048 | HOA Board Heroes: Looking To Your HOA’s Future, Not Conflict!

Calvin Ball: 0:00

I found out that there was a lot of negative history, there was a lot of conflict on the board coming into a new situation and kind of had to bring in a new sense of positivity and kind of a future outlook rather than trying to dwell on the past and try to turn over a new leaf. So that's kind of been my focus as well as many other members of the board, trying to just ignore as much as we can what happened in the past and try to move on and just create a better community going forward.

Announcer: 0:30

HOA insights common sense for common areas exists to help all 2 million volunteer board members nationwide have the right information at the right time to make the right decisions for their future. This podcast is sponsored by for companies that care about board members, association insights and marketplace, association reserves, community financials, and Kevin Davis Insurance Services. You'll find links to their websites and social media in the show notes.

Robert Nordlund: 1:00

thankless job, what comes to your mind when you hear those two words, having served on the board of my condominium association for several years, followed by decades of experience in his industry. There is one job that without a doubt deserves to be at the top of the list and elected volunteer HOA board member. So a regular feature of our weekly podcast is one episode a month devoted to sharing the stories of real life unsung board heroes. In our eyes a board here was one of the 2 million elected volunteers who are worthy of recognition for simply performing a thankless job well, well if you match our definition of a board hero for associations or know someone who does, please reach out to us. Our contact details are provided in the show notes. Well, welcome back to Hoa insights common sense for common areas. I'm Robert Nordlund, and I'm here to share the story of an unsung board hero named Calvin Ball. This is episode number 48. And if you missed meeting our other board heroes, you can find them easily on our website, Hoa insights.org, or on our YouTube channel or by subscribing to Hulu insights on your favorite podcast platform. But before you hear Calvin story, let me introduce you to one of our sponsors.

Russell Munz: 2:18

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Calvin Ball: 2:50

My name is Calvin Ball. And I serve as a volunteer on my board in my HOA community for about six years now as about 150 175 units and on the property located in central Maryland about halfway in between DC and Baltimore. And when I'm not wearing my board member hat. I like to take care of my my cat Gigi. She keeps me busy when I'm not at work. As far as work. I'm a tax accountant by day. So it really helps being in accounting and tax work, being treasurer on board. Three words to describe the job of a board member. That's actually very tough. I would have to say Patience is a big one thankless. The job is very thankless. There's a lot of things to do that people don't really acknowledge until well after the fact. I would say it's it's very demanding. A lot of people kind of come to you. And then they look up to you as well to hopefully do the right thing to make the community better. And keep things in order. The main story I'd like to tell about being a board member is is just making sure the community keeps its value. My community's probably about 30 years older, so a lot of things hadn't been taken care of. So it feels really good to be able to come in and put in the time to make things better and hopefully make things last another 30 years.

Robert Nordlund: 4:35

As you just heard Calvin has served as the treasurer for his HOA board for the last six years. The property is about 30 years old with a budget of $700,000. Now Calvin emphasized how invested he is towards maintaining its value for another 30 years. We asked him if that was his primary motivator for serving on this Association's board of directors. The

Calvin Ball: 4:57

biggest thing that motivated me With just seeing things in the community that really needed to be improved, just trying to see what I can improve on, considering a lot of things were original, or when the community was put together, so we wanted to make sure that things were going to last another 30 years. So there has been a lot of big ticket items, we try to fit into the finances, try to look at the reserves and see, can we replace these items? And can we get quality products, because a lot of things when they break down, actually, the manufacturers aren't even with us anymore. So replacement is kind of actually the only option. So that's kind of one of the biggest things I saw was we really wanted to make sure that this community lasts another 30 years. As a as opposed to just kind of making small repairs as we go.

Robert Nordlund: 5:49

Calvin's Association currently has six out of seven total board seats filled each with term limits of two years, that vacancy made us wonder how easy it is to be elected at that board. And if Calvin intended to run for reelection when his current term ends, the

Calvin Ball: 6:05

process of joining our board is fairly easy. Typically, not many people want to be on the on the board, for various reasons, they might have other obligations and light. But uh, yeah, for our community, it's fairly, fairly easy. I believe our annual meeting is in May of this year. So we have a couple months to go. But we just started accepting resumes for the positions. So typically, people will send in resumes a couple of months before. And those will get once we have a cut off. We'll send those resumes out to the entire community. And then they will come to the annual meeting. And we might have five or six people put in their names to come join the board. And we actually have an open seat. So in this case, we might be able to just have that extra person kind of fill in for as long as I live in this community, I'll try to stay on the board. I know a lot of people on the board really like working with me. And I like working with them. So it's been a really good relationship so far, as well as the property manager. Calvin's

Robert Nordlund: 7:15

enthusiasm towards running for reelection assured us that he is a motivated and hardworking member of his board, we decided to ask how much time he invests into his board member duties each week, as well as what personality traits or gifts he brings to the board of directors. So the

Calvin Ball: 7:31

number of hours it per week, kind of varies throughout the year. I know around the holidays, we don't really have much going on. But during the summer is kind of why I spent a little bit more time just because the weather's much better out here on the East Coast than it is during the winter. So we try to get more things done during the summer. So I would say probably anywhere from, you know, one to five hours a week, depending on what we have going on. Depends on if the board is just communicating by email, or we actually have meetings in person. So it really can vary as far as personality. It's interesting, our property manager kind of gave me a nickname, or not really a nickname, but kind of describes me as a bulldog, because there's a lot of things that I've kind of tackled head on with our community that had been sitting for a long time. And we want to make sure that the community is going to be good for the long term. So I'm kind of spending a lot of my time in addition to looking at the financials as treasurer. And I'm also coordinating with the president of our board and the property manager making sure all the vendors are lined up for projects, make sure we're getting proposals, multiple proposals for each project, just to kind of get a better gauge of how much the services or the products going to cost for the community. Calvin

Robert Nordlund: 8:55

clearly enjoys the work he puts in as treasurer and as both a proactive board member as well as a productive influence on the community. This ensures that repairs and improvements are completed before they become an issue. Seeing as how he's already listed some of his favorite aspects of serving on the board. We asked him what some of his least favorite aspects of board service were.

Calvin Ball: 9:18

The least favorite or the least greatest aspect of being on the board is kind of having to deal with things that have happened in the past, in a community when I moved in, in 2018. You know, the community had about 25 years of history already there. I found out that there was a lot of negative history there was a lot of conflict on the board, coming into a new situation kind of had to bring in a new sense of positivity and kind of a future outlook rather than trying to dwell on the past and try to turn over a new leaf. So that's kind of been my focus as well as many other members of the board. Try I'd like to just ignore as much as we can what happened in the past and try to move on and just create a better community going forward.

Robert Nordlund: 10:08

Given that the board had a history of conflict prior to Calvin's tenure as treasurer, we asked if the conduct had improved to the point where Calvin had started to enjoy attending and participating in their meetings. Here's what Calvin had to say, I do

Calvin Ball: 10:22

enjoy our meetings. They, they typically, we usually have one every month. Unless there's a special circumstances where we have to cancel, obviously, we have an annual meeting every once every, every year, kind of with a little more detail than your regular monthly meeting, board, sometimes calls for additional closed meetings, for various things going on. But I do enjoy our meetings, we, we do get a lot of information out there to the few people that show up to the meeting. Personally, I think it's really important to have transparency as a board so that people are aware of things going on in the community, especially if things require action upon the unit owners. One recent item we had done was we repave part of our community. And in order to do so we had to tell everyone, you know, they had they needed to park or move their cars at certain times during the week, so that we could get the whole area paved, being at the meeting would be very important to that. So we kind of told people, you know, when to move their cars, and they could tell their neighbor. And so hopefully everybody, you know, finds out so that we don't have any issues when we go to actually do the work. And and it turned out really well. It's just really important to be transparent at the meetings with how we're spending money, how we're doing things for the community, and just getting the word out on action items that the community might also need to be involved in. In

Robert Nordlund: 12:01

that last answer. Calvin stressed the importance of transparency from the board towards the rest of the community. So important decisions and action items are communicated properly, we then asked if the board was meeting virtually in order to improve communication, making it accessible to the community at large.

Calvin Ball: 12:17

So our board meetings are right now kind of everything I know when COVID started, we had about a year where just virtual meetings through zoom, and they seem to work fairly well, obviously, the first couple calls went a little, were a little rough, just kind of getting used to that kind of setting. But once we were done with kind of that year, and things started opening back up, we started meeting in person. And we actually kept the virtual option. And we still use that today. Many people still use it, we actually kind of have this 5050 now where half half of our residents attend virtually and the other half still coming in person. So it's it's worked out really nicely. Calvin

Robert Nordlund: 13:03

seemed very motivated to improve the communication between board members, as well as the communication between the board and the community at large. We decided to ask him if he's done anything specifically to accomplish this. And here's what Calvin's had to say,

Calvin Ball: 13:17

when I first joined my board, I was I actually advocated for everybody on the board to get their own separate email address for specifically for board activities. And a lot As many of the board members that listen to the podcast, know of people were just using their own personal email address, which, you know, just kind of being on the younger side of I'm probably easily the youngest person on my board, just trying to convince people to go a little bit more digital. Because prior meetings in my community were typically they would meet like an hour before the actual monthly meeting, and kind of like discuss what kind of votes they want to do, what kind of other things they want to accomplish. And they would do it like right there before that meeting, whereas I kind of introduced to the board, hey, let's kind of get email chains going. And let's really talk about these things well before the meeting so that when we get to the meeting, we're not rushed, because our meetings are kind of like early evening. You know, and so some people will be coming just from work and like just trying to get settled in. And, you know, they might say, Oh, well where were we on this on this particular project, but it's really nice to have these emails to refer back to, to really say Ah okay, that's where we were. Now let's let's look at the next steps that we have to take. So communication has been one of the biggest things that we focus on as board and I think it's really important in in a community is keep that communication up between board members and and even the community. We've also thought about creating some sort of like newsletter or website for our community He as well, that's kind of take on the backburner right now, just because we have so much going on. But I think being able to communicate, both in person and and virtually is, is huge. And in today's world proper and timely communication is not always going to quell the tempers of unit owners in the community. This is especially true now that so many homeowners are working from home and seeing things around the community that they wouldn't have before. To that end, we asked Calvin, if he had any experience mediating tensions between the board and community members, we've definitely had to kind of pull down the temperature of the room sometimes during a meeting where there was disagreements between some unit owners and the board, the biggest one I can remember was fairly recently, one of our buildings because our community actually has, we don't really have high rises, we have like very much smaller buildings where they're only about two or three floors each. But we have like 14 buildings, and one of them had a sewage backup from the main line, it wasn't just one unit, it was the main line to the building. And this was a emergency situation. So we really had to get some vendors lined up, to dig up and fix this main, the main pipe to the building. So they had to dig up and get to the main, the main pipe pretty much replaced part of it, it was a lot of work, they had to dig up the front lawn of the building, and some of the pavement, the piping was actually way deeper than we thought, I think it went almost 17 feet underground, to get to the pipe. So there was a lot of work being done in front of this building. And obviously presidents weren't too happy that, you know, there's a ton of work being done, this major disagreement was from after the work was done. So once the work was done, kind of all the land was kind of put back into place, the pavement was done, for the most part, they kind of just pushed it back, they didn't really, you know, level it off, or make it look pretty. So we didn't have any grass on that lawn. Right when all this work was done. The resident came to one of our meetings and basically kind of said, Why does the front of our building looks so terrible, I understand you guys had to repair a pipe. But why is it look so terrible in front of the building. And at this point, we had only been a week or two out of out of finishing the project. So I'm not sure what his expectations were in terms of being able to bring it up to a perfectly beautiful lawn. So when he brought it up to the meeting, we were actually in the process of getting proposals from vendors to you know, repave, the spot where they had to dig up and, and get some new grass in. But we like to get usually more than one proposal so that we're not rush into just taking whatever offer that we're given from a vendor. And unfortunately, this resident was very frustrated by that they kind of complained about how there was dirt on the road, and we should power washing the road. And so there was a lot of floss this resident wanted us to undertake just to make it pretty within a week after the work. And so we had to remind him that look, this was an emergency situation, we had to get a vendor out right away to fix this. And this was in his building. So I'm not sure. You know, we just wanted to make sure hey, look, we wanted to focus on the main problem, we don't want sewage backing up in your unit. Because that could that's even worse situation than having to deal with, let's just get some new grass in front of the building. So he kind of came to subsequent meetings kind of complaining about the same thing as we were still in the process, about a month later at the next meeting. But after that second meeting, he was kind of frustrated that we we had it resolved and he understood after we kind of explained a lot of things to him. Throughout

Robert Nordlund: 18:56

his answers, Calvin had emphasized that his goal was for the board to be setting their focus towards creating a better community going forward. And we asked Calvin to expand on that thought and tell us more about his board's current focus,

Calvin Ball: 19:08

as I mentioned before, where we kind of have a long term outlook. Yeah, one of the biggest focus we have as a board is trying to make sure that the community lasts another 30 years, looking at the reserve study very carefully to make sure that we can we can fix things when we can but also replace as much as we can, considering a lot of things around the community are original from the late 80s, early 90s. So we really have that focus of doing things that will last a long time. And focusing on quality more than more than anything. This community has had kind of a history of kind of just making small repairs here and there instead of replacing, so we're kind of focusing on just making sure we do everything right. So the last Calvin

Robert Nordlund: 19:58

briefly mentioned that they were following their reserve study very closely, which is something I was like to hear to continue on this topic of reserves, we asked Calvin about their current percent funded

Calvin Ball: 20:09

as a percentage funded, I think we just recently hit the 100%. Mark, ever since the collapse of the condominium and in Florida, a lot of states have reconsidered their laws about the management of these associations. and Maryland has been kind of towards the front, in trying to create better laws, the condominium act that Maryland has is pretty substantial already. Because I believe they reserved, they already required reserve studies. Whereas I don't think Florida did, at least not at the time of the collapse. From from that standpoint, the state of Maryland has pretty pretty decent, they actually just recently passed something I don't know if it's an icon, condominium act or Homeowners Association. They recently just made it a requirement that within the next I guess, this year or next year, you need to be fully funded in the reserves. So I believe we're 100% funded, but that like I said, that just happened here recently, within the past year or so, it's been a long, a long journey to get there. Considering when I joined the board, we we definitely were not even not even close to that number. So we've seen really good progress in the last few years.

Robert Nordlund: 21:30

Getting to 100% funded in reserves is no small feat. Regardless of how long it takes for an association to get there. We asked Calvin if the Association had ever passed a special assessment before getting to that funding goal. Yes,

Calvin Ball: 21:43

we definitely have had a special assessment, we've actually had two in a row within the past couple of years. And this was actually during the pandemic, shortly after I joined the board, I found out that our Association had to was actually resolving a second water clean within the past like two or three years when I joined the board. Shortly after that was resolved, our main insurer actually dropped the community and we had to find a new insurance carrier. And when we were shopping for insurance, our broker taught us that new main insurance company in the primary insurance market would take our community. So we had to go into a secondary insurance market where our premium was substantially higher, it almost double, just for switching the market, it was really difficult just to find an insurer, let alone be able to afford it. So we had to take a hard look at the finances and come up with a special assessment. And then also, after finding that insurer, we had to make sure that one we weren't going to have any claims. And two that we had, we needed to show multiple years of no claims. In order to attract the primary market to our community. Again, we had to go two years on the secondary market. And basically the difference between the primary market and the secondary market, we had to pass on as a second as a special assessment. So the first year was definitely a sizable special assessment. And then the second year was a little bit better, we were able to reduce the special assessment, make it a smaller second special assessment. But then we we increase the operating budget to kind of offset that decrease in the special assessment. So it was still, you know, a big cost that we had to pass on, you know, to the unit owners, but it had to be done. Unfortunately, because of prior leaks and claims.

Robert Nordlund: 23:46

Calvin already mentioned how the COVID 19 pandemic moved their board meetings from the in person gatherings, they were to virtual ones. So we asked how else the pandemic or any other external factors have affected the association, the big

Calvin Ball: 23:59

things going on in the world that that definitely affect the association is obviously, you know, COVID-19 Totally, you know, flipped associations on their head, in a lot of ways, the meetings for us, we're kind of, we're kind of different. I see a little bit less people coming into the meetings, even through the virtual people are kind of like, disinterested, I guess, in learning about the community. But also a lot of people are a lot more frustrated easier since the pandemic started. Some people now work from home. So they get to see more of their community. And when they see things that aren't working, they kind of get frustrated and they want them fixed right away. Another one that the pandemic kind of really accelerated was inflation. The cost of everything obviously, is much higher than it used to be, especially for services and that's what most of your money goes to an association. So snow removal, you know is way higher, you know, make making sure the pool is open and maintained properly is you know a lot more money You know, lawn maintenance management company, you know, all the all these services really, really go up in inflation. And then as I mentioned with the special assessments also insurance, you know, a lot of people notice in their personal budgets that car insurance is higher, but the insurance for condominiums is through the roof right now. And I know that's across the board. Luckily, here in Maryland, we don't really have any issues finding a carrier unnecessarily. I know Florida has even worse situations where people are just having a hard time finding a carrier, let alone being able to afford the number that's on these carriers are giving out for premiums. So rippling effects that have happened from the pandemic are really, in the discussions we have as a board. Throughout

Robert Nordlund: 25:45

this interview, Calvin served as a stellar example of a board member that focuses on the long term prospects of his community. We asked him to shorten his sight to the next year and tell us what he hoped to accomplish. In that time,

Calvin Ball: 25:57

I'm hoping to see us be able to insurable a lot more in our reserves. I know, I mentioned we were fully funded. But we do have a lot of big ticket items we're looking to hit in the next year, actually. So I'm really optimistic, hoping that that we can, you know, be able to save more money in our reserves. But being able to hit these big ticket items is kind of the most important thing for me, you know, we still put a fair amount in our reserves in our annual budget. So as long as we're not digging too deep into that reserves, while also getting some of the some of these really expensive projects done, and making sure they last is really the biggest thing we look for in the next year,

Robert Nordlund: 26:40

Kevin is clearly motivated and enthusiastic about leaving the community in a better place than it was when he first bought his condo. But we want to know what specific impact he wants to leave on the community before he either stops serving on the board or leaves the community entirely. And here's Calvin's response, the

Calvin Ball: 26:59

biggest impact I want to leave is changing the mindset of the community and the board, the board's kind of already on board with this, but it's kind of getting the community more oriented into a long term thinking, a lot of people tend to think in the short term, and they tend to think in the now and be more reactive. But my main goal is to be proactive, we want to make sure that thing things are done properly. And then we can also be able to anticipate problems in the future. Kind of another goal is kind of to put, try to try to get the community on autopilot, if you will, you know, I'm hoping that we can get to a point where our monthly meetings can just be Okay, is there some few small things we have to take care of? And that's it, instead of trying to say, Oh, well, what's the status on this huge project we're dealing with, that's going to take a year to actually be completed. Because I know right now, we're kind of in various stages have multiple big ticket items that we're hoping to get rid of in the next year or two. But it just sometimes the planning just takes a really long time to get all our ducks in a row and, and really finish out what we need. So definitely bringing in a long term mindset is kind of the biggest impact on me. Finally,

Robert Nordlund: 28:21

we wanted to close out this episode by asking Calvin if he had any advice for board members tuning into this program.

Calvin Ball: 28:27

You know, if you're on a board, I definitely recommend increasing fees every year. I know this is a hard thing to hear for a lot of people that live in these communities, but it doesn't matter how the economy is going, there's always going to be inflation. Ever since I've joined the board. I've advocated at least 2% increase every year, if not much larger than that, depending on what we had going on. Because even if we don't spend it, you know, having eaten reserves is a really important thing. Because a lot of unexpected expenses come up. And then kind of what I touched on before is communication, being patient with other board members and communicating well, so that you can really get things done as a community and hopefully, you know, residents will see that and hopefully be thankful for for a few things that you might do. I've gotten many compliments over the past few years, from people that have been in the community for a very long time, saying I appreciate all the work that you guys are doing this is probably the ADV been said that this is the best board that we've had, ever sometimes you get things from the community and sometimes those things can can go a really long way and in motivating the board to do even more for the residents. I know it's often thankless job being on the board. But oftentimes you get some people in the community that they're all thank you for the hard work that you do. So it's kind of patience is a really huge a really big thing and can go a long way. We

Robert Nordlund: 30:04

wanted to publicly acknowledge Calvin for performing a thankless job well, and compliment the entire board of directors at his community for taking their responsibility seriously, to act in the best interests of their association. Well, thank you for joining us, and we look forward to another great episode next week. And remember, if you match our definition of a board hero or know someone who does, please reach out to us our contact details are provided in the show notes.

Announcer: 30:33

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