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missroseroseLast night was the quarterly condo board meeting (held via Zoom, here in this pandemic year). It was somewhat more interesting than usual, in the sense of "interesting times".
Back when I first took the position, I looked over our finances and budget history and discovered that our reserve had been basically static for the past decade or so—it would occasionally dip down or be boosted above its usual amount, but hovered pretty stubbornly around that line. The good news was that said line was a substantial emergency fund; the bad news was, it was nowhere near enough for the major projects (roof repair, basement foundation work, deck replacement) that were coming down the pipe. During my first meeting as president I noted this and asked the Board to approve a (small) annual increase in dues solely as a means of combating inflation, and was turned down flat—the message I got was "come back with hard numbers, and we'll see."
As it happened, Fortune gifted me with a new board member whose background is in accounting; she dug into the numbers, and I got quotes for the work that needed doing. And the unsurprising but uncomfortable news is, the building's dues have been underpaid for so long that we're well into special assessment territory. Frankly, it's a 100-year-old building with a 37-year-old gut rehab; there's a lot of maintenance involved.
It took a fair amount of talking in circles, but the Board passed a significant HOA dues increase unanimously, with surprisingly little pushback—it's equivalent to something like five times the annual increase I was asking for? I guess they figure they'd rather just get the pain over with in one big chunk.
The flipside is, that's really only the first step—it brings our dues more in line with what we need for regular maintenance and reserve contributions, but doesn't fix the fact that we're so far behind on major projects. So, it's probably going to be special assessment time in the next year, which requires calling a meeting of all the owners (not just the board members) and obtaining a two-thirds vote from whoever shows up. To be frank, I have no idea how that's likely to go down—I don't even know a few of the owners, and I definitely don't know their financial situation. But hopefully pointing upwards and clearly enunciating "Roof! Roof need help! Otherwise roof leak, we all get wet!" will be enough to convince them that it's a necessary investment.
From a more personal angle, I'm having a surprising amount of feels about my role as president. Fairly consistently now, I've spent the rest of the evening after board meetings getting hit hard with imposter syndrome: lots of certainty that I've screwed up, that everyone hates me, that the only reason nobody's told me to get out is because they want to do the job themselves even less. (Which is in itself its own kind of power, but I'd far prefer to be well thought of. Machiavelli shakes his head at me, I know.) I suspect this is amplified partly by the current uncertainty; it feels particularly shitty to be raising fees in the middle a pandemic and economic crash, with record unemployment and an upcoming and frankly dire election...but at the same time, this stuff needs doing, and it's not like there's ever really a good time to raise dues.
At the very least, it's nice to feel like I'm doing something useful. And if, when I send out the announcement about the HOA increase and upcoming assessment, a mob with pitchforks and torches shows up outside my door...well, at least then it won't be my problem anymore, except in the more general sense where it's everybody's problem.
Back when I first took the position, I looked over our finances and budget history and discovered that our reserve had been basically static for the past decade or so—it would occasionally dip down or be boosted above its usual amount, but hovered pretty stubbornly around that line. The good news was that said line was a substantial emergency fund; the bad news was, it was nowhere near enough for the major projects (roof repair, basement foundation work, deck replacement) that were coming down the pipe. During my first meeting as president I noted this and asked the Board to approve a (small) annual increase in dues solely as a means of combating inflation, and was turned down flat—the message I got was "come back with hard numbers, and we'll see."
As it happened, Fortune gifted me with a new board member whose background is in accounting; she dug into the numbers, and I got quotes for the work that needed doing. And the unsurprising but uncomfortable news is, the building's dues have been underpaid for so long that we're well into special assessment territory. Frankly, it's a 100-year-old building with a 37-year-old gut rehab; there's a lot of maintenance involved.
It took a fair amount of talking in circles, but the Board passed a significant HOA dues increase unanimously, with surprisingly little pushback—it's equivalent to something like five times the annual increase I was asking for? I guess they figure they'd rather just get the pain over with in one big chunk.
The flipside is, that's really only the first step—it brings our dues more in line with what we need for regular maintenance and reserve contributions, but doesn't fix the fact that we're so far behind on major projects. So, it's probably going to be special assessment time in the next year, which requires calling a meeting of all the owners (not just the board members) and obtaining a two-thirds vote from whoever shows up. To be frank, I have no idea how that's likely to go down—I don't even know a few of the owners, and I definitely don't know their financial situation. But hopefully pointing upwards and clearly enunciating "Roof! Roof need help! Otherwise roof leak, we all get wet!" will be enough to convince them that it's a necessary investment.
From a more personal angle, I'm having a surprising amount of feels about my role as president. Fairly consistently now, I've spent the rest of the evening after board meetings getting hit hard with imposter syndrome: lots of certainty that I've screwed up, that everyone hates me, that the only reason nobody's told me to get out is because they want to do the job themselves even less. (Which is in itself its own kind of power, but I'd far prefer to be well thought of. Machiavelli shakes his head at me, I know.) I suspect this is amplified partly by the current uncertainty; it feels particularly shitty to be raising fees in the middle a pandemic and economic crash, with record unemployment and an upcoming and frankly dire election...but at the same time, this stuff needs doing, and it's not like there's ever really a good time to raise dues.
At the very least, it's nice to feel like I'm doing something useful. And if, when I send out the announcement about the HOA increase and upcoming assessment, a mob with pitchforks and torches shows up outside my door...well, at least then it won't be my problem anymore, except in the more general sense where it's everybody's problem.
