What does the president of a homeowners association do?

[Cluricaun]

On Monday there's a meeting coming up for our homeowners association and they're looking for people to run for office, even including president. Sounds exciting. Ok, maybe not, but it sounds like a chance to do something I've never done before and have petty amounts of power with which to annoy my neighbors, so other than that, what duties come along with that kind of office?

[Q.E.D.]

Based upon my previous experiences with HOAs, the primary requirement is to be a giant douche.

[Cluricaun]

Trust me, I have that down cold.

[danceswithcats]

The President of any organization has one primary duty, which is to preserve order and decorum at meetings. Together with other members of the board of directors, executive board, or whatever it's called, a meeting agenda should be set and followed, so members know what to expect.

If you're seriously interested, head over to a local bookstore and get a copy of Robert's Rules of Order and give it a read. Some items may not pertain to your organization, but it will still help you to develop a sense of organization.

One of the hardest things for many Presidents to remember is to remain neutral, and not become involved in debate. If there is a matter about which you feel strongly, and wish to speak to it, pass the gavel to the Vice-President, and leave the dais. Then you can speak to a matter as a member. Regarding votes, the President should only vote to break a tie, and must be extremely cautious should any matter come before the group in which they hold a personal or financial interest.

My comments are based upon a number of years on fire company executive boards, two terms as Vice-President, two terms as President, chairing a township advisory task force, and current membership with the township Planning Commission.

[Campion]

What Q.E.D. said.

danceswithcats, we never ran our HOA with that level of formality. We met at a board member's condo, sat either around the living room or around the dining room table, and talked. There was typically an agenda (put together by the president usually with some input from other board members prior to the meeting, Brown Act notwithstanding), and the agenda was sometimes detailed, sometimes not. Then we talked like normal humans, without adhering to Roberts Rules of Order.

But this was a small association -- 5 on the board for 14 units, which was absurd. My father was on the board of his HOA for a while -- I think they also had 5 members, but there are somewhere between 300 and 400 houses in the tract. His experience was slightly more formal. As their HOA was larger, they had a property management team that basically ran the meetings.

Which is all to say that experiences may vary. If you haven't attended a board meeting, you should. There are lots of rules governing HOA boards, and because more and more people are now moving into places with an HOA, many US jurisdictions are beginning to really develop and codify laws about how boards can work. So a fair amount of your time in the beginning likely will be taken up with learning the CC&Rs and the governing law (when I did that, for example, I learned that our CC&Rs were not in compliance with the law), and figuring out the finances (when I did that, I learned that we were running routinely in the red, and our prior treasurer had filled out our tax returns simply by copying the numbers from the previous year's form, actual income and expenditures be damned).

Serving on the board of my HOA was probably the determining factor in selling my condo and moving to an unincorporated area of Los Angeles. No HOA, no repressive city government (if I want to cut down a tree in my yard, I can). My father's experience was similarly sobering, but he just didn't run for reelection when his term was up -- with nearly 400 houses, they had plenty of people to choose from to put on the board.

[tunaman]

Yeah, a lot depends on how many units there are. Our complex is only around 21 townhomes (where the average resident has lived for probably around 12 years), so there's not a lot of formality or intrigue there. Plus, since they're townhomes, there are a lot of issues that don't come up for us that do in subdivisions of detached houses (the jerk that painted his house bright purple, or the lazy bastard that won't cut his yard, etc.).

On the other hand, one of my former bosses was VP of his (much larger and richer) HOA, and it was like apparently something out of Machiavelli.

[McNutty]

I know someone who's an HOA president for a small complex of condos (I'm guessing somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 units) and to hear him tell stories, he spends a lot of time trying to get deadbeats to pay their dues, deciding who needs to be fined according to the CC&Rs (balancing the fact that for some people, getting fined for something petty will push them into the "screw it, I'm not paying anymore" group versus the fact that some of their rules really are fairly petty), receiving complaints and deciding whether they need to be acted upon, and deciding when someone is enough of a deadbeat that the expense of a lawyer to go after them is warranted. Oh, and gleefully exercising his petty amount of power over the residents he hates.

[Cluricaun]

Excellent. I'm in. Welcome to Ryantown bitches. I mean neighbors.

[danceswithcats]

Excellent. I'm in. Welcome to Ryantown bitches. I mean neighbors.

Congratulations. I hope for the sake of your sanity that the place doesn't have a couple of resident nit-picking buttheads who have a conniption over how long somebody leaves their garage door open, or the depth of the mulch in a flowerbed. Those folks tend to make me feel very .

[Guizmeaux]

Excellent. I'm in. Welcome to Ryantown bitches. I mean neighbors.

Congratulations. I hope for the sake of your sanity that the place doesn't have a couple of resident nit-picking buttheads who have a conniption over how long somebody leaves their garage door open, or the depth of the mulch in a flowerbed. Those folks tend to make me feel very .

My grandmother lives in a condo on the Galt Ocean Mile. The President of the HA used to complain about how straight people parked their cars, FFS. Bored, nasty old snowbird. Nan used to wind them up by thrapping her Caddy STS through the car park at 10MPH rather than the demanded 5.

Oddly enough, she went for (and gained, surprisingly) presidency of the condo. How she managed it, I don't know. Maybe it's because she's German. But now she's getting her revenge - and is unravelling the financial impropriety that the previous (deceased) incumbent had weaved. Quite the scandal, and she's loving it. More to the point, the other residents love the fact that she's saving them money. Imagine how surprised they are that their hurricane insurance is an order of magnitude lower than they thought it was.

[jayjay]

The President of the HA used to complain about how straight people parked their cars, FFS.

What were his feelings on how the gay people were parking?

[Cluricaun]

The President of the HA used to complain about how straight people parked their cars, FFS.

What were his feelings on how the gay people were parking?

I had to read that twice, my first impression was the same as yours. Damned breeders and their bad parking.

[jayjay]

The President of the HA used to complain about how straight people parked their cars, FFS.

What were his feelings on how the gay people were parking?

I had to read that twice, my first impression was the same as yours. Damned breeders and their bad parking.

Well, there IS a lot less leeway when gay people are "parallel parking", if you know what I mean...

[Guizmeaux]

The President of the HA used to complain about how straight people parked their cars, FFS.

What were his feelings on how the gay people were parking?

Oh heck. I knew that was going to happen, but I couldn't find a way of phrasing it without allowing that gaping opening. (There's another one for you).