this event feed. So it’s a very contentious topic. I brought it up, but unfortunately, with the violations now, you know, popping up in our community, it’s kind of been something that has crept up in people’s minds now, saying, Hey, should we put up security cameras now? Because we’ve had a couple instances too, where people’s cars were broken into, or there’s suspicious activity at, you know, a particular building, you know, that we’ve run into, and we there’s nothing that we can point to that’s necessarily illegal, but it’s very suspicious. So a lot of people kind of ask, How can we, how can we keep an eye on this? And I told him, unfortunately, it’s just gonna have to be, you’re gonna have to be either an eyewitness or we put in security cameras. And that’s kind of where we’re at right now. It’s kind of at an impasse. Surveillance

Robert Nordlund 26:01

and the use of security cameras in community associations is a polarizing topic, and Calvin’s Association certainly isn’t the only one that stuck at an impasse. We next asked for more details about the parking issues that Calvin mentioned earlier, in order to see if his board had come up with any novel solutions to that problem, and here’s what Calvin told us.

Calvin Ball 26:24

So with our parking situation, every unit has one reserved parking space, and when you purchase that unit, this is kind of another part with the realtor. The realtor should be telling you, you know what your parking space is. So all of the spots that are reserved to a unit have a number to them, like you, like you mentioned, the number doesn’t exactly correlate to the unit number, but at least you have a number that is specific to your unit. I actually have the list in in our rules and regulations, where we we know which parking spot is assigned to with unit, and so a lot of people aren’t, you know, in their unit, they’re either, you know, they might be a married couple or even a family, because a lot of our units vary in size as well. So you know, it’s not unheard of to have a unit where there’s more than one vehicle, and so we have at least one reserve Spot, Spot, a parking space, and we have quite a bit of overflow, um, so next to the reserve, the reserve spots are usually, like I said, we’re in a suburban environment, so we’re kind of spread out and have more space than a lot of condominiums. Now the overflow parking is kind of scattered that sometimes, some sometimes, depending on the building you have, you might have some very close overflow parking. Some of the overflow parking on some buildings is quite is a decent walk now. I mean, not, not crazy bar, but if someone was having any mobility issues, you know it, it may not be suitable, but you know, it’s, it kind of is what it is based off the geography. We didn’t have quite enough spaces for two reserve spaces per unit. That’s why we only have one per unit. But there’s almost, I went around the community, encountered them. We have almost, I would say we have, like, three quarters of enough for units to have, you know, a second parking space so you know that that’s plenty enough to take care of people that you know, like I said, are either married and have two vehicles or have a family. Unfortunately, people are kind of just like water. They take the path of least resistance. So they a lot of people, like I said, park in front of the building, or they park in the closest spot possible, whether it’s their their parking space, or whether it’s an overflow parking space. I know some people that actually park in an overflow space and not in their actual reserve spot, and that’s kind of an unfortunate thing when you think about it, because technically, no one is supposed to be in their reserve spot but them, and so if they decide to take an overflow spot, that’s one less spot for a visitor or someone else to take, you know, a vendor that’s coming by to do some work on a unit, you know, things like that. So we try to remind people, again, like I mentioned before in our agenda, that you should be parking in your reserve spot, and if you have an issue you know with your spot, you know not being close enough, or if you need a handicap spot, then you can let the board know, and we can do our best to accommodate that, because legally, in many circumstances, we do have to comply with that if there’s a request sent in, but if You don’t send a request in for a handicap spot and the board simply doesn’t know, then you’re, you’re not really going to have a case as a unit owner. A lot of people think that we should just be we already know what their personal situation is. Oh, well, can’t you tell that I can’t walk? You know, unfortunately, you know, we’re not around to talk to every every person every day. Way to understand what they’re going through. So if that’s where kind of the transparency part comes in, where unit or just have to be transparent with us and say, hey, you need an accommodation, you need to let us know. Because we can’t just, we don’t automatically know when somebody needs an accommodation. And sometimes you there’s parts of the condo law where, you know, unit owner is required to contact the board, you know, where we can’t just do things as we see fit. We need a reason to do many of the things that we do. So it’s kind of, again, a two way street on what people need out of the parking situation, and if they don’t tell us, then we kind of do the best thing that that works for the community,

Robert Nordlund 30:42

Calvin and his board were smart to not make any assumptions about when to give preferable parking accommodations to their residents, as Albert Einstein once said, assumptions are made and most assumptions are wrong. So with that being said, enforcing parking rules in a community can be a difficult task. Some associations keep detailed records of each resident’s vehicle, make model and license plate, while others expect the residents to act like adults and rely on the honor system. We asked Calvin if his association fit into either category for parking

Calvin Ball 31:17

enforcement, we’re still kind of like you said in an honor system, we kind of like to treat everybody as adults. You know, I think we can all if you’re responsible for driving a vehicle, I think you should. You should be able to know where what your parking spot is and where you need to park, and how to handle it. We also remind people that, you know, even though you’re in a private community, when you’re on our road. It’s still technically a public road. Public driving rules still apply. You know, you still need your headlights on when it’s dark out or when it’s raining. You know, tires need to be on pavement and not on grass. There’s just a lot of things that are very simple that we think are common sense. But unfortunately to some people, they’re not. But yeah, back to enforcement. It’s just kind of expecting people to be adults and drive rationally. And we, unfortunately, we have come into issue some some people have brought it to our attention that some people like to speed, some people like the park where they’re not supposed to be parking, or they park across the lines and they end up taking two parking spaces, kind of back to our let it. You know, red tape that we run into through the legislature, Maryland is a very difficult state to tow someone’s vehicle. Um, it has to be a very unique circumstance for you to tow the vehicle. I actually looked it up in Maryland law, and we cannot tow a vehicle, you know, unless it’s completely blocking the roadway. You know, there’s very, like, I said, very specific reasons, and like, there has to be a lot of notice. Like, Maryland has a theme where you have to notify the person before you can do things kind of like the violations and the board, you have to notify somebody that they’re parked improperly. So but we actually talked with our lawyer and they said, you know, if they say they have an expired registration and we notify them, they could move it to, like a different like, I think, in our bylaws, if you if we know that your vehicle hasn’t moved in, like a week, then we can start enforcing, you know, violations. But Maryland law says, Well, you have to notify them first, and then you have to wait like 48 hours or so after you notify them to see if they actually move it. According to our lawyer, you can give them notice to move their vehicle. And if they move it within 48 hours, all they have to do is move it to a different parking spot. They don’t have to, like, move it out of the community or anything. They just have to move it to a different parking spot. And then you have to keep giving them that 48 hour notice again. So as long as they just move it to a different parking spot, you can’t you can’t owe it, and so we can only notify them that their registration is going to expire and that a police officer could give them a ticket. Now the police officer has more authority to tow your vehicle. Now if you give them a ticket and then you ignore the ticket, obviously you know something can happen to your car, but we, as an HOA, can’t really, we can’t really tow vehicles in unless it’s a very dire situation.

Robert Nordlund 34:28

From Calvin’s answer, it appeared that the state of Maryland’s laws can present a huge obstacle to enforcing the bylaws of a community association, putting board members in a situation where they have to deliver the news that there is not an immediate solution to the problems plaguing their community. We decided to close out this interview by asking Calvin if he had any actionable advice for board members struggling with enforcing accountability in their community. Yeah,

Calvin Ball 34:55

the biggest takeaways I would have is be patient. Um And and careful in how you communicate things. You know, the patience is key, because sometimes things drag out way longer than than you want them to. We currently have, you know, bigger, big projects, actually, right now that were, you know, big geographical, you know, construction projects that we’re looking to do next, you know, next year, in 2025 that are going to take a lot of money, take a lot of time, planning and patience and just making sure they they get done the right way, so that you don’t rush through them, and just being careful with how you say and, you know, because, like I said, a lot of people look into the law. And sometimes people want to, people want to, want to ask the grind sometimes. And so if you, if you say a particular thing as a board member, they may take it to heart. And you know, if you don’t, if you don’t come through with, say, you make a promise, and you won’t come through with that promise. Some people may come back and say, hey, well, you told me this. You know, we try to be careful in how we give people information about what, again, our responsibilities, their responsibilities, what the law says, what are, what our community bylaws and rules and regulations say, and we, if we don’t know what the answer to a question is, we we tell them, you know, we’re very upfront, and say, hey, look, we’re not sure we haven’t run into that issue before. Let’s, let’s look. Let’s wait until the next meeting. Give us some time to either reach out to the lawyer if it’s a legal question, or let’s go through the rules and rules and regulations or bylaws for that. So it’s just being be again, being patient and careful in how you act.

Robert Nordlund 36:50

We want to publicly acknowledge Calvin for performing a thankless job well, and compliment the entire board of directors for taking their responsibility seriously to act in the best interests of their association. We hope you gain some HOA insights from Calvin story, and that it helps you bring common sense to your common area. Thank you for joining us, and we look forward to another great episode next week. And remember, if you match our definition of a bored hero, or know someone who does, please reach out to us. Our contact details are provided in the show notes

Announcer 37:26

You’ve been listening to Hoa insights, common sense for commen areas. If you like the show and want to support the work that we do, you can do so in a number of ways. The most important thing that you can do is engage in the conversation. Leave a question in the comments section on our YouTube videos. You can also email your questions or voice memos to podcast@reservestudy.com or leave us a voicemail at 805-203-3130, if you gain any insights from the show, please do us a HUGE favor by sharing the show with other board members that you know. You can also support us by supporting the brands that sponsor this program. Please remember that the views and opinions expressed in this program are those of the hosts and guests with the goal of providing general education about the community, association industry. You’ll want to consult licensed professionals before making any important decisions. Finally, this podcast was expertly mixed and mastered by Stoke Light. Video and marketing with Stoke Light on your team, you’ll reach more customers with marketing expertise that inspires action. See the show notes to connect with Stoke Light you.