Pam Home: 0:00

So my advice to any board is to pay attention to your reserve study, because these bigger, somewhat predictable things that are going to happen with your property, you need to be able to pay for that, or you're running into special assessment territory, and nobody wants to

Jennifer Johnson: 0:23

A regular highlight of the HOA insights do that. 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: 0:56

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 Pam. Home. This is episode number 82 and if you missed meeting 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. Now let's hear a little bit about Pam and the story that she'd like to share.

Pam Home: 1:24

Hi, my name is Pam Holm, and I've served as a volunteer on the board of union terrace cooperative for the last two years. When I'm not wearing my board member hat, I work as a manager at a local nonprofit, and we serve local entrepreneurs. Three words that I would use to describe the job of being a board member is community compromise and finances. And a little bit about what I wanted to share today is what it means to the board to follow a reserve study, to understand what a reserve study is all about and what it can do for the for the life of the community

Robert Nordlund: 2:10

Union Terrace cooperative is a 31 unit Association in Seattle, Washington. The property is a three story brick building that just turned 100 years old this year, as you just heard, Pam has been serving as the president of the board of directors for the past two years. We decided to kick off this interview, as we often do, by asking Pam what first motivated her to join the board at Union terrace cooperative.

Pam Home: 2:34

I became motivated to be a part of the board experience because many of us have our home as our most important asset, and protecting that asset is critical. Also it is an opportunity to work with the community together and really protect our investments. Also wanting to be involved in the the decision making process is important.

Robert Nordlund: 3:07

It's all too common that someone joins the board because they have a specific and often Esoteric Agenda that they'd like to implement. So we're happy to hear that Pam's motivation to join the board was to work with their fellow homeowners as a community towards protecting their investments. This made us wonder how much competition there was for board seats at her association, so we asked Pam about her experience joining the board. Here's what she had to share.

Pam Home: 3:34

My experience has been that getting on a board is of a on a minim complex or a co op is pretty easy because nobody wants to do it. I raised my hand at our annual meeting a couple of months after I moved in and was very easily appointed, and two of the prior presidents are still on the board. So again, it's this group of people that are invested in the community, that have the same, you know, the same desire. However, there are different ways that people go about that, and we have some folks on the team the board that are very strict about procedural issues. Me, not so much. So that has been, you know, an opportunity for me to adjust a little bit, because there's nothing wrong with, you know, being a little bit more more formal The Association as well as you know, the board members, I believe we're all functioning pretty well again, when you're bringing together seven people that are very diverse yet with a common goal. You know. It's it's going to be okay.

Robert Nordlund: 5:02

It was great to hear that the board at Union terrace Cooperative was full of like minded, productive board members that were united behind a common objective, even if they might have small disagreements in terms of how to accomplish that shared goal. We next asked Pam about her personality and what she brings to the table that her fellow board members don't

Pam Home: 5:23

well, one of the things that when I was thinking about my role and what I might be bringing to the association that is this perhaps a little different, and that is my willingness to seek out opportunities that might save the might save our, our community money, and we had an apartment complex go up literally right next door, and it took almost two years to to finish. And this earlier this spring, they were finishing up doing all the planting, and I saw somebody who was loading up some extra plants in a truck, and I asked him, I said, What are you doing with these? He says, Oh, these are just going back. We're probably just going to get rid of them. I said, No, no, no, no. I said, we'll take them. And I borrowed their wheelbarrow, and we brought over probably about 1520, plants. In addition to that, we had river rock, probably about eight wheelbarrows full of that. So we were able to use those things on the property, and it didn't cost us anything. So that was kind of fun. And additionally, this just happened last week, there is another building that is going up across the street, and they are in the demo phase. And I happened to be waiting at the bus stop, and saw the guy with the with the hat on coming out, and I asked him, you know, I was just saw this beautiful iron, decorative fencing around that was covered by walls before. And I said, What are you doing with that when you're done, like, after demoing? And he said, Oh, you want it. And I said, Yeah, we want it. And he went so far as to, you know, remove all the cement, you know, at the bottom of the fencing. He got his foreman to put it all on a forklift, and we drove it across the alley, we put it in our backyard. So this is going to be an opportunity for us to kind of enhance our property in in the backyard, which is really not utilized a whole lot, and is really becoming important as a sanctuary, especially as all this construction is happening around us, one of our shareholders and I have kind of formed an ad hoc committee for grounds and beautification, and so we're going to have to, at some Point, kind of bring that to the board. And I board and discuss how we're going to utilize some of these things, but it's all in the name of, you know, beautification of the property. What's important to know here is that this building is 100 years old this year, so we're not dealing with pristine new anything. We're dealing with overgrown trees and, you know, just an area that wasn't necessarily maintained. And living in the city, it's a balance between deciding how to utilize the space and make it welcoming for all of us in in our community, and not making it a haven for activity, illegal activity. So there's been a hesitation to do some of that. I personally feel that by keeping things beautiful and picking up the garbage, and, you know, making sure that things have esthetic appeal, that it deters that kind of action, and you're going to get a little bit of it anyway. It's part of living in the city. It's colorful, and that's okay. We all chose that

Robert Nordlund: 9:18

now, that's a skill that I'm certain we haven't heard any of our other board heroes talk about someone who's willing to take the initiative to massively improve property beautification without passing the cost onto the homeowners. That's a huge asset to any association. It was clear to us that Pam was both very invested and very involved in improving the property to the benefit of the community at large. We next asked her if she had any success recruiting her fellow homeowners in her efforts

Pam Home: 9:46

trying to get the community involved in the in the community is difficult, and it's it's not easy, and a lot of times people are. Quite comfortable coming home and, you know, and leaving to go to work, and that's about the extent of it. So it's not an easy thing to do, but I'm not not giving up and creating these, these types of opportunities. We have a community on a website. We have a community called base camp. So it's a communication portal that we try to get everybody to utilize. And then, of course, a a board, peg board, when you first walk in, that is that where we can post things. One of the ways that I've been able to kind of make this work is with the new people coming in. And, for instance, the we just had a new owner move in two weeks ago, and I made it a point to go and talk to him. And said, Look, you must have some extra things. Why don't you join us? So it was an opportunity for him to meet, you know, eight of his 30 some neighbors. I think by starting that with the new people coming in, it might be a little easier to change that culture. There are always going to be people that are not, you know, not as involved and you know, and that's okay, but it's important to have a core group of people that are

Robert Nordlund: 11:20

we felt that Pam's decision to focus on involving new homers was a very effective one. Pam has a lot of good things to say about the board meetings at Union terrace cooperative, but first, let's take a quick break to hear from our generous sponsors.

Kevin Davis: 11:34

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Robert Nordlund: 12:03

we're back before the break, we heard from Pam about her strategy to recruit fellow homeowners into getting involved with their community, which prompted me to ask about how union terrace conducts their meetings. Here's what Pam had to say on that matter,

Pam Home: 12:17

we have our board meetings every other month. I personally would like to hold them monthly, but I guess it's in our bylaws that it's held every other month. So what we've decided to do as a board is we meet in off months and sometimes even in months where we do have scheduled board meeting, we do working events, and that's an opportunity for us to come together with all of the different projects, things that need to be voted on, so that we get consensus at that group working session. That way, when we come to the every other month board meeting, it becomes much more productive. The goal for our meetings are to check things off the list, to come up with a consensus around whatever projects need to be done, whatever spend and there's no shortage of things to discuss when you've got a building that is 100 years old in the past. I understand that the meetings used to be hours long and just painful for everybody, because that time was utilized for discussion and debate, and so now we take that offline, and then we come together and utilize our board meetings much more efficient

Robert Nordlund: 13:42

from her answer, it sounded like Pam and the rest of the board at Union terrorist cooperative had arrived at a good compromise around the frequency of board meetings. We're curious as to where their board meetings are held, because in a post COVID world, it's become more and more common for associations to hold their meetings virtually. Here's Pam's response.

Pam Home: 14:03

Our board meetings have been a bit hybrid. Our association manager always does a zoom, zooms in, and she lives on the other side of the lake, and so that's fair. No need to drive and and spend all that extra time. I think post COVID, this hybrid situation, seems to work very well. Sometimes we'll gather, you know, a few of us, you know, in my, my place, you know, with one computer, and you know other, others of us are virtual or upstairs, and so we're just kind of trying to make it work for the most amount of people. We do offer all of our shareholders to be a part of any of our meetings, and so holding it virtually allows them to be more easily, be able to join in. We do have a board. Third room, which is down in the basement. It's a little, it's it's got furniture that's probably 100 years old in there, and it's a little musty. I'm thinking at some point, you know, we might all get together and create a nice space for the whole community to to come together,

Robert Nordlund: 15:20

given that the board at Union terrace Cooperative was intent on involving the community manager in their meetings, it certainly made sense for them to be holding hybrid meetings. This also came with the added benefit of getting other homeowners attending and involved in the meetings as well. Overall, it appeared that the association, as my co host, Julie admin likes to put it, might not be in the same pew, but they were definitely in the same church. Wenix decided to ask Pam about what's keeping her and the rest of the board motivated to stay involved with the association.

Pam Home: 15:52

What's motivating me to stay involved is is protecting my investment and protecting the investment of the building as a whole. That's where the reserve study has really come into play. I don't think any of us on the board really understood the importance of a reserve study. It was there. We saw it okay, but there were opportunities for us to learn a little bit more. I go back to the building being 100 years old. We had a line item on our reserve study for a systems evaluation for our plumbing. And the board and me not I don't know about the plumbing, you know, the board said, Well, they're 100 years old. Let's just get them fixed. Let's just completely, you know, update, update them, which is a close to a $400,000 item. So we've, we've had a bit of a debate about that. Why would we spend, you know, $18,000 in the reserve study to fix something we're just going to fix. And the more that I have talked with Association reserves about the reserve study and what these things mean, it's become very clear to me that having the systems evaluation to determine the useful life better prepares you to save for that inevitable cost. That's currently what we are working on right now. And I'm trying to change. What I'm trying to do right now is to drive home the point that to spend $20,000 to understand exactly what the life span is of the plumbing is a better, a better use of spending money than just assuming it's all going to be, you know, ruined tomorrow, or, you know, fail tomorrow, or next year or whatever, will have an actual data

Robert Nordlund: 18:05

as a reserve study specialist and professional engineer. I'm a bit biased when it comes to the issue of whether or not your association needs to regularly update your reserve study, but given the age of their property, I can certainly understand why some of Pam's fellow board members might prioritize getting their plumbing project actually done, instead of commissioning a plan that would likely list their plumbing project as first priority. Well, we were curious as to how Pam, as president of the board, communicates with her fellow board members to come to a decision on disagreements such as this one, communicating with

Pam Home: 18:41

the board to get those types of issued issues resolved takes a lot of a lot of effort. I approach it from the point of view of getting as much information as possible to bring to the board to to explain the position that I'm taking and why it is important, inevitably, I don't answer all the questions, in which case I need to go back and gather more information. Again. This is where Doug white, with Association reserves, has been really helpful, where he has welcomed, you know, my questions, ad nauseam questions, you know. So that's how we're tackling right now. It has not yet been resolved, so it's still a work in progress, so we'll have to wait and wait and see.

Robert Nordlund: 19:33

In order for us to better understand the information and data points that Pam was trying to communicate to the rest of the board, we asked Pam about the state of the association's finances. Specifically, we want to hear about their annual budget and their reserves. Percent funded.

Pam Home: 19:49

Our annual budget is right around 300,000 again, going back to the reserve study, we're finding that we should have been the last couple of years increasing. Our contributions to the reserve, so we're going to have to do a bit of updating or for our dues, starting in the new year. So I'm preparing for that with gathering really solid data to be able to share with the community the reasons you know for what it is that we're doing and how we're spending. It's difficult in this current you know climate with the cost going up, and Seattle is known for being one of the most expensive cities to live in, and we're right in the thick of it, there's just a lot of tension around how to save money and yet protect our investments and also make sure that the community you know can continue to afford to live here. Our funding for this year, 2024 was right around that 30% mark, which is like, from what I understand, the the minimum acceptable being kind of funded. However, with our most current study that we're working on right now for 2025 it appears that that number is going to go down significantly. So this is an opportunity for the board to work with Association reserves and with our property management to identify those items that have more useful life than are being shown to have in the study. For instance, our roof had zero life, and we had someone come out and root company come out and inspect the roof, and they said, with good care, five to 10 more years. And so we made sure to include that in our budget now, where they are coming out every year and they're patching and repairing and doing whatever they need. So we were able to move that line item out several years on, and so we're working with those types of things, also with the building Windows. So we're trying to make it as close to reality as possible.

Robert Nordlund: 22:16

In some of her previous answers, Pam alluded to the fact that union terrace cooperative retains a professional property manager. We wanted to know about how she felt about her current management company and the overall value that they provide to an association. Here's what she had to say,

Pam Home: 22:32

our current management company have been really great, and I had mentioned that I was on a board at a different property, and I was on the board for 10 years, and in those 10 years, and I'm almost not exaggerating, we had 10 different managers, so my experience has not been the best there, and sure enough, we had two already here at Union terrace. However, the most recent person that we're working with has been wonderful, and she's a partner in this, as is, you know, association reserves, a partner with us in in reserve study in the management of the building, and I I couldn't do it. I couldn't do it without them. I had a neighbor upstairs who recently sold and moved to a different Co Op down the street, and she was really excited about the fact that it was self run, but they did not work with a management company. In fact, she even had a couple of board members over to her place to kind of share that we were kind of entertaining. Oh, gee, that sounds really interesting. And, you know, and what if we Yeah, and a year later, no, she said, No, no, no, no, that it's extremely dysfunctional and it's very difficult to do and and we talk about being on a board as being, you know, a thankless job. Imagine if you had to go through the phone book to find, you know, three plumbers to bid your you know, our management company has all of those relationships already and steps in our behalf, and that is such an important and the best way to spend money is to have somebody managing

Robert Nordlund: 24:38

finally, we decided to close out this Interview, as we often do, by asking Pam if she wanted to share any advice to board members tuning into this program,

Pam Home: 24:47

my advice to any board is to pay attention to your reserve study. Understand it, find out. What it really means, understand the vocabulary and what it's really there for. Ask a lot of questions, because these bigger, somewhat predictable things that are going to happen with your property, you need to be able to pay for that, or you're running into special assessment territory, and nobody wants to do that. So I think that is something that I have learned, and I'm really happy that I that I've taken it on to learn more.

Robert Nordlund: 25:36

We want to publicly acknowledge Pam for performing a thankless job well and compliment the entire board of directors at Union terrace cooperative for taking the responsibility seriously to act in the best interests of their association. We hope you gain some HOA insights from Pam'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.

Jennifer Johnson: 26:14

You've been listening to Hoa insights common sense for common areas. If you like the show and want to support the work that 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 comments 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 gain 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 sponsor this program. Please remember that the views and opinions expressed in this program are those of the hosts and guests with the goal of providing general education about the community, association, industry, you'll want to consult licensed professionals before making any important decisions. Finally, this podcast was expertly mixed and mastered by stoke light, video and marketing with stoke light on your team, you'll reach more customers with marketing expertise that inspires action. See the show notes to connect with stoke light you