Bill Turney: 0:00

I'm the south and I grew up, I went to graduate school in Memphis, and got to meet Elvis and some of the guys. And Elvis had a philosophy three, three letters, TCB, and a lightning bolt. That was a little pellet. And he gave that to his staff. So we passed that out to people who do an admirable, really, a beyond admirable, job. And the TCB is taking care of business, and so that's what we as a board do? We take care of business, and because we take care of business, we get the job done.

Unknown: 0:37

Hey, everyone, we have another live episode coming up on HOA Insights, where we'll dive into two very important updates affecting the US, housing market and board members, Fannie Mae and the corporate Transparency Act. What change has Fannie Mae made? And why? What is the corporate Transparency Act, aka CTA? What does the CTA have to do with board members? What is the deadline for CTA compliance, and why might that change? Tune in live, October 10, at 3pm Pacific on our HOA insights YouTube channel, and don't forget to hit that subscribe button to stay up to date on all our latest episodes. See you soon. A regular highlight of the hoe insights podcast is our board heroes feature, where we dedicate one episode each month to celebrate the remarkable efforts of HOA board members to us a board hero is one of the 2 million elected volunteers who deserve recognition for excelling in a role that often goes unnoticed. Today, we're excited to spotlight one of these exceptional board heroes and share their inspiring story. If you match our definition of a board hero, or know someone who does, please reach out to us, our contact details and those of our sponsors are provided in the show notes.

Robert Nordlund: 1:46

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, bored hero named Bill Turney. This is episode number 73 and if you missed meeting any of our other board heroes, you can find them easily on our website, Hoa insights.org on our YouTube channel, or by subscribing to Hoa insights on your favorite podcast platform. But before you hear Bill's story, let me introduce you to one of our sponsors.

Kevin Davis: 2:17

Hi. I'm Kevin Davis, the president of Kevin Davis Insurance Services. Our experienced team of underwriters will help you when you get that declination. We provide the voice of reason, someone who will stand by you. Our underwriters bring years of knowledge to our clients that can't be automated by technology or driven by price. As a proud and wins company. We bring true value to your community association clients. We are your community association insurance experts.

Bill Turney: 2:46

My name is Bill Turney. I've served as a volunteer on the board of Park Square co Owners Association for the past three years. And when I'm not worried about board hat, I'm just a husband, father, and I'm retired now. Three words I would use to describe the job of being a board member are challenging, tedious, time consuming, difficult, sometimes rewarding, sometimes painful. The main story, what I believe I could tell, is one of perseverance, commitment and a common sense and success.

Robert Nordlund: 3:32

Park Square is 177 unit high rise condominium association in Houston, Texas. The property is 42 years old, has an annual budget of approximately 3 million and is about 90% owner occupied. Bill has lived there for about 12 years, and as you just heard, he's served as a volunteer on the board of directors for the past three years. We decided to start this interview by asking Bill what board position he currently holds, as well as what first motivated him to join the board of his association,

Unknown: 4:04

I'm president. What motivated me was several neighbors and my wife who insisted that I do this, which was to basically remove the prior board, encourage them to step aside, if not, to remove them through the legal process, and to try to change directions for the association. But I also should probably tell you, this ain't my first rodeo. I served on a board in 1971 that in 1976 I was president for, I think for five or six years, of a residential community that we took over from the developer and had to build everything from scratch. Then I was involved in association. And in Mexico, because I had other experience in dealing with the condo association down there and then here. So I've been 12344, or five different associations, and I quickly went in and did the basic CAI board member course to make sure that I have anything that was new available to me.

Robert Nordlund: 5:25

It's always great to hear from board heroes that have a great wealth of experience serving on Association boards. And Bill is a great example. We next asked him if he brought any special gifts or abilities to park Square's Board of Directors beyond his personal experience as a board member. Well,

Bill Turney: 5:44

I don't know. I don't know a lot, so I have to learn a lot. What I do is I try to research as much as possible. I try to go on the internet. I try to find all kinds of sources. Fortunately, the internet's pretty broad and enables you to do that, and I've been fortunate. I've had five different careers, so I understand finance and accounting, legal, marketing, operations, and for 10 years, I was a bankruptcy expert and appointed by the court to go in and take over companies that were in chapter 11 bankruptcies, typically ones that had a criminal background. So I got used to having no institutional knowledge that was trustworthy, and having to dig and find and put it together again, almost like Humpty, Dumpty off the wall and broken. Now I was hired to come in and put it back together again, so I was familiar with the process. This was not Humpty Dumpty. This was just we needed to do some things to make sure we knew what we were dealing with. Every job I've ever had, I was hired to get the work done, to get the job done, to accomplish something and to leave a good team in place. I've never been in my life hired to form a committee or run a committee, so my approach is a little it's it's a little too much autocratic, but I find that the work that really needs to be done, it's heavy work. It's easier if, if, if if I treat the board as my committee, and I use their expertise, we organize the board in a functional capacity, where we have a CPA, we have someone who's an experienced facility facilities person, we have someone who's an experienced communications person, and we have someone who is Got a history with the building and particularly with documents that prior activities. So we put all that together, and I use that as the President's board to help me bounce ideas and move forward. I try not to be heavy handed, but I'm sure some people would disagree with that, but I'll always make sure that the board fully understands and approves everything that we're doing. Some people might say they should have been involved earlier. My point is, at the right point, everybody's involved, so probably a little heavier handed than many people are.

Robert Nordlund: 8:19

Bill's experience as a bankruptcy expert is a terrific asset for any association, especially when a little bit of forensic accounting is needed to figure out what the previous board had been neglecting. Well, naturally, his sales and experience will be sorely missed when he eventually decides to retire from serving on the board. For this reason, we next asked Bill about the composition of park Square's board, if they have term limits, and how long he expects to continue to serve as president,

Bill Turney: 8:47

we have five members, and each year, either two go off or three go off. We serve two year terms. We have a term limit of six consecutive years so you can serve six, stay off a year, and then you can serve six more, but six consecutive years is the term limit. I'm finishing four a year from now, and the question is whether or not I'm going to succumb and be enticed to run for another term. I'll be 79 this year. And honestly, you know, I didn't plan on doing this when I'm in my 80s, so it's going to be a much more difficult process to get beat to continue or another two

Robert Nordlund: 9:35

at 79 years old. We could hardly blame bill for seriously considering retiring from the board at the end of his next term, even so he seemed highly motivated and devoted to his roles and responsibilities as a board member. So we next asked Bill how much time he's invested each week into his board member duties.

Bill Turney: 9:54

Most people don't do this. I put in between 25 and 60 hours a week. Week. But you have to understand, when we came in, we're a self managed Association. Our general manager had just been hired. He has no high rise HOA experience. He has a lot of excellent facilities experience. So what we're trying to do is he and I are working together to continue to bring him along to understand and learn more about HOAs, how Cai can help, learn about the governing documents, learn about dealing with people versus machines. So it takes a lot of time to do that. We we've instituted reserve policies. We've all kinds of things that take a lot of time, but it's it's an investment in the future that if we are able to create a trail of breadcrumbs for future boards so they'll have a policy to follow, as opposed to just making it up as they go. One of the real problems in volunteer management is that, typically, you know, every two years you have a change, and within four years you might have a complete change of the board. And none of them have any experience. They don't have any knowledge. One thing we were missing was they we didn't have any institutional knowledge, so we've had them scratch hard and dig and find as much institutional knowledge as we could, and that's been very difficult. The first thing I did was I read the reserve report, word for word, line for line, page by page. And one of the things in that reserve report troubled me. It said we needed to replace our windows immediately. Well, my windows were fine, so I questioned that a little bit. I got a window expert to come in. He said, your windows are fine, but you've got holes in the building. Your caulking is drying up. So that led us into a investigation that nobody here knew. But in 1992 the entire building had been re clad with a new Eve system. The old system was falling off, and the developer paid to have a new one put on. We had no knowledge of that. That new installation had not been maintained, it had not been serviced, it had not been cleaned, it had not been sealed. So we started into that, and that's where the rabbit trail got long and deep.

Robert Nordlund: 12:34

In a previous answer, Bill mentioned that he started serving on Park Square's board of directors about three years ago. That means that he started in the midst of the covid 19 pandemic, which disrupted the way most boards conduct their board meetings. We asked Bill if Park Square had adapted to hybrid or entirely virtual board meetings. Here's what he had to say,

Bill Turney: 12:56

we always do it in person. We have zoom capability, which some people like to watch. I'm a little old school. I like to be able to have people if they want to come to a meeting and have their say, I want to give them that opportunity. We're required to have nine regular board meetings a year. So we have nine regular board meetings. Have an annual meeting. We have two town hall meetings, and I might have an additional two to three special meetings, depending on what what I need to get done. But we have about anywhere from 25 to 50 show up in person for the board meetings. And then we have anywhere from, I want to say 15 to 25 who attend PSN, even though we've got a room full of owners and members, I really work hard to get the board members to talk to each other, because we're resolving issues and dealing with and making reports. It's not that it doesn't involve the members, but they are not part of that meeting. This is a board meeting. At the end of the board meeting, we majority go to an open mic session, and then people can ask questions, make comments, and if they want to have something particularly on the agenda, if they will put the agenda in writing to either be the secretary or the general manager, I think three days in advance, we'll make sure we put that on the agenda and we'll deal with that. But otherwise, the meetings are board meetings, just like you would find in any corporation, where the board sits down and talks to each other. I love the opinion that we have five member board. So if three of us got together, that would be time out to having a board meeting, because control would be there. So I just, I never have a meeting that's not in front of the entire Association. We've had an occasional workshop, but I'm very careful that it's just dissemination of information and never request for a decision. Some. Times when you're dealing with difficult issues, it's very difficult for a board member to sit there and be listen to this and be open to asking questions and all if they're doing it in front of 2535 40 holders out there, it tends to get them they don't want to ask an embarrassing question they don't ask. Well, does that make me look silly? So always trying to make sure that I'll never, ever, ever allow board member to be embarrassed. Always want to give them an opportunity to ask questions, and then when it's time for a decision, they will go through it again. We'll make very, very sure that it's one transparent, but also that it's not embarrassing to board members so that they could ask questions.

Robert Nordlund: 15:47

While Bill described his management style as heavy handed and autocratic, he clearly understands and has emphasized the importance of transparency between the board and the association at large. Winx asked him if he felt that his tactics are helping the board succeed in its mission. I

Bill Turney: 16:06

think so. My wife says that one of my traits says that I don't suffer fools gladly, so I have to work hard on patience and letting people come to the conclusion. I mean, sometimes it's just easier. I can just do it faster than I can tell you or teach you, but then I'll have to go back and teach you later. But by and large, the board has accepted how we all work together. Some things I could care less about and I don't want to be involved in. I have enough on on the plate right now we're getting ready to do a $2.2 million special assessment, and that's enough to consume much of my time. I'm working on that board presentation today. He

Robert Nordlund: 16:56

certainly got our attention at the mention of a $2 million special assessment, and while that amount certainly isn't unheard of in an association as large as Park Square, we had to ask Bill for more information. Here's what he had to say. Well,

Bill Turney: 17:11

what we found is that over the years, many boards have come to the conclusion that they needed to do something, and the negative Nellies and people that were just a guest spending money or anything, didn't understand reserve, didn't understand Magnus. They always were so heavy handed that they talked the board out of doing anything. And the board always thought that, well, if we try, will get defeated. I simply read the declaration. The declaration says that the board is obligated to maintain the facilities. There's no difference in maintaining something that's been deferred for 30 years than maintaining the hallways with the vacuum cleaner. And so we looked at it. Our lawyers agreed with us, so we were not asking permission to do the assessment. I call it a Corrective maintenance assessment. There's operational maintenance, there's preventative maintenance, and a large part of what's not done is deferred maintenance. So if you have a lot of deferred maintenance, which we had, the option that you have to do is called Corrective maintenance, we're into that process going forward, we just will absolutely refuse to defer any maintenance. If it needs to be done, we do it, but we're focusing heavy on doing the things that need to be done. And when you in a high rise building and you have the structure to have your maintenance of that exterior panel system is what keeps water out of your unit. So we're focused heavy on that. We have been over the last two years, heavy, heavy, heavy education program to educate not only me, but our board and our owners. Buildings have a life history. They have a life cycle. We're 42 years old, and there's no reason that we can't go to old age. But just like humans, we have to sometimes take care of ourselves. I have a new knee . My wife has a new knee. We each have different things that we need. I've had rotator cuff surgery. So these are the same kinds of things that a building has to have in order to stay in top operating shape. So we're doing the things that need to be done, and we have educated educated all along the way. We're continuing to find things we created, for the first time, a long range plan that goes from 2023 to 2040 and to. The extent possible. We try to mirror the reserve study results into the long range plan. The reserve study, people don't look at that as a plan. They look at that as an inventory of assets. Oh, you need to do something with them. It's when you take that information and budgeting information and put it together that you create a long range plan so that you could actually accomplish those objectives of taking care of the physical properties that you're directed to take care of. When you become a member of the board, you're obligated to do certain things. We

Robert Nordlund: 20:35

were happy to hear that bill and the rest of the board were taking a proactive approach to planning out projects in advance in accordance with the reserve study, and also educating the community on the importance of accomplishing these projects. While this sets a strong foundation for the current and future boards, it's also vital that the board is able to quickly adapt to changing circumstances such as a global pandemic or inflation. We next asked Bill if there was anything else that he thought they could do to be more adaptable.

Bill Turney: 21:07

The first thing that I think we need to do is to continue to focus on our functionality, our available time, training and professional certification. Functionality is that all too often, boards have become a social club, and you get on the board so you can find out the ladies gossip or put out the ladies gossip. But I want people who bring a professional talent to the board. Maybe we'll go into in a minute. We're like a small city. We can discuss that a minute, but we need the expertise. Second, we need to create more of a partnership with our accountants, auditors, professional engineers, reserve specialists and the association specific attorneys. The prior board had a litigator as our association attorney that was he didn't have the skill set to manage and deal with Association law, Association's deeds. And we need to understand that we really are not an HOA board, planning parties and writing newsletters, stuff like that. We are a small city. We have all the attributes of that small city, and we need to act accordingly. We need to act professionally. We need to be more involved in legislation that impacts us. We need to treat this as a serious job and not just something. Oh, well, I'm the SO and SO of the association. We need people who want to do the job to get the job done. Treat it as a corporation. There's always room for the social aspects of it, but let's get the job done before we celebrate and have a party. In

Robert Nordlund: 23:00

that last answer, Bill repeatedly compared the operation of his association to the operation of a small city, given Park Square size and operating budget. We felt that was a fair comparison, but we want to know more. Here's what Bill had to say on that matter,

Bill Turney: 23:15

we have a small city. I'm the unelected I'm the elected but unpaid mayor. Our board is the elected but unpaid City Council. Our general manager is the city manager. We have taxing authority. We levy fees every month. We have budgetary responsibility. We have parks and grounds. We have tennis courts, the park area, we have landscaping, we have security. We have, as I said, we have our professional security people. We do everything that a small city in Texas does, plus our facility is about a $75 million facility that's much more value than many small towns in Texas will have. So when we look at the responsibility, it's good to look at what it really is. It's not when we need to have a party or when we need to issue a newslet. We do issue the newsletter. We issue our last newsletter was a water it's six pages of water because we just had a a small leak. Resident was in Argentina, and his pipe burst in his his old wine and cause a quarter of a million dollars worth of damage. And so we're trying to trying to get people to move to understand their responsibilities, but these are just things that are very technical, very professional, and fly way off the radar screen of what many boards think their job is. Now we take it more seriously, perhaps because we are self managed. Managed, but we think we are very professionally self managed. We use the best experts we can find to assist us and guide us in that probably the biggest thing that we need to continue to deal with is to continue to work on policies. So we policy simply operations or the collections policy. Rather, the collections policy stops you from having to make a decision on every individual past you account. There's a policy, if they go past you 15 days, they get $100 fine. If they go past you in 30 days, they start getting interest, and it leads right into where the foreclosure will be posted. And so you don't have to make a decision, well, show a good neighbor or see a bad neighbor. This is the policy, Joe, you know, pay the bill. You knew this when you bought here. To me, the whole key is professionalism and treating it as a real job, even though we don't get paid, we just started working on a piping assessment. Not that this is bad work on a piping evaluation, because, as all associations, all reserve people, know that piping has never been included, because that piping lasts forever. Well, you know, we're 44 years into forever, and we figured out that forever ain't forever anymore. So we're beginning to do that. So we're going to adjust our long range plan. People don't understand when I say the long range plan is wrong the minute I publish it, because things have started to change already. So we're going to be doing our first update later this year. As we update our reserve study, we're going to try to put in there proper proper provisions for our piping needs. So that means we got to do the testing in advance to know when we're likely to have those piping needs come up. So we're trying to be good little boys and girls and trying to be proactive. And we're, we're, we have an Elvis mentality. Also,

Robert Nordlund: 27:11

while he was emphasizing the proactive attitude of the board, Bill brought up another interesting attribute of the board, and that's their Elvis mentality. We never heard of that before. So we decided to close out the interview by asking bill about the Elvis mentality of park Square's Board of Directors.

Bill Turney: 27:29

I'm the south and I grew up. I went to graduate school with Memphis, and you got to meet Elvis, and some of the guys and Elvis had a philosophy, if you ever see Elvis, he had a lightning bolt, three, three letters, TCB, and a lightning bolt that was a little pellet, and he gave that to his staff. So we passed that out to people who do an admirable, really a beyond admirable job. And the TCB is taking care of business. And what Elvis told his band that they needed to quit paying so much attention to the girls, and they need to take care of business, or there wouldn't be any more girls. So they started taking care of business. And, of course, became world famous, international everything. So we use that taking care of business. We just awarded one last week, one of our front desk staffers was doing his job. He was watching the surveillance cameras, and he saw my wife get knocked down in the elevator by a large service animal just knocks flat on her, flat on her butt, and she's laying there. It's the door closes, and you don't know what's you don't know what how bad off it is. So he sees it on the camera, and he comes running out of the desk and over gets that elevator. And we don't allow our people to our staff to pick up anybody, because they don't. They're not training that. So she said, if you just get me to 17th floor, get Bill, he can pick me up. So because he knew what to do, was paying attention, he was taking care of business. So we gave him a TCB pen, and so that's what we as a board do we take care of business, and because we take care of business, we get the job done. We

Robert Nordlund: 29:24

want to publicly acknowledge bill for performing a thankless job well. We'd also like to compliment the entire board of directors at Park Square for taking care of business and taking their responsibility seriously to act in the best interests of the association. We hope you gain some HOA insights from Bill's story that helps you bring common sense to your common area. Thank you for joining us, and we look forward to another great episode next week. And remember, if you match our definition of a bored hero, or know someone who does, please reach out to us. Our contact details are provided in the show notes. Questions

Unknown: 30:02

You've been listening to HOA Insights: Common Sense for Common Areas, you can listen to the show on our podcast website, Hoainsights.org, or subscribe on any of the most popular podcast platforms. You can also watch the show on our YouTube channel. Check the show notes for helpful links. If you like the show and want to support the work we do, you can do so in a number of ways. The most important thing that you can do is engage in the conversation. leave a question in the comment section on our YouTube videos. You can also email your questions or voice memos to podcast@reservestudy.com Or leave us a voicemail at 805-203-3130. If you gained any insights from the show, please do us a HUGE favor by sharing the show with other board members that you know. You can also support us by supporting the brands that support this program. Please remember that the views and opinions expressed by the podcast do not constitute legal advice. You'll want to consult your own legal counsel before making any important decisions. Finally, this podcast was expertly mixed and mastered by Stoke Light Video & Marketing. With Stoke Light on your team. You will reach more customers with marketing expertise that inspires action. See the shownotes to connect with Stoke Light.