105 | Priorities, Politics, and Peace: Navigating HOA Differences

Learn how HOA boards can navigate priorities, politics, and community differences with better communication and proactive decision-making.
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Navigating the complexities of HOA board management requires balancing priorities, understanding community differences, and communicating clearly. In this episode,  Robert and Julie discuss how boards can overcome political divides, bridge cultural differences, and set priorities that reflect the needs of their communities. Julie explains why proactive communication, clear goals, and community events are key to reducing conflict and building trust! 

Chapters:

00:00 How do community priorities shape HOA board decisions?

01:24 Why is enforcing rules for the sake of it a mistake?

03:10 Can cultural differences create tension in HOAs?

04:40 How do newcomers' expectations clash with established HOA norms?

06:22 Why is communicating board priorities so important?

08:14 What happens when boards fail to share their long-term goals?

09:47 How do property values depend on clear communication and priorities?

11:33 Why do homeowners sometimes feel left out of decision-making?

17:22 How can setting clear priorities reduce community conflicts?

19:08 What are the dangers of keeping assessments low without reserve planning?

21:30 Why is it risky for boards to ignore long-term maintenance?

23:00 Ad Break - Community Financials 

25:01 What role does cultural diversity play in HOA expectations?

32:14 How can board members manage cultural clashes with grace?

35:11 Final thoughts on communication, community unity, and peaceful management

The views & opinions expressed in this program are those of the Hosts & Guests, intended to provide general education about the community association industry. The content is not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual or organization. Please seek advice from licensed professionals.

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Chapters

• 0:00 How do community priorities shape HOA board decisions?
• 1:24 Why is enforcing rules for the sake of it a mistake?
• 3:10 Can cultural differences create tension in HOAs?
• 4:40 How do newcomers' expectations clash with established HOA norms?
• 6:22 Why is communicating board priorities so important?
• 8:14 What happens when boards fail to share their long-term goals?
• 9:47 How do property values depend on clear communication and priorities?
• 11:33 Why do homeowners sometimes feel left out of decision-making?
• 13:18 How can a simple newsletter improve HOA transparency?
• 15:07 Should boards focus more on social events to build community?
• 17:22 How can setting clear priorities reduce community conflicts?
• 19:08 What are the dangers of keeping assessments low without reserve planning?
• 21:30 Why is it risky for boards to ignore long-term maintenance?
• 23:00 Ad Break - Community Financials
• 25:01 What role does cultural diversity play in HOA expectations?
• 27:32 How does proactive communication prevent misunderstandings?
• 29:55 Why should HOAs establish yearly priorities and communicate them?
• 32:14 How can board members manage cultural clashes with grace?
• 35:11 Final thoughts on communication, community unity, and peaceful management

Transcript

Julie Adamen: 0:00

You know, enforcing rules just for enforcing rules sake. I mean, I know you have to do that. Frankly, I would argue that's part of your fiduciary duty, but there's one way to do it, and there's another, and the other is going to be far more successful than the one way do things, or else again, especially if you're in a community that hasn't done a lot of rules enforcement over the years, which unfortunately, is really, really common. HOA

Announcer: 0:23

Insights is brought to you by five companies that care about board members, association, insights and marketplace, association reserves, community, financials, Hoa invest and Kevin Davis, Insurance Services. You'll find links to their websites and social media in the show notes.

Robert Nordlund: 0:38

Hi, I'm Robert Nordlund of Association Reserves,

Unknown: 0:41

and I'm Julie Adamen of Adamen Inc, and this is HOA Insights, where we promote common sense for common areas. Welcome to episode number 105 where we're again speaking with management consultant and regular co host, Julie Adamen. Today we'll be talking about your priorities, the stated and the unstated ones, and how they affect the decisions you make on a regular basis. We want you to be aware of the implications of your priorities, because we want our listeners to have associations that thrive. Last week's episode number 104 featured a great conversation with Attorney Ed Hoffman on the rise of incivility between homeowners boards and their managers. It's something that you need to be aware of, because right now it's affecting just about every Association. Bringing peace to your association takes some purposeful strategies. So if you missed that episode or any other prior episode, take a moment after today's program to listen from our podcast website, Hoa insights.org, or watch on our YouTube channel, but better yet, subscribe from any of the major podcast platforms so you don't miss any future episodes. Well, those of you watching on YouTube can see the HOA insights mug I have. I think Julie has one too. Got mine right here. Got my merch, and you can get that from our merch store, which you can browse through from our HOA insights.org website, or the link in our show notes. And you'll find that we have some great free stuff there, like board members zoom backgrounds and some specialty items for sale, like these mugs. So go to the merch store, download a free zoom background, take a moment look around, find the mug that you'd like and email me at podcast@reserves.edu.com with your name, shipping address and mug choice, mentioning episode 105, mug giveaway, and if you're the 10th person to email me, I'll ship that mug to you free of charge. Well, we enjoy hearing from you responding to the issues that you're facing at your association. So if you have a hot topic, a crazy story, we get some of those, or a question you'd like us to address. You can always contact us at 805-203-3130, or email us at podcast at reserve, study.com and today's episode comes from a question submitted by Charles from Boise, who stated, a lot of out of towners live in our community. Some want things to be like where they came from. Some of us, long time Idaho residents, have other priorities and sensibilities. It's dividing our community. Is this common? And for this question, we wanted to have Julie help us with the answer. So Julie, what would you say to Charles from Boise? I'd

Julie Adamen: 3:29

say, Charles, yes, that is common, whether it's people coming in from out of state, and in your case, in Idaho, I lived in the Pacific Northwest for a long time, you probably have a lot of people coming in from Washington, Oregon and California, and a lot of those folks have very, very different sensibilities. That's why they moved to Idaho. But they oftentimes kind of want to bring that baggage with them. So yes, that's very common, very, very it's baggage. Well, I mean, you know, it's the way they it's the way they think, it's, it's just, it's a different lifestyle and, and I think people, they don't necessarily mean to come across that way. I mean, some do, of course, but I think a lot of people just don't realize there's such a cultural difference, and they kind of have to ease into the cultural differences and realize that everything's not going to be the way it was back in Van Nuys. So I think it's, I have empathy for what you're going through, but I do think there's ways to address it. Okay,

Robert Nordlund: 4:23

well, let's talk about that priorities. I don't think, well actually, I think having differences is actually a very good thing. It gives a blend to the association. Homogeneous association is probably a boring place. It's not necessarily a good place, but diversity gives some richness. But what are our board's priorities? And we've talked before about having a mission and vision statement. How is this different from that, or the same as that? Well,

Julie Adamen: 4:53

I want to say that what Charles was it, Charles? Is that his name, anyway, from Charles? Yes, this Charles. Yeah. What he said? Was his quote was, Idaho residents said they have other priorities and sensibilities. So let's take, let's isolate the sensibilities for the time being, and let's go to the priorities like you were talking about. I think because people come in from other areas, and, you know, they don't necessarily have to be, you know, the Californians or the Washingtonians or the Oregonians moving in, it could be people from other countries. I mean, places that are incredibly diverse. I mean, if you're anywhere that you have a lot of diverse people. I mean, like in the Bay Area, Seattle area has it. I mean, Los Angeles has it. So you have people who are from countries all over the world, and that's a serious melting pot. And that can be everything from different language, different I have a whole chapter in my board classes online that talk about that people, they could, you know, they're completely different. You have different foods, you have different mores, you have just a dip, even different languages. So, so anyway, I think, but what everyone can focus on, and what a board can focus on are its priorities. So what are the priorities of the board in a particular time frame? So could have long term goals and objectives, or you could just be doing like a priority of the month, excuse me, like we were talking about before we went on air. But I think the biggest problem is the board has their priorities, and they know what they're going through and what they're going to do, but they don't necessarily communicate that to the homeowners. And now I'm not saying if you know, as we were saying, if this month's priority is, well, we're getting the asphalt redone, but that bleeds into the next month. That's still your priority, but you come back to those stated priorities that you have given your homeowners, and I really encourage boards to do that. So whether it's every board meeting or once a quarter, or whatever, you send it out in the newsletter, meaning the E blast, or it's on your website, or it is a typical snail mail old time, one to do, I would let the homeowners know there's anything wrong with that, not that there's anything wrong with that at all. A weird but you need a stapler. Bob.

Robert Nordlund: 7:07

Do I even have staples? Yeah, exactly.

Julie Adamen: 7:10

So talk about kicking it old school there. But anyway, no matter how you do it, I think that the if the board communicates with the owners and the residents on what its priorities are for the coming X amount of time. I mean, I'd say you need to have goals and objectives every single year. You need to say we're going to get these three major things done, and then there's a couple smaller things we're going to try and get done. And this is how we're going to approach it, and this is the time frame I encourage you to do that. I will say you should all do that. I know everyone doesn't. You've got time constraints and all that kind of thing. But if you do that, and you stick to that as best you can, to the plan and communicate, to communicate to the owners that plan, the priorities of the plan and where we are at each month or quarter or whatever you're doing with that, it goes a long way for people to understand where the board is at and where the community is going. You are the leaders of the community. You have to tell the community where it's going, and you have to bring them along with you. And of course, what are your priorities? You know, are they rules enforcement? Are they social events? Are they, you know, whatever are they, you know, remedial repairs that need to be done? There's all kinds of I mean, it's a community association. We could say all of the above, but I think it's good to focus on those and let everyone know what you're doing. And for the people that come from out of state, it's a good way for them to go. Okay, now I see where these guys are going, and I don't have to go there and tell them we did it this way, where we used to live. If you tell them what your priorities are. Try to bring them along with you. Well,

Robert Nordlund: 8:45

I think there's this, and you said it very quickly, but you talked about the board knows, but do the homeowners know? And let's give the Board members credit that. Let's say they're multi year board members. They've got a good thing going on. They're taking good care of the association, but the homeowners are wondering, I think it's going to be a real big step in the right direction, a real positive aspect, if the board is communicating that, because if the homeowners know that the association is in good hands and things are getting taken care of, then you don't have that absence of information which causes anxiety. And we've talked about it before. Nature abhors a vacuum. Vacuum, yes, start, if you can have and I just started writing things down here. You talked about it, the annual calendar of things to focus on. First thing I start with, from my background, is reserve projects. Is this going to be a big year or little year? Are we doing anything at all, or is something simple. We're just replacing the pool furniture this year. Something hopefully simple, or is it a big roof project? The board needs to know that. And they've got, what are the other things that are calendared? They've got the tax filings. They've got the budget. That is a season. There's probably landscape that is. The spring into the summer. There's these different things that you want to be able to hit on. Oh, and there's, hopefully you have some social events, maybe Memorial Day, Fourth of July, Labor Day. That takes some planning. So there's some seasonality. And I'm thinking, we live our life on seasons our kids go to school, that's a season we watch football or baseball or soccer or basketball, March Madness, basketball, hockey. I'm probably leaving some things out. But, yeah, basketball, there's both sides. But boy, the the richness of being able to say, if someone's saying but, you know, but something's looking shabby over here to be able to say, Yeah, no worries. That's on the calendar for June. Every year, at June, we catch up on all our maintenance. If there's a gate that is not closing, boy, we walk around and maintenance gets stuns in in June, hopefully you do the emergency stuff that week or that day, but to be able to give assurance and Kevin, I can hear Kevin's voice now saying, just low the temperature, temperature. Yeah, that's Kevin. We both listen to Kevin. Yeah. That's just fascinating to be able to get ahead of it, and that so many times you've talked about the pressing the communication button, can't do it enough.

Julie Adamen: 11:26

No, there's no, really no such thing as over communication in our industry. And you know the for the boards, I know it's often challenging for them to I mean, especially if you are still in the workforce, if you're not retired, you're still in the workforce. You maybe you've got kids at home. You know, your life is really busy. I get it, and I think that's kind of what happens. A lot of people fall off on that. They're like, well, they want to know they need to come to a board meeting. Well, by the time they figure it out and they come to the board meeting, they're probably mad about something because you're not doing this proactive communication. It's too late. It's too late that time it is and they're already mad. And even if you've already done it and taken care of it, they still have that emotion level that Kevin right here. They still have that emotion level that's up here. And it takes a while for that to dissipate, or it doesn't dissipate, and they find something to turn that anger on. I would say it's incumbent upon board members to be really cognizant of how much that communication of your priorities as a board to the homeowners, to to get that to the homeowners. And you know something, and can we talk about the sensibilities part for a minute? Because he says they don't have our sensibilities, okay? And I get well, that's because culturally, your sensibilities are probably completely different. Not everybody's, but you definitely will have that. I hear that from people in Texas. They're like, Oh my god, the Californians came in and they want to do it just the way they did there. And they're like, you moved to Texas to get away from that. And there's so so two sides of it. I'm in Arizona now, and I hear the say, exact same thing. Oh, all these people from California came and moved in. So not I'm a Californian, so I I'm gonna bag on my own people there. So I've lived there for quite a while, but I am native, but I think as boards, you're going to have to deal with that. That is a fact of the reordering of what's going on in our country. People are voting with their feet, and they are and they're moving out of places they don't want to live and moving into places they do want to live interesting red and blue states, red and blue states, and the I kind of live in a purpley state, but I'd say it's actually more red than blue, but still, it's completely different culturally than where I was previously living. In Washington State, totally different and definitely different to California, for sure. But I think for the boards you got this is going to happen, and you kind of have to be ready for it. Personally, I think you feel like, oh my god, you know you're coming over here and telling us how to do things, but you just got away from how they were doing things. I think that kind of some sort of not necessarily an outreach, in the sense that, you know, there's going to be some of those people who are, in your view, pretty reasonable. They move there for the right reasons, but, you know, maybe they don't understand how things are really working around here. And I would say, bring them into the process. Bring them in to maybe not a board seat, because it may not be one open, but get them on to a communications committee, or get them to help you just every now and then, so you could create a relationship with the most reasonable among them, and when they have that positive experience that you're trying to understand where they're coming from, and then you'll be have a chance to communicate where the board and this community has been all this time, and now we're just bringing in these new people, and we're All adjusting. You're adjusting, they're adjusting. So I think you you really don't have a choice, because it's not going to change. I'm sorry, but it's not, it's the elephant in the room. Introduce it. Okay, if there's the elephant, introduce the elephant. And bring those people into the process as much as you possibly can. You're

Robert Nordlund: 14:57

talking about adjusting there. And I. Remembered for a year we lived in a a condominium. We rented a condominium while we were waiting for we did a major remodel on our house. And I live next to a very pleasant guy that was our next door neighbor. And every, let's call it Tuesday, garbage can. Day, he would bring his garbage can in and he would wash it out. And I always thought that was interesting. I asked him why, and he says he's always washed out his garbage can when it was empty. And sensibilities can be trivial. They can be significant, but it's just those little things that I never saw anyone wash out a garbage can, and maybe I'm the minority, but yeah, there's all these different things, but the more we practice tolerance, I think the better it's going to be for us all, because if we get stuck in we want it our way, we like it our way. We expect everyone to do it our way, then we become a siloed society, and that's not good. And we've got a lot of different people here from a lot of different places, with different languages, with different ways that they grew up, doing things birthday parties that are small, birthday parties that are large, whatever it is you got me, you got me really thinking on that, but I want, I want to get back to priorities. I want to encourage our audience to think we are diverse and it's going to just get more diverse as we have people continuing to move around. More people working from home. Their company is in Dallas, but they don't even live in Dallas. They live in Tennessee, or they live in Maine, or whatever it is, or they live in Maine half the year and they live in a warmer state the other half of the year. We've become portable, and so we're going to have to learn how to see people differently. Oh, I haven't seen Joe in a while. Oh, that's right, it's summertime. He's not here in the summer, or whatever it is. And now I'm thinking, I know someone who I only see six months of the year, because in the cold, six months of the year he's in Palm Springs. Yeah, that's it's just the reality. I want to talk about priorities and again, almost like sensibilities, but stereotypes. I think our audience here is aware. The stereotypes are that board members are mean. Board members are focused on fines. They're focused on rules. How can we address the priorities and tell the owners? How can we make it clear that that's not all we do here at this association.

Julie Adamen: 17:41

Well, you could do other things other than that. That's what you can do. And that's true. The stereotype is, and you all know from various TV shows or commercials, you know, here's here's Karen, the board president. She's out there with her. She's measuring the lawn. We see how high it is with a clipboard. That's right. And unfortunately, some of that is warranted, that things like that do happen. I'm not going to say they don't. Stereotypes are there for a reason. They are there for a reason, but sometimes they kind of grow beyond their they're beyond their reality, right? But it always makes a good story, and a lot of people do feel that way. I mean, we could talk about the the, oh, that survey that came out that we talked about a couple times a couple of shows ago, yeah, that's people were overall. They don't think you should live in an HOA, except if you drill down to the survey, almost all of them said we really like our property values here, and then all the houses have to be kept up. But there you are, right there. That's that's their sensibilities or their priorities. My priority is the dues are too high, and the boards don't know what they're doing and but the other part is, I really like living here because the landscape looks good, or whatever. It's just, it's a funny thing. So people have these two parts that they always want to deal with in HOAs, but one of the parts always is the board doesn't know what they're doing, or they're spending too much money, or they don't do anything but send out fines. So how do you combat that? You combat that by doing other things, and you combat that by, especially if you're the type of association that has gone for years and years without really enforcing anything. I was just talking to someone about this. What do you stand for? What do you see? Yeah, actually, you know who I just talked I was talking to my son who works for a management company, and they got a large account, and nothing had really been followed up on in a very long time. And so the board president initially wanted to, we got to send this stuff out. Send it out right away, tell them they have 30 days to clean up. Well, this place has been gone on for a couple of years without anyone really doing anything. And you know, you want to kind of soft pedal that you don't really want to come out and say, clean it up within 30 days, even though it's been there for four years. You want to send out the first the soft notice. Hey everybody. We want to let you know that this is what we're planning on doing this year. And we know it hasn't been done before, but this is in an effort to increase our property. Values.

Robert Nordlund: 20:01

That's why I want to, I already started to write that down. Why? Yeah, because we don't have a rule just because we're mean. You know, everyone out of the pool at 10 o'clock. It's the why? Because we, here at Happy Valley villas are try to be a peaceful, welcoming community. We have, we ask everyone to be out of the pool by 10 o'clock at night. It you got to have the why in there.

Julie Adamen: 20:25

You do. And actually people will understand the why. I mean, they may go about it at first, but they really do understand the why. So forcing rules just for enforcing rules sake. I mean, I know you have to do that. Frankly, I would argue that's part of your fiduciary duty. But there's one way to do it and there's another, and the other is going to be far more successful than the one way do things, or else. Again, especially if you're in a community that hasn't done a lot of rules enforcement over the years, which, unfortunately, is really, really common. And again, it's the same thing with the people who come from other places. You know, they don't know why you do things necessarily in Idaho, and why that's different than what we do in, you know, in San Francisco or in Seattle or Boston or, yeah, it's usually people west coast, people that are have moved to Idaho and up and around that area. I know because we looked at, we looked at moving there, ended up settling on Arizona. The differences that we are, we have this. It's only, as Robert said, it's only going to get with more diverse. And, you know, another reason it's going to get more diverse is the advent of AI and the jobs that that is going to take over and people having to be in their office. I mean, there will be people who have to be in the office. And I, as a business owner, I think that's a really smart thing to do. But there are going to be a lot more people that do different things and jobs that we don't even know about yet. I mean, we just don't know. So if you look in the next 10 years, for those of us who are piano on the backside of the backside of 60, almost to 70, careful, closer to 70 than 60. I can't believe it, but anyway, but for those of us on that end, it's actually, and often we're the ones who are board members, right? It's usually, often people who have time because they're working part time, or retirees or something like that. But you have to understand, this is what's coming down the pike. There's no getting away from it. So how are we going to manage it? Are we going to manage it by climbing up and telling people, no, we don't do it that way. Because Are you going to say, well, this is why we do this this way in this area or in this community, and what are you and it's going to take some politicking on your part, for sure, but asking people why they think the way they think, I think it's okay. I just say, Why do you think we should do it that way? And really listen to them? You may learn something, you may blow it off, but the fact that you listened those people walk away with a really good taste in their mouth about the community, right?

Robert Nordlund: 22:55

So much of it is allowing people to have their say, Make allow them to feel heard. You know, I I spent X$100,000 to buy a home in this community. I want to have a voice in this place and to allow them to be heard. Well, Julie, looking at the time here, I want to make sure we take time to take a break to hear from one of our generous sponsors. After that, I want to get back to talking about priorities, the written ones and the unwritten ones and how they affect life at our association. Okay, so we'll be back in just a moment with more common sense for common areas. Is your HOA

Russell Munz: 23:30

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Robert Nordlund: 24:01

and we're back well before the break, we want to talk about moving into what are the priorities that you do have? And what's interesting is the actual priorities and your unspoken priorities, the ones that are there that you just haven't articulated. So in the break, I was talking with Julie about what I've heard from Kevin, and he talks about the priorities you need to have just to stay well insured, is to care for the common areas, and we call that maintenance and reserve projects, collecting assessments, which means running the association. The business of running the association, you've got to have money for the association to function right, and enforcing the rules. So that's what Kevin would say. And Julie, right before the break, you talked about some associations that haven't enforced the rules, and my guess is those are the associations that chafe at that rule management stereotype, and they've just kind of abdicated that role, right? A

Julie Adamen: 25:00

lot of times that's what happens, is that they just and it is a lot of bother, and you can get a lot of grief for it. I've worked with associations, consulted to them who have had this problem, and tried to help them out of it. But, you know, I find that the reason they don't, for the most part, is, yes, they don't want the grief. Or two, they're the kind of homeowner that got on the board and they had had rules and rules enforced against them, something they had done they should have been doing, or parked the car on blocks, or whatever. It doesn't matter. And then they get on the board and they're like, No, we're not enforcing that stuff, which is way against your fiduciary duty. So Kevin is really he's well taken, especially since he's in the insurance field. I mean, these are the things he has to look at all the time, right? And those are the right things, and those are priorities. And that's the basic priority, collect assessments, do the maintenance and pay, I'd say, pay the bills. Yeah?

Robert Nordlund: 25:52

Well, there's collect the money and pay the money. Yeah, right. That's

Julie Adamen: 25:55

those things you have to do. But those are those absolutely have to be your priorities, oftentimes unwritten priorities. There we go, written ones. So let me ask you this, if your association hasn't raised assessments in five years, and you are only 20% funded on your reserves, and you're cutting services because you're not have don't have enough money to pay for that, though you haven't said it your priority is Robert low

Robert Nordlund: 26:26

monthly assessments. Low monthly assessments are changing your pool service from twice a week to once a week, changing your landscaper from twice a week to once a week, only because you want to pay half the money, only because you're trying to keep the assessments at the same as they are last year, and you're not looking for what's it take to make our community inviting? How much are you damaging home values when half the time the grass is too long, half the time the flowers aren't trimmed and blooming and blossoming, it doesn't look inviting. You're shooting yourself in the foot, but yeah, I think that's the biggest unwritten priority that we see. Literally, we can see every day, every day. Yeah, it's not a board that has it written down, but when you're doing that, the homeowners see it, and you may think that you're doing it in their best interest, but what are you saving them 50 bucks a month? But in saving them 50 bucks a month, if you're losing 10 and 20 and $50,000 in home value, you're shooting yourself in the foot.

Julie Adamen: 27:32

Not only that, you're actually you're breaching your fiduciary duty. I'm, I would argue, absolutely.

Robert Nordlund: 27:37

Yeah, governing documents say that you are empowered and have the responsibility to collect assessments, to pay for the bills of the association, to sustain the association. And that's not just the monthly bills that you receive in the mail or receive via email. That's the roof deterioration, the asphalt deterioration. These things are real costs. That is in my world. That's my pet peeve. Boards who are holding on so tight to last year's homeowner assessment rate, and they think that that is their objective. And I rail against that. I Yes. Whole episode, just going down that path just

Julie Adamen: 28:20

go off. And yes, absolutely they that happens a lot. Now I do want to recognize that, especially in certain areas of the country, but pretty much most associations have been affected by the increase in insurance costs, which have just been onerous or to the point where you can't get it. It's pretty bad. So I do, I have empathy for that. I do understand that. But setting that aside, though that's a there's an elephant in the room. Setting that elephant aside for the time being, is that still, if you, if your association doesn't look inviting, and your property values are going down, I mean, well, in this in Australia, where they have they called strata management, right? Their HOA work is strata. That's what they call it. But good that, I think that originally comes from high rises, but I think they refer to all HOAs as strata, do they not?

Robert Nordlund: 29:10

I, I believe so. I think so too. We it's strata there, just like condominium here, whether it's, yeah, tall or short or town home or mid rise or whatever, I

Julie Adamen: 29:20

think that's correct. But you know, we will hear from

Robert Nordlund: 29:24

some of our, I hope we hear from some of our our International Australia. Listeners, yes,

Julie Adamen: 29:30

education, folks, yeah, please. But the manager, so if they have a professional management company manager, most of them do, and especially those high rises in cities, the manager's salary is often based on how much the property values are, which actually kind of makes sense, if you want, because you've got the person who is really driving that boat on behalf of the board, but they're driving that boat and using all their professional wisdom and expertise to keep the community whether it's a high. Rise or mid rise or or card homes. It doesn't matter, keep it on that track of continually improving, so preserving, protecting, maintaining and enhancing the community and there, that's the board's responsibility. But if they farm that out to a manager, management company, those folks and that can be remunerated on the SAL on the price of the units. So based upon how much, if it's gone up 5% management company gets an increase. So I think they still do it that way. If I'm not, please people let me know. I think it's a great way to get compensated. I

Robert Nordlund: 30:33

would love to hear from our Australian listeners. I want to get spend a little bit of time talking about, what are these other things? Because the board has a lot to do. We talked about the three priorities, caring for the common areas, maintenance, sustainability, collecting the assessments and paying the bills, enforcing the rules. Those are real jobs that have to be done. Do them with a heart, do them with sensibility, where you can collect assessments. Maybe give a payment plan to someone who's in a bad spot. You figure it out, you work it out, but have a heart, but make sure that you are demonstrating that you're looking at so many other things. And just during our conversation here, we talked about landscaping. Maybe April is landscaping month, maybe. And I'm going with a maybe December 31 fiscal year end. Maybe September is budget month. Maybe one of the other things, vendor contracts, you spend one month a year, where you just go all through your vendor contracts. Investments are your reserves getting the right maximum return, and are there any things you need to roll over your bank balances, your operating versus reserve balance, your reserve projects? Do you have a long list or a short list? Are you on track delinquencies, not only our delinquencies, but is our delinquency policy keeping up with technology. And, you know,

Julie Adamen: 32:02

I like the idea of making them like this is, this is reserve month. This is, you know, and I think that's a really interesting I never thought of it that way, Robert, till you brought it up before we started this. But that would be a really great communication theme. If you have priorities every month. And obviously, if they need to be changed because of certain circumstances, that's fine. It's not in stone. And if you have that to the homeowners at the beginning of the year, saying, Okay, this is, this is where we're going this year. And it's January, it's snow removal month, or what, or whatever it is, you know, if you, of course, if you're in the desert, that's golf month. And yes, but change, and it can either be something that has to do with the Association, or, let's say you're going to have a social event. So it's February. There's nothing else that really needs to go on. So this is Valentine's month, or whatever it is, balance. And then for Louisiana, yes, exactly. And so don't forget, for all the physical things that you absolutely have to do, I want to encourage boards to think there are social things you can do, and it doesn't have to be a ginormous whoop dee doo, but there are social things and you can think about and talk about, or maybe have a party, or a block party, whatever time of year that is, and the association ponies up some money, maybe, or everyone has to pay 10 bucks when they walk in. And you will be surprised how many people will pay to do that kind of thing. When you are showing people your priorities, whether they are this is reserve month or this is budget month, so all the homeowners know what you're working on, and they, if they come to the board meeting, they want to ask you about the budget, and you can say, well, we're in progress. Things are looking pretty good, you know, we won't know what assessments are going to be. Or if it's, you know, if it's a fun month, if it's, you know, September, it's Back to School Month. Maybe we do something for that. When you are telling people that you're doing the physical things that need to be done, as the as the board, as the stewards of the association, we got this, we got the budget, and we've got, you know, yada yada, all this. But we also have heart, just like Robert said, we have heart. This is Back to School month, or

Robert Nordlund: 34:02

maybe we adopt a back to school cause, and we've purchased 15 backpacks come with your supplies. We're gonna stuff 15 backpacks for the new kids at the local elementary school, or whatever it is, or the fundraiser for the local high school football team. I love that. See, I got a couple more here. Did I say delinquencies? Focus on your delinquencies, your delinquency policy, architectural approvals. Are they still relevant? Are they worded appropriately? So many things. When you see that we have a balance here at the Community, I'm realizing it. That's the kind of community I want to be a part of.

Julie Adamen: 34:43

Yeah, and people want to be a part of something positive when they are viewing the board as being competent and aware of what's going on in the community, as well as aware of where it's going on outside, like you just said, like the fundraiser, like for the for the football team Texas. I'm looking at you Friday Night Lights. I want to see. Some of that kind of thing. If they need uniforms, or whatever needs to happen, you can make that happen, and it brings people around a common purpose that does not have to do with we gotta raise news, or we gotta get, you know, enforce everything. It

Robert Nordlund: 35:13

unites the community. Yes, I like that so much and it and we've talked before about how when you're doing things positive, you get higher board meeting attendance. You get board candidates who are constructive. You get committee people who would like to help. They know they want

Julie Adamen: 35:31

to be a part of the process. If it's positive, people want to be a part of that process. Yeah.

Robert Nordlund: 35:36

And if the maintenance walk through is May, they can do that in May. They'll help with a maintenance walk through. They'll check I got the gates. I will check every all five gates. And boy, that is such an easy project. I'm getting psyched. I'm about ready to go out and look for some gates in my association here. Julie, as always, it's great talking with you. Any closing thoughts to add at this time, no,

Julie Adamen: 36:02

not too many. But I do want to let people know that I have a series of online classes for board members, online courses. You go to my website, which is Adam and dash inc.com, or just google me, and you'll find my website. Go to education, and there's four hours worth of information in there for you to take. And I'd love to know what you think about it.

Robert Nordlund: 36:21

It's good stuff every way we can with free podcasts. Our company has webinars. Julie has board member training. We're trying to help you. Yeah, well, here, here in the podcast, we hope that we're providing you some HOA insights from our discussion that helps you bring common sense to your common areas. Well, thank you for joining us today, we look forward to bringing many more episodes to you, week after week after week. We're going to be here. We're going to have great guests, interesting topics, and it would be great to have you join us on a regular basis. So spread the word. See you next week.

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