KC Holland: 0:00

But what we didn't realize when I while I was on the board, was we had some homes that were rented out, and the renters weren't able to get on the listserv because they weren't the property, so we had to make some adjustments to allow them to be present at the HOA meetings even though they weren't the homeowner, they lived in the community, and we were there to serve the community.

Jennifer Johnson: 0:30

A regular highlight of the HOA 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: 0:59

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 KC Holland. This is episode 86 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 KC and his story.

KC Holland: 1:28

My name is KC Holland, and I served as a volunteer on the board of Seneca Ridge homeowners association for 18 years. I served as a member at large the Vice President and the President's role for 10 years, while I wasn't actively wearing my board member hat, I was working every day and raising my kids and motorcycling and just enjoying things. Three words I would use to describe the job of being a board member are thankless, satisfying and communities. The main story I'd like to tell is to emphasize community transparency and simplicity.

Robert Nordlund: 2:08

Seneca Ridge is a housing development in Sterling, Virginia, consisting of 182 single family homes. The property is about 40 years old, and KC has lived there for about 24 years. As you just heard, KC served as a volunteer on the board of directors for 18 out of those 24 years in a variety of roles, including board president. We decided to kick off this interview, as we often do, by asking KC what first motivated him to join the board at Seneca Ridge, I was

KC Holland: 2:41

approached the shortly after we moved into the house, somebody knocked on my door and said, Would you like to be on the board? We're recruiting new members. And I said, Not yet, maybe next year. Let me think about it. And about two weeks after that, I think it was maybe a little longer, my neighbors came over to congratulate me, and I was very confused what they and I said, were you congratulating me for? And they said, We see you're running for the board. So I was hijacked, and that's really the how I ended up on the board. Right away. So I was okay with it, because at that point, the ballots had been printed and mailed to everybody, and I just hadn't opened mine yet to see my name. So I said, Well, okay, if it doesn't work out, I can always design and that's kind of

Robert Nordlund: 3:39

it. I had a fair amount of sympathy for a KC where I left sudden nomination to the board, because, as some longtime listeners of the show will recall, I became president of my condo association In a surprise move at my first board meeting when I attended as a resident. Needless to say, board members can't, just as KC put it hijack homeowners to join them on the board whenever there is a vacancy. So we decided to ask him what the election process usually entails. So

KC Holland: 4:09

generally, the election process is that a board member serves for a three year period as a board member every year there's an annual election for it's supposed to be roughly a third of the board, which is why it's a three year period, so that it can be staggered, and we've got carry over between, so that we don't have a case where there's an outgoing board that's and again, completely brand new, incoming board with no historical knowledge or background. After the general elections for board members are held. The officers are then elected from within the board itself as to who they want, who, who the board wants to be running as president and who they want to be the secretary, etc, etc. Generally speaking, there's some static positions like the secretary. Okay, while the secretary could be voted in as president, they usually aren't. They usually don't want that role. They usually are happy being the Secretary or the treasurer, which is good, because if they had, like selected me to be the treasurer instead of the President, we would have been in a world of hurt.

Robert Nordlund: 5:17

KC mentioned a key ingredient to successful board transitions that has come up time after time on this podcast, maintaining staggered terms for board meeting seats. This ensures that institutional knowledge is preserved between elections, because there will never be a completely new board taking the place of the previous one. This talk of board transitions got us wondering about how KC transitioned into the role of president in the first place, and how he successfully exited the board after serving for 10 years in that position. Here's what Casey had to say. I

KC Holland: 5:53

transitioned into the president role somewhere around 2007 or eight, I think, if memory serves correctly. The former the former president before me, had was moving out of the neighborhood, and we needed somebody else to take over, and I was the vice president, so it naturally fell on my shoulders, and then it just continued to be re elected as president every year after that, I was not spending an inordinate amount of time in the position of president, because we have a reasonably small community and the board itself was more run, more Like a committee than a board, if you will. The President was a key, key person for some things, but not most things. So it's, it wasn't a tremendous a lot of time that I was spending in any given week, unless there was something really odd. Going my time to spend on the board was less and less, and it was limited at times. It's an all volunteer board, but the President's somebody that needs to be pretty approachable and reachable. And because of job constraints and family issues and other things, I wasn't always available as I needed to be as the president. So that's how I ended up transitioning out. It

Robert Nordlund: 7:28

was good to hear that KC was self aware about his availability or lack thereof, and that graciously stepping aside for someone else was the best thing for the Board's operational success. With that being said, 10 years is a long time to serve as the board president. On top of the eight years he served in other volunteer positions, we felt that there must have been something motivating KC to stay on the board and continue to serve the community at large. So we asked him what that motivation was. What motivated

KC Holland: 8:01

me to stay involved in the board was that I liked what we were doing for the community. I liked being part of the decision making process on what was right and what was good for our community. And I really, really liked being the voice of reason for some of the other boys board members, there were a couple that were very boisterous in their opinions on how things should be and how they should be run, and what we should be doing, and it didn't always align in the community's best interests. So I stayed on as long as I did to be a good point of pointing out things that somebody didn't think about, like, what are you kidding me? The residents are going to be up in arms over that, those kinds of community check or not community but board checks, right? Somebody thinking through from a different perspective and voicing it so that it was at least considered. I think one of the most positive aspects over the year was being able to do things that supported the community and helped the community. Our board being small is much more personal than some of the surrounding neighborhoods that are three or four times our size. In fact, there's a neighborhood the borders ours where the President puts on a robe and a gray wig and stands behind a gavel or behind a podium with a gavel and bangs the thing to order and oh, it's crazy. It's nuts. Ours was so not like that at all ours was a bunch of community members that got together in a room, talked through things that were impactful to the neighborhood, reviewed, you know, people's submissions for the Architectural Review changes. It was a very easy going board. It was both. Is on the community and not on the conference ceremony of the fact that it's a board.

Robert Nordlund: 10:07

KC had repeatedly mentioned that he enjoyed how Seneca Ridge was a relatively small community with a board that runs its meetings like a committee, given the dictatorial operation of the neighboring community. He mentioned in his last answer, we decided to ask KC what his definition of a successful board meeting was. So my

KC Holland: 10:27

definition of a successful board be meeting is when we would get together as a board and work through the issues and resolve the tough ones favorably. Almost everything's resolved resolved favorably in the end, but there may be some contention along the way with people's opinions. But, uh, a good board meeting is when we were able to actually make a difference and take some actions. KC

Robert Nordlund: 10:55

had more to say about resolving contentious situations during Seneca ridges board meetings, but first, let's take a quick break to hear from one of our generous sponsors. Hi,

Kevin Davis: 11:04

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Robert Nordlund: 11:33

we're back before the break, we heard KC talk about how he defines a successful board meeting, yet he alluded to the need for him to sometimes step in and resolve contentious disputes between board members at their meetings. It's only natural for board members to disagree with each other, but we still decided to ask if he had any special tips for resolving these situations. Contention among

KC Holland: 11:58

the board members was never violent or boisterous, but everybody's opinions are different, sometimes on various topics, and it becomes a matter of resolving that by just talking through things, asking people pointed questions about their perspectives and their point of views, trying to sway one group or the other to line up just so that we could come to enough of a vote to get the job done? As President, it was kind of my job to guide that. When it happened, it didn't happen an awful lot, but when it did happen, it was my job to try and get enough people in the room together to come to an agreement one way or the other, regardless of what my own personal opinion was, it was not my job to to inject my opinion and say mine is the right way to do it and my it was My job to guide the group and get them

Robert Nordlund: 13:03

to agreement. In a post COVID world, it's common for HOA boards to hold meetings in either virtual or hybrid meeting formats. This has had the added effect of some boards, including ones we featured on this program, significantly increasing the attendance at board meetings as such, we asked KC about the current level of accessibility that Seneca Ridge offers for its board meetings. Accessibility to

KC Holland: 13:28

the HOA board meetings was open to the public. We held them in public locations for a while we were using the library at the local high school because the principal had said he would support the community and donate that space to us for our use. Sometimes there was a classroom in the high school because the library was already in use that lasted until the County School Board said, Wait, you can't do that. They can request it through us. And at that point it became a real hassle. But that's okay, because the local library had rooms that we could sign up for that were easy to sign up for. It wasn't as convenient as the school, which is right in front of our neighborhood, but it's only a half mile away, so it wasn't horrible. Either the meetings were open to the public. We didn't do video conferencing or anything back at that point because, well, we like to have an in person meeting. We like to be able to see people. We wanted to see the residents, if they came to the meeting. Some meetings, we got lots of them. Others, we didn't have any at all. It was full transparency. All of the notes were transcribed and released to the neighborhood, the neighborhood listserv, because back then, we didn't have a social media presence. We had our own listserv that one of the members was running out of his basement. So any emails that went out from the board went out through the listserv, you had to be a member of the listserv to even get the emails. Only residents were allowed to join the listserv, because we didn't want it full of. Uh, people trying to drum up, you know, business and, you know, have you want your Bucha call this guy that that wasn't the intent of the list serve. It was to serve our community. But what we didn't realize when I while I was on the board, was we had some homes that were rented out, and the renters weren't able to get on the listserv because they weren't the property, so we had to make some adjustments to allow them to be present at the HOA meetings, even though they weren't the homeowner, they lived in the community, and we were there to serve the community.

Robert Nordlund: 15:40

It's not very common for community associations to keep renters in the loop of the goings on at the community, but we felt that it was a great idea that the board Seneca Ridge includes renters in their email lists as members of the community. After all, while they may not have a vote, renters spend as much time in the community as homeowners do so they absolutely deserve to know what's happening. We want to know more about the renter homeowner dynamic at Seneca Ridge, so we next asked KC what percentage of the community's homes were occupied by renters. I honestly

KC Holland: 16:15

couldn't tell you that we didn't keep track of that. What I can tell you is we did have issues with dues collections at times because we didn't realize there were renters in a home that we thought was lived in by the resident or the owner, not the not that they had rented it out. Those types of cases, there were a handful that we discovered were renters that way around, and that was purely because the dues didn't get paid. The notices went to the home the renter didn't think the forwarded to the homeowner who lived in whatever state. Pick one. So it eventually came to light, we had to figure out how to reach them and collect it is later. But as far as percentage of renters versus the actual owner, couldn't tell you, but it was, I suspect it was very low at that point. I think it's gone up a little bit in the most recent years, but not significant.

Robert Nordlund: 17:17

At this point in the interview, we felt that we had a pretty good understanding of Seneca Ridge homeowner association, and could confidently say that it was a pretty well run organization. However, we wanted to know how KC felt about the association, especially now that he has some distance from it. Here's what he had to say.

KC Holland: 17:36

So our eight to eight is a little bit different than most of them in the area, especially here in Northern Virginia, where there's lots of money and lots of big houses and lots of very rigid HOAs, we are completely self sufficient. We don't have anything external that we deal with, as far as the management of the board or our decisions. Long

Robert Nordlund: 18:01

time, listeners to this program will recognize that our board heroes opinions on professional management have differed wildly from episode to episode. Some such as Bill Turney in episode number 73 feel confident that they can manage the community on their own, while others, such as Pam home from episode number 82 see professional management as key to prevent Community Association dysfunction and chaos. That's something we obviously try to avoid. Well, KCappeared to firmly fit in the former category, so we decided to ask him if he had any tips for board members that are seeking to run their community without the help of professional managers.

KC Holland: 18:46

My biggest tip to boards in general that are hoping to be self sufficient, and maybe they have a management company now and they're trying to get rid of them. My biggest tip would be transparency. Be transparent with your residents. Bring your residents in, get them involved. Be personable. Don't be a machine. Don't be a business. If you are upfront, transparent and work with your residents, and you have residents that are willing to support the board, that's also key, because your only membership of the board will be your residents. You've got to be open and honest with them 100%

Robert Nordlund: 19:24

as the saying goes, honesty is the best policy. We next asked KC if his dedication to honesty and transparency between the board and the homeowners was a key ingredient in the success of their association. It's

KC Holland: 19:38

been community driven since the beginning. The neighborhood was established in 1984 85 timeframe. Our house was built in 84 actually might have been 83 to 84 some of the older homes are a year older than ours, and it's just how it was built out in the beginning. And it was built in such a way back then, there was no i. Metropolitan area surrounding this neighborhood. It was nothing but trees. It was a little community, and everybody had, pretty much got to know each other. And you know, if you needed help from somebody, your best bet was to go next door and see if they could help first, right? Because it wasn't a big, sprawling metropolis that's, you know, come in the time that I've lived here even, I mean, when we first moved into this house, in 2000 there were still dirt roads in this town, not many of them, and only in, you know, the hedges of it. But those are long gone. The trees are all going away. Everything's being chopped down and built up, and all of these new, you know, multi use communities with businesses, residences and entertainment and food, all in, you know, three buildings. It's just, it's it's not what this town used to be, and this neighborhood is a reflection of what it used to be. I pointed out that we didn't have anything because that crazy neighborhood where they have a robes and wigs. They've got a community swimming pool. They've got a community center where you can sign up and, you know, rent it for pennies, I guess, very inexpensively, to have like, birthday parties and things or do things. There are aspects to having those things that our neighborhood really would have benefited from. But the flip side is there's a cost associated with it, because we don't have that. We don't have a reason to charge exorbitant fees. We don't have any maintenance overhead costs for we're not paying the board. During my time as President, we decided that the board, based on the way the covenants were written, the board could be exempted from the HOA dues because we were providing a service to the community. And that lasted a few years, until somebody decided that they didn't feel right about it, because we are also residents, and so the board reversed that the decision. But for a few years there as a board, we didn't pay our dues. We didn't have dues that we were required to pay because of the way that the board had decided. The initial decision was based on the fact that we can't be paid. This is volunteer time, so it doesn't say that we can, we can't be exempt from the dues, so that's how we took it for I think it was three or four years that we did that, and then somebody been one of the meetings, brought up that they didn't really feel comfortable doing that, and were transparent to our community. So all of this was in the minutes that were sent out. Nobody objected, but one of the board members brought it up and said they just didn't feel right. So as a as a board, we voted, and we voted ourselves back into paying dues every year.

Robert Nordlund: 22:49

We were pleased to hear that KC and the rest of the board at Seneca Ridge were doing their best, as my co host Julie admin often puts it, fill the communication vacuum in their community. Well, given the COVID pandemic, recent hurricanes in the southeastern US, as well as the ever present threat of wildfires here in California, we wondered how the board was handling communication in the event of an emergency. We asked KC about this, and if he had any specific examples, the

KC Holland: 23:18

board leads the community in the event of an emergency, whether it's COVID or something else, more specifically else, I'm going to speak to something recent that happened, even though I wasn't on the board, because it happened very, very recently. We had a house in the neighborhood that literally exploded one night and unfortunately caused the death of a firefighter, and it's was a very, very tough time for our community. Throughout all of it, the president of the HOA stayed in touch with the homeowner and with the fire department and the investigators that were doing the investigation and keeping the community informed on what was happening and what was going on when the investigation was concluded, he let everybody know that when they were starting the investigation, they were going to walk off the streets so they could do their investigation. So he let everybody know that as well, which was especially critical, because in our neighborhood, there's really only one road that comes into our neighborhood and goes out of our neighborhood, and if you live in front of that, you were impacted by the traffic that was just trying to get in and get back to their homes. Because the roads were blocked for the investigation, we had a police checkpoint so that the only people pass could be residents. So if you're going back to I live back behind that I had to go through a police checkpoint and show an ID that had my address on it before they would let me pass the area. So the President was very good about keeping people informed and updated on things as they were developing and then they were occurring, and making sure that. Residents knew, to the best of his ability, at least, what was coming at us and what was going to be impacting our daily lives throughout the whole process. Throughout

Robert Nordlund: 25:11

the interview, KC repeatedly mentioned that Seneca Ridge's size and lack of common area amenities differentiated itself from many of the other communities in northern Virginia. We wondered how that affected the association's assessments, their overall budget, and whether or not they ever had to pass a special assessment. Here's what he had to say. With

KC Holland: 25:33

regards to special assessments on my during my time on the board, we didn't really have a need for them. We had a couple of times where there were unexpected expenses, and we talked about maybe doing a special assessment in order to fund it. But the reality was we were, or always, and probably still are today, even though I'm not involved anymore and can't save a certainty well, well funded through just the collection of our dues. So our annual budget was determined every year based on what we foresaw coming at us. As an example, if the common area paths needed to be repaved, that was figured into the annual budget, if trees on the common grounds needed to be trimmed, that was figured into the annual budget. Snow removal was figured into the annual budget. All of those things, of course, had their own processes to determine what that was going to cost. Snow removal, we would get three or four bids from companies on what they would charge us. Tree Trimming was the same. Paving, the pass was the same. So it was really a process of getting those bids, figuring out which company we were going to go with, and then adding that into the total tally for what we were going to project as the next year's budget. Our dues were used to support the annual budget every year, as well as feed into our surplus for expected expenses and so. And as I mentioned already, we have a small community. We didn't have monthly dues. We didn't have, you know, a lot of services that we are collected for. And so our dues were always low, and still are today, but they are more than enough to cover all of the financial needs of the Association as well as build a surplus. And in fact, to that point, when I first moved into my house, I think the dues were$50 a year, and they stayed that way for probably the first 10 years that I lived in this home. We retained a lawyer to review the bylaws, because the bylaws said that we could only increase by a certain percentage every year, and we wanted to confirm it that was, in fact, the case, and have our bylaws reviewed and make some changes to them. So we brought in a legal expert to assist with us, to assist us with that had a non retainer, and just discovered that, you know, we could increase our dues by this percentage. I believe it was 3% every year. And over the years, we built that up to somewhere just over 100 I think it was $107 a year for dues. And then we discovered that the surplus that was building as a result of that was way too much money for us to need. So we talked to the lawyer about reducing he said, you can reduce it all you want to. Just remember you can only grow to 3% a year. So we cut it back to

Robert Nordlund: 28:40

$75 together. Finally, we decided to close out this interview, as we often do, by asking Casey if he had any advice to share with the board members that tune into this program.

KC Holland: 28:52

I think the one point I would make to people that that are considering serving their community and joining a board is that they should do it, and they should do it with the with the mindset that they're doing it for the community, and they should be the voice of reason on the board. And when they hear something that has a negative impact on that community, they should bring it up, and they should speak out against it. And they should, you know, make the effort to keep it community driven and for the betterment of the community. And maybe they'll win some battles, and maybe they won't at all going to depend on their board and their neighborhoods, but you just don't know until you try to be that you know voice of reason on whether or not you're going to be able to affect change. We want

Robert Nordlund: 29:34

to publicly acknowledge Casey for performing a thankless job well, and compliment the entire board of directors at Seneca Ridge home wars association for taking their responsibility seriously to act in the best interests of their association. We hope you gain some HOA insights from Casey's story, and that it helps you bring common sense to your common area. Well, thank you for joining us, and we look forward to another great episode next week. 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: 30:13

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 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