What attributes should you have if you are thinking about joining your condo board? First you should ask yourself why you want to serve the board and the owners in your community and then ask yourself what can you bring to the table. What tools and knowledge and experience can you bring to the table to contribute to your community. Understanding the obligations and roles of a board of directors is an important first step before you decide to run for election. Do you have the time commitment? Are you available to deal with the issues that arise daily and can you commit to learning and understanding your obligations. If you can't commit to learning and understanding your roles then you should offer to work on committees or special projects and leave the heavy lifting for owners who have the experience and can commit the time to the building and the corporation. If you can't commit then you run the risk of creating more problems in your community than you are solving. We recently learned of a building where the board of directors is so new and inexperienced they rely heavily on the property manager to govern and manage the building and the property manager is so poor and has such low standards the building is losing it's property values. The board of directors is unaware of their obligations and the property manager's obligations they have no idea that they are being ripped off by their property manager and the owners are suffering as a result. The board of directors tells their owners that they are volunteers and don't have time to deal with issues and continually make excuses for not dealing with issues and for the most part doesn't even know what issues are ongoing in the building. The building has been neglected, the owners are angry and they are losing their investment. When the board accepts low standards of a property manager then the building suffers and risks increase. If you are a board member and you use the "volunteer" card you need to step aside and let someone else take over. Owners don't care if board members are volunteers. Owners don't care if board members don't have time to deal with issues. It's not acceptable to use excuses as board members and not fulfill your obligations. What can owners do if their board continually makes excuses as to why certain items are not addressed or addressed poorly? There are many options available to owners who find themselves faced with a board that is not willing to commit the time and effort necessary to the board. Depending on the circumstances we can assist your board in working through internal issues possibly with the property managers, we can work to call new elections and find experienced members to replace those members and we can develop internal tools to assist board members with decision making and understanding their role. Serving on a board of directors should be a great experience learning about your community, meeting new people and working together to make your community a great place to live. The board should be focusing on creating a building that people would want to purchase not just as an investment but as a home. The board should be focusing on creating a safe prosperous community and if they can't commit the time and have very little knowledge of their roles then they are working against the community and not with it. Is your board of directors working for the community or against it?
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