HOA Insights: Common Sense for Common Areas

114 | How To Act When a Community is Fed Up With Your HOA Board

• Hosts: Robert Nordlund, Kevin Davis, Julie Adamen • Season 3 • Episode 114

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Is your HOA board facing homeowner backlash? Learn proven ways to rebuild trust & manage conflicts effectively during a crisis!
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Are you currently dealing with potential unrest in your HOA community? Julie and  Robert share critical insights into what HOA boards must do when facing homeowner frustration. Learn how proactive communication, transparency, and direct engagement with residents can ease tensions, rebuild trust, and resolve conflicts before they escalate. 

Chapters From This Episode:

00:00 How Do HOA Boards End Up in Crisis Situations?

03:15 Why Do HOA Communities Experience Cycles of Conflict?

05:08 What Happens When Good Board Members Leave?

07:29 How Did COVID-19 Amplify HOA Board Challenges?

10:15 What Changes When a Dissident Joins the HOA Board?

14:26 How Does Poor Communication Create HOA Issues?

16:12 Why Do Emotional Appeals Cause HOA Conflicts to Escalate?

19:31 Ad Break - HOA Invest

20:09 How Should HOA Boards Address Community Dissatisfaction?

21:35 What’s the Best Way to Handle Dissident HOA Groups?

24:52 How Can Transparency Resolve HOA Misunderstandings?

27:08 Can Proactive Communication Prevent HOA Conflicts?

28:53 Why Should HOAs Involve Trusted Community Members?

30:07 How Does Creating a Volunteer Pipeline Help HOAs?

32:14 What Encouragement Do HOA Board Members Need?

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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Julie Adamen:

to come in and they're going to do things when that agenda evaporates. All you board members that are out there who are the other board members who knew that couldn't happen, you need to take that person literally, rush in and give them some other projects, because if you don't that agenda, vacuum will just suck in there, whether it's I want to get rid of the rest of this board, or let's get rid of management, or fire the landscape company. And that can all create you all those things could create a lot of turmoil.

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Robert Nordlund:

Hi. I'm Robert Nordlund of Association Reserves,

Julie Adamen:

and I'm Julie adamen With Adamen Inc, and this is HOA Insights, where we promote common sense

Robert Nordlund:

for common areas. Welcome to Episode 114 where we're again speaking with management consultant and regular co host, Julie ademan. Today we'll be talking about what we heard in Episode 112 two weeks ago, in a board hero episode titled An unfortunate story. The truth is that sometimes bad things happen at your association. Now, from our perspective, we've seen the cycles that some associations go through, some troubled years followed by some recovery or turnaround years. So neither the good years or the bad years are permanent. So if you missed that episode number 112, 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. And those of you watching on YouTube can see the HOA insights mugs that Julie and I have merch, our merch, our merch, yes, that we got from the merch store. And you can browse through that merch store from our Hoa insights.org website or the link in the show notes, and you'll find we have some great free stuff there, like board member zoom backgrounds and some specialty items for sale, like the mugs that we showed 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, at reserves, a.com with Your name, shipping address and mug choice, mentioning episode 114 mug giveaway. And if you're the 10th person to email me, Julie, I look forward to the day that where we say the 50th person, yeah, or the 100th person. We're getting there. We're getting there. That's gonna be hard on the admin staff. But if you're the 10th person to email me, I'll ship that mug to you free of charge. We enjoy hearing from you responding to the issues you're facing at your association. So if you have a hot topic, a crazy story or a question you'd like us to address, you can always contact us at 805-203-3130, or email us at podcast@reservestudy.com but today's episode is what we felt a necessary follow up to episode 112 sometimes bad things do happen at an association, and we didn't want to leave you hanging. So Julie, how do associations get off track?

Julie Adamen:

Let me count the ways. Ah, good answer. There's, there's so many ways they can get off track, but get off track, they do. And just as you had said earlier, is that it is a cycle. It's always a cycle. The association is always in a cycle. There some really terrific people come in, and they manage the place very well. They're engaged. They know how to deal with their homeowners and the problems that come up, they communicate. Well, they might have to do something unpopular, like raise assessments, which, of course, puts the antenna up of all the people out there who don't want to raise assessments. And no, we're spending too much money, and it kind of feeds on itself, and for one way or another, whether the good people get sick of it or it's just their time to get off. Then the people who come in and want to do whatever they want to do, whether it's assessments or anything the agenda that they have, and then the association kind of takes that little down dive, and it stays on the bottom for just about as long as the rest of the homeowners can take. It could be two years, could be five years, could be a year, don't know. And then they vote them out, and newer people come on, and it just makes the cycle.

Robert Nordlund:

Yeah, that's the election process. So again, I've been thinking about this in advance of our conversation, but just some of the words that you've been saying, there is maybe a happy medium where there's not too much trouble and not too much success, because once it gets down below a level of tolerance, then you're going to get more people that want to run for the board and say, Hey, this is not good. Is it also a little bit like the good board members and the good years that you were describing people doing a good job, they're lifting the association up. And. That is a unstable situation where it requires so much effort to keep it going. Or what's your thoughts on that?

Julie Adamen:

Well, it can Yes. I mean, that is one circumstance. There's, like I said, for the ups and downs, there's usually several different reasons, or a combination of weird reasons, or weird and not weird reasons. But yes, so if you have a great board, and I have, in fact, the last time I actually managed low these many years ago, okay, I had fantastic board, I mean, and I was very blessed. I had a fantastic board for four out of my five years at that particular community. I was on site Jim, and they were just amazing. And then a couple of those people kind of segue off the board because they know they've been on the board for five years or four years, and they've got other things to do, very normal. And then the dissident group, at least one or two members got on. And you know, the fortunes change, especially if you're in the in the management end of it. But actually this applies to board members as well. You know, if you're a good board member, and you come in and do a fantastic job for two years, three years, four years, people have a tendency to take that for granted. They're, oh, man, this is so great. And then after a while, it's like, wait a minute, how come they're not doing this, or they're not doing that? And they must be doing something wrong. Or, if you're paid staff, it's, well, why are we paying that person so much money? And all of a sudden, all those little naysayers, kind of, it kind of gathers up like a gathering storm, and depending on how the board reacts and manages that gathering storm, the board that's there can often determine where the association goes. And what seems to be happening now is, I talk to lots of people in the management world, is that the board members who are doing a good job, and they're always getting, you know, if you're standing up front, you always have a tendency to get shot in the rear. The ones who are getting shot in the rear are at the point where there's like, I don't even want to finish out my term. So it's become difficult to find good board members, because the good board members feel like they're not being appreciated, and they probably aren't. And I would say, as you know, Robert, since COVID, people have lost their marbles. As far as getting they feel completely okay with getting up in your face and yelling at you or cursing at you in public, just doing crazy things. Even in our larger society, there's a lot of it still is going on all the time. And in HOA world, who's going to come get you the condo cops? Well, there is no such thing, so there aren't a lot of repercussions for that bad behavior, so that that is exacerbating the cycle.

Robert Nordlund:

Well, another thing I was thinking about was I also use the word COVID. It seems like during COVID, we started, started to have more distrust in what the truth was and who's telling the truth, and you add that to social media, and all of a sudden the credibility of your honorable people is more readily attacked because, oh, who knows a juicy rumor, and rumor has no basis in fact, but someone can say it, it can get across, and all of a sudden that person is now in a place that they have to defend

Julie Adamen:

themselves. Yeah, those rumors have legs, and they run right towards, you know, the target, the intended target. So yeah, it is. You're absolutely right. That was during the COVID period. But then I think Americans have lost so much trust in their institutions for good reason, in my opinion. But that kind of distrust spills over into the personal your HOA, or the airline you're going to fly or or any kind of thing that we normally would have trusted to do the right thing. And unfortunately, boards get caught up in that. The funny part is, is that most board members, no matter if they got elected on a specific agenda, you know, whatever, so Well, I want all the flowers to be white, whatever somebody's agenda. I actually, I actually had someone who ran on that, but she had to walk it back. She was actually a great board member. She ended up being a great board member, but she wanted everyone, this is in Palm Desert, California, just a great board member. But when she first was there, she was also the head of the architectural committee, and she wanted everyone to plant only white petunias on the golf course side. Now that's 12 175 74 units or so, so that kind of went by the wayside. But boy, she had it. But no matter what it is, it's, you know, you could be doing most board members get elected because they really want to do the right thing. It may not be the right thing, really, as far as professionals go. And we think, well, that's not smart. But they really want to do the right thing, and they feel they have a sense of duty. Most of them do. I would say whether they know how to execute that duty. I you know, is up for debate, but they they're trying to do the right thing, most of them. Most of them,

Robert Nordlund:

well, I want to follow up on that, because the lady, just like you said, the lady who had this idea for white flowers, and you said that later on, she became a good board member. And. So what changes when you have someone saying, I want to or I'd like this, and they run for the board, and then they get on the board, what then happens is it a matter of seeing the facts, where they're finally confronted, really with the facts?

Julie Adamen:

Yes, it absolutely. And I call that a seat at the table of knowledge. I like that because, because of the folks who, let's just take the people who want to lower dues. I mean, that's always a big thing in Hoa, is where it is too much money, blah, blah, blah, and it can be or typically it's not, but they just because, in this world, what we do is we are dealing with people's living arrangements, their money, their finances and their home. So it's very personal to them. And, boy, they sure don't see why we have to spend all this money on whatever. But they get elected on a very narrow agenda, such as, I'm going to lower dues by 20% or whatever it is. But once they have that seat at the table, they often realize, oh, I can't do that. And that you'll see that happens in city councils and people who run for any kind of office, we're going to do this, we're going to do this, we're going to do that. And then they get in there, and either they were lying number one or number two, they realize, oh, I can't do that. And they have to walk that back. You know, I like to give them a little grace on that, because the you know, if a board member, or if someone is running for the board, and they are the lower dues by 20% I would hope that the current board would bring them in and sit down and talk with them about the financials and where we're at and why we need to do, why they need to stay where they are. I find that I've seen that actually happen, and I find that people who are running pretty much don't want to know that information, because they've got their they've got their platform and they've got their supporters, and they want to run on it, and they'd rather deal with it later, or they just won't believe what's in front of their eyes until they are sitting at that board and they are a fiduciary or trustee of the association, and all of a sudden they realize, oh, we can't do this. There's a problem there for other board members and management. What happens is the person who had this big agenda, and they're going to come in and they're going to do things when that agenda evaporates, all you board members that are out there who are the other board members who knew that couldn't happen, you need to take that person literally rush in and give them some other projects, because they will have a tendency to have A lot of pent up emotion and pent up energy about that particular issue. Now that that has gone away, you got to focus that energy to something else. And I'm sure you have something in your community that needs close looking at, or, you know, put them on the head of the road committee, or whatever is coming up that's meaningful, but you can channel that energy, because if you don't that agenda, vacuum will just suck in something in there, whether it's I want to get rid of the rest of this board, or let's get rid of management, or fire the landscape company, you and that can all create you. All those things could create a lot of turmoil. So other board members need to be aware of that.

Robert Nordlund:

I really like that idea because I don't want that to get slide on by someone coming in, and they have great ideas, and they know, and everyone knows that they're the new voice, the one out of five or the two out of five on the board. And they're going to rattle the cages. And if they start to see the first month's worth of bills and realize that, oh, the landscaper really is$2,500 a month, the pool service really is x $100 a month, whatever it is. And they're like, Oh, gee, yeah, I guess we do need to do this. The solution is not to hope that they resign. The solution is get them on like landscape productive, yeah. Productive, yeah, landscape committee or the reserve committee. Get them preparing for the roof project next year, that is going to be $500,000 start developing a list of or the specs, all that kind of stuff, yeah, but get them productive. I love that. And then I want to follow up on this idea of a vacuum. And we've all heard the phrase nature abhors a vacuum, and you alluded to it earlier, that there will be some good years, and I wonder if that causes some apathy among the homeowners, that maybe slows down communication, because everything's fine, and then that allows an opportunity For an opposing worldview to come in. And the same with vacuum of communication. Vacuum is a bad thing.

Julie Adamen:

That's very true. That actually happens if there's if, if everything's running smoothly, you know, people don't really pay much attention to the association because there's another or, you know, the dues haven't gone up, or everything looks great out in the landscaping and or whatever that type of thing is. I packed I did a I did a keynote. I was a keynote speaker for board member retreat for a big management company down in in the Coachella Valley in Southern California. And I had about 300 board members in this room, and we were talking about the communication vacuum, and then we were all talking about how. All the homeowners have become apathetic. And of course, board members, that's always a problem for board members at one time or another. That's part of the cycle. Apathy is part of that cycle. And when some guy raises his hand in the back, he said, Well, we cured that at our association, and I'm like, how? And he says, Well, we sent out an email to everyone, tell them we were going to raise the dues by 45% and they came running into the annual meeting, and they all said, Psych, No, we just wanted you to attend the meeting we have. I don't know that I'd recommend that to everybody, but it was quite creative, and it worked. Yeah,

Robert Nordlund:

that's certainly a way to get people to a meeting, but I'm not sure if you want to. Was it? Cry wolf, the sky is falling, one of those things. But let's talk about mob action. I think we all have a selfish gene in our body. Was it? Dale Carnegie said that the sweetest word is always your own name. We care about ourselves. We care about our self interest, and if someone is going to tempt us with lower assessments or something that is personally agreeable, personally favorable. I think that's a human tendency to be open. You know, let me, let me hear a little bit more. Let me hear your story. What's the human dynamic and that getting traction?

Julie Adamen:

Well, I mean, it's, you're absolutely right about the human nature. I mean, it's we are always looking out for ourselves. I mean, that's no matter what, we're always looking out for ourselves as much as you try not to. When we try to think of others and look out for others, a lot of the times, we're looking out for us and helping someone else helps us. We're good with that as much as we maybe should do it, even if it doesn't help us, right? But so that's just human nature for the most part. And so when someone says, I'm going to get on this board and I'm going to make sure that we fire this landscape company because, bah, bah, bah, bah, bah, whatever the reason is.

Robert Nordlund:

I see their employees sitting on the yard having lunch, and they're wasting time, and we're paying them

Julie Adamen:

that. We're paying them exactly that. Whatever it is, it doesn't whether it's it doesn't matter what it is, it's how the pool didn't look good, or the snow didn't get removed on time. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, all the same stuff. But if you're appealing to somebody's emotion on that issue, it's very effective if you say, well, the snow didn't get removed for eight hours. And what if there had been an emergency and, you know, your child was choking, and we could get the ambulance in there. I mean, they can just go on and on it, people will buy right into that. It's an emotional appeal. It's, it's very, what I want to say that is, it's very cynical. It's a very cynical way to operate, but they do it all the time. It's again, it's all human beings, and everything is politics. I don't necessarily mean that in a bad way, but it always is in this world, in our world. So that emotional appeal, and then you get people all riled up in their emotions. Then they're at the next meeting with their torches and pitchforks about something. And that literally is mob. That's a mob coming after you. And it does happen all you board members out there, I would venture to say all of you have experienced that at least once. Usually it's a baloney thing, completely baloney. But everybody's all upset about it. In they walk.

Robert Nordlund:

I'm writing down notes here, and that you add the emotional appeal to a distrust in institutions, and the general raised anxiety from COVID. And it's a combustible mixture. It is that fair thing to say? It is. It's a toxic brew. It certainly can be okay, which is what Helen got herself into. And it wasn't that, arguably, she really did anything wrong. It was just she had a toxic situation, or toxic brew, and the opposing viewpoint got a majority on the board, and she is in the audience, rather than being at the board table, and it's very interesting. I really like your phrase now that the board has a seat at the table of knowledge and realize it's a lot harder to work magic. And I finally, I don't know if I told you, I finally bought a magic wand. I have it on my head. I bought a bookcase. It's on my bookcase. And so that's for people who say, Oh, we're going to be able to take good care of our property and we're going to lower our reserve funding by 20% and I say, Hold on, just a minute. I go get my magic

Julie Adamen:

wand. It's always a pen, not a wand, okay? Well, yeah, I

Robert Nordlund:

asked them if they want to borrow it, because that's what it's going to take. Hey, we are at the midpoint here, and want to make sure that we have time, because I want to turn the corner here. But let's take a break here and hear from one of our generous sponsors, after which we'll be back with more common sense for common areas tired

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Robert Nordlund:

and we're back. Okay, there's a lot of things that can go wrong, and they're real and they happen. It's part of the cycles. But Julie, how do you mitigate, how do you minimize, bad things going on if you start to see them happening at your association Number

Julie Adamen:

one, don't ignore it. If you see it, it's happening because, and if you see it, it's probably been going on a little bit, you know longer than you think, because they've been having whoever that is, who has that they've got that going on in their head. And I would say that I think a lot of board members, you're a volunteer in this job typically takes more time than you were ever told when you volunteer to be on the board. So you're like, oh, god no, I think it'll be okay. Or I just don't want to see it, you know, I just want to have my blinders on and I want to see it. I would say, once you've seen it, you truly see it. You can't ignore it, and you have to create some sort of strategy to try to you may not be able to stop the person or stop the cycle from kind of going downhill a little bit, but you can certainly mitigate a lot of it. I was gonna say, treat it like an iceberg. Treat it like an iceberg, absolutely, because if there's one guy complaining, there's 50 down below, or 10 down below, you know, something like that, way more than you think. So you cannot treat it like it's not there. It's it is there. So what are we going to do about that? Well, let's just say, are they, well, Robert, are they on the board or off the board?

Robert Nordlund:

Let's say they're off the board. They're the mob outside that's criticizing the board. They're

Julie Adamen:

the dissident group. Okay, the first thing I would do is, depending on the kind of group they are, but overall, I think the first thing I would do is actually meet with that person personally, or two or three of them, and have them sit down with a couple of board members and have them, have them actually commit to paper what their grievances are, or what they think is going on, and then to the best of your ability, I would share with them what you can. Obviously can't share proprietary information, but I would definitely give them, I mean, if they Well, you know, this is costing too much, and that's costing too much, and and then you can say, well, here were the bids we got for the last landscape contract. Here they are. They're not a secret. In fact, the people are entitled to them anyway. And and give them the reasons you did this. Now, they may disagree with your reasons, but you had reasons. This also goes to the fact that hopefully, if you're bored, if you have a professional management company or on site manager, there, you have these kind of records, if you are self managing, you need to ensure that you are keeping those types of records for just this type of situation. Because if you thought, well, I don't need to really keep this bid from three years ago. No, contrary, I would keep that stuff for probably up to 10 years, just depending on on your association and what goes on there. So that's the first thing I would do, is face to face. You know, people have a tendency back back when I was a manager that the property, I was telling about the gala, wonder do the flowers all white. She was a great board member, though. But anyway, when I was there, we had people who would try to, you know, they want to do that kind of thing. They want to tell you, this is happening or that's not happening. You know, how you deal with that is, you just paper them to death. You're like, well, here's what we did, and here's what stuff was. Because we, I was really good about it. The company I worked for at the time was very good about keeping records, and it was, you know, that you once you've papered them to death, oftentimes they don't want to be inundated with it anymore, and they'll just go, okay, or they'll back off. But if not, you know, you just have to keep continually trying to keep that line of communication open with those people. Personally,

Robert Nordlund:

what I'm hearing is the same things we think about with reserves is that people come to us and they say, We're underfunded. It's going to be hard for us to have enough money for the roof or the asphalt or whatever. What do we do? We say, Well, you need to increase your reserve funding. And they don't necessarily like that, but that's the truth. If they would have done that, that would have prevented the problem that they're into. And here you're talking about meeting with the person or the group, sharing information, sharing the truth, showing them the invoices, showing them the proposals, showing them the governing documents. It means we can't do this, showing the letter from the attorney that says you must do this, things like that, where if you're you're sharing the truth, and if you're being and this, what I wrote down, being proactive as as much you can be proactive and transparent. That's going to help, and it'll help in advance, rather than always in a reactive mode. But I, I like saying, Hey, we get it. We understand you're disappointed. Can you meet with us next Wednesday? When? When can we meet with you? And we'll show you some of the reasoning behind what we did. Just put it on the table

Julie Adamen:

Absolutely, because there none of this is particularly secret. The only thing secret in associations or delinquencies, typically. You know you can't share with who's delinquent and that type of thing on their on their dues or assessments and then other legal matters, such as if you're in a lawsuit or something like that. A lot of that cannot be shared and but some can. And if the if that's what their worry is, well, it might be worth it to have your attorney look over what's going on and say, What can we share? If he says, Nothing. You can't share any of this. Well, you know, that's what you tell them. And he puts that in writing, and that's what you tell them, however, we'll share what we can when we know it, you know. So you do as much as you can. And I think the truth, Robert, I think you put it in here, the true says it shall set you free. You know, no wiser words were ever spoken. I mean, I think those are words of Jesus, right? And so,

Robert Nordlund:

but it's amazing. You look that up.

Julie Adamen:

I bet you know already. I know I do, but, but it's true. I mean that that applies to everything. Very seldom does sub subterfuge on the part of board members because they just don't want to deal with it, or they think, oh, man, this guy's going to go crazy if we tell him this. That's a short term thinking it's better to be truthful about it, and then tell them the reasons why be truthful. This is what we had to do, and here is why that's better. Now, if you're going to be proactive about this to keep those people from, you know, coming at you with the torches and pitchforks, or the dissident group, or whatever it is, it comes back to my favorite word, Robert, which is communication, you would be communication. That's right, it's communication. It's proactive. Communication, continually, continually. If you think they don't need it, you think they don't read it, that means you still need to do it. And once again, I'm going to tell you, there's really no excuse for not putting out your own e newsletter or something like that. If you're self managed, there's really no excuse, because you can just put up five or six bullet points, put it into chat, GPT or grok, or any one of the AI platforms, and it'll put out an article for you, if that's what you want. You know, a 200 word article, 300 word, boom, it's there. It's done. Make sure and proofread it. Yeah, yeah. You gotta proof it, but still, it's done for you. So there's no excuse not to do that. The tools are there, and they've made your life a lot easier if you are composing that kind of missive to the owners.

Robert Nordlund:

Yeah. Well in advance, I thought, what are the issues that cause problems? And it was lack of communication or communication mix ups, finances and rules, and maybe you just, if you sense, I don't know if is it, sense what we'll get to this. If you sense trouble in this, if you see the iceberg coming at you, maybe you dial up the communication. Maybe you have a quarterly budget and invoice review that's open to people. And you have a semi annual rules review committee open open to the membership, where you just say, hey, is closing the pool at 10 o'clock the right time? You know, we don't care. It just needs to be at a reasonable time. And so let's talk about it

Julie Adamen:

exactly. I think that, yeah, and I do. I understand from board members aspect, they're like, I already spending all these hours. I have to do that too well. Unfortunately, sometimes you do that. Last association I was telling you about, that was the last time I actually was a physical manager, right that time, and, oh, there was some big bro going on. I don't remember what for, but this is before, this is in California, and this is before you had to have a third party do your elections. So we, we did them right the and I worked for a management company. Then I was on site, so we did all of that. But there was this group is like, well, how are we going to know that's accurate? You would have a Ba, ba, ba, you know, doing their whole thing saying, well, we wouldn't be accurate because you don't want new people on the board. So what did we do? What did the board decide to do? But it kind of was a collective thing is that we got the most trusted, neutral person in the community that everybody knew and they did and to be the she was. What do you call that? She was the

Unknown:

observer of elections, elections. She actually counted the ballots. This is a big

Robert Nordlund:

lake Johnson. Everyone sees her. Everyone knows her. I

Julie Adamen:

can picture her to this day. She was nice, she was smart, but just a neutral party that the dissident people liked her, the people who weren't dissidents liked her, and they all trusted her. So when she counted the ballots, everybody just shut up about it. And so yeah, that's it's a good way to go, you know, when you can go out to members of the community that you know are supporters of the community, and I'm not necessarily talking there, rah, rah, we love everybody on the board, but they want the best for the community, the supporters who may kind of see some of the dissident points, if you can get those people in as a part of your process as a board member, and make them like part of the rules committee or the rules review committee, whatever is the hot button going on at your you know, or the finance committee, or whatever it is, or the reserve committee, whatever that is that is the hot button in your community. Bring some more people in, because the more advocates you have out there, the better are, the better off you are as a board you want. Acolytes going out. You want disciples going out and with truth, not with not with your board spin, with truth of how things are.

Robert Nordlund:

That's right, not necessarily supporters, but people who are sitting at the table of knowledge, people who know that. Oh no, that can't be the case because I've seen the invoices. I was there last month, the pipeline and that pipeline of people at the association, it's a pipeline of volunteers, it's a pipeline of committee members. It's a pipeline towards board members. So it's not like who's Pro and who's con, it's just building a healthy pipeline of supporters in the community. It may be a building captain, it may be a floor captain, it may be whatever, but people who you share this information with, and that's maybe like a vaccine, it prevents trouble by having people who know know the truth and have knowledge.

Julie Adamen:

Yes, it's their knowledge, yes. And the more people that know that, and they're out of the community, you're exactly right. It's like, No, I'm not even on the board. And I am the review invoice committee, and there's two of us, and we review the invoices. We see how they got paid and when they got paid, and how much it was, and what was it for, if there were extras, we review that and paying themselves. No, the margin. It's not a Seinfeld. It's not a Seinfeld episode.

Robert Nordlund:

Yeah. Well, Julie, this is fantastic. This brought a lot of peace to my heart, because we wanted to tell the truth of Helen's story in Episode 112 we also wanted to be able to share our voice of experience that we see good times, we see bad times. We hear complaints. And we just wanted to share best practices. We wanted to share to let you know that I think I'm I can say this, okay, you haven't screwed up. It's part of human nature, and we live in a more toxic environment than we have in the past. And Kevin has said that the temperatures are higher and we need to lower the temperature. So you're hearing it from different people, and we hope we're giving you some some good tools here. So thank you, Julie, as always, it's great talking with you. Any closing thoughts to add to wrap up this conversation,

Julie Adamen:

actually, I just want to thank all of you who are board members, who have stepped up to do that, because we just don't have enough people who want to do it, and my hat's off to you. I've been a board member several times. I'm a board member on another or not an HOA, but a part of an HOA, like a subcommittee. And so it's I like being involved, but I know how much time it takes, and I appreciate the work that you do, and I know Robert does. We talk about this all the time. That's why you're the board member heroes.

Robert Nordlund:

Yep, absolutely. Well, we hope you learned some HOA insights from our discussion today that helps you bring common sense to your common areas. Thank you for joining us today. We look forward to bringing many more episodes to you, week after week after week. We'll be here. It'll be great to have you, and it'll be great to have you join us and share this with other people. Spread the word. Thanks so much.

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People on this episode

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Robert Nordlund, PE, RS

Host
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Julie Adamen

Co-host
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Kevin Davis, CIRMS

Co-host