resigned board president

Our board president quit and has refused to give the board all her documents pertaining to the board. Including but limited to a const defect arbitration settlement huge stack of documents. The board is currently barely able to function as a result as she made multitudes of decisions on her own. Does anyone know if any rules/laws exist to force her to relinquish all those documents??

I would also make another change. There should be copies of most of these things provided to each board member. Along these lines it could be well worth the investment to purchase a good, fast scanner and software to go with it.

One of our former treasurers did this.

We ended up having our attorney send him a letter requesting that he bring them to the lawyer's office within 48 hours of receipt of the letter.

The night that he would have received the letter, a box of documents showed up on the president's doorstep. That included the checkbook, by the way. However, there were no deposit slips. Oh well.

Robert, the deposit slips I was referring to were the blank forms, not the deposit slip receipts, fortunately.

That really didn't matter, because we changed banks immediately anyway.

We really don't know what happened to him, but in going over the checkbook afterwards, we noticed a lot of minor "irregularities" (checks made payable to himself to "reimburse" himself for paying our utility bills out of his personal account, and the actual hard copies of those invoices not to be found anywhere).

In total we think he may have "redirected" something along the lines of about $200. A small amount in the scheme of things, but certainly enough to justify never allowing him on the board again.

He just STOPPED attending meetings one day, and not responding to emails or phone calls.

The president tried repeatedly to talk to him in person, and we were suddenly getting late notices for the water bill or other bills.

Then one day he just resigned. By email.

We tried for about 3 months to get him to turn over the files he had: all homeowner payment records, electronic files, our insurance binder, so many items that we really needed, not the least of which being the checkbook.

We finally just had the attorney write the letter. The material (minus any blank deposit slips and a handful of older invoices from the electric and water company) just showed up on the doorstep.

TO this day we don't know what happened.

But this is the treasurer who we discovered had never filed any taxes on our behalf, let our annual report go unfiled for 2 years, and was paying our landscape guy with cash instead of checks in some months.

Michele, a Finance Committee of 3 people, plus the Treasurer, would have caught all this mess. That Committee keeps its eye on the money and does an on-going audit review of all revenue, expenditures, A/P and A/R and specical accounts.

I keep harping on the necessity of several eyes on the finances, because my feeling is that one person in control over the checkbook, deposits, and reporting is a bad thing.

Everyday we pick up the paper and read where some person has embezzled money out of a kid's sports fund, HOA, or the church coffer.

I have no sympathy for groups who let this happen.

Get your financial department structure in order.

Michele,

I agree with what you said about committees.

But don't you wish it were different . . .

I agree, Susan, that having the committees you outlined, and for the reasons given, is an excellent idea. Unfortunately, as with other HOAs (Michelle and George in this thread), we are barely able to keep a full BOD (we currently have 4 seats of 5 filled). The one good thing we have going for us is an excellent MC – who takes care of budget preparation (initial draft), paying the bills, finding contractors, etc. Our BOD has done the work of such committees since takeover - arch. control, landscaping, finance, enforcement.

Good luck, Sherrill, in resolving your issue. I agree with the advice given by Robert and others.
Bonnie

No offense, Susan, but you act as though we've been doing this for 6 months instead of over 12 years.

We canvas the neighborhood regularly. We send out all sorts of pleas and requests. We get people to "volunteer" for various things, then the day of the event or after one meeting they never show up again.

Like I said, we get people to step up to the plate occasionally, but when they actually see all the work involved, or that the meeting times might conflict with watching "Survivor," they disappear into thin air again.

One of the things I learned in the corporate world is that people will show up most anywhere for free "stuff," even if it's crap "stuff" and "stuff" they don't even really need or want. It's free. They'll show up for that.

So we also have had what would be the equivalent of "Job Fairs" where we have tables set up themed for the various things we need done, like welcome committees, arch committees, lake cleanup (though we call it Adopt-a-Lake, and offer "reserved seating" for various areas around the lake - the only "catch" is that they agree to clean up around their "area"), and have had free giveaways and drawings for items that local businesses have donated to us.

So while we can get a handful of people (and it's always the same "handful"), for various push-comes-to-shove things, like a spring clean up around the common area, or prepping the flower beds, it's a much different story getting reliable people to commit to any specific long-range or repeat-effort thing, such as a committee.

Even when we had a rash of break ins last year, all of the board went door-to-door and met with each homeowner, to talk about the need for a blockwatch, let them know what happened in the area (beyond what was reported in the paper), and to talk about any other things they needed to talk about.

We got a lot of names on a list, but when the first formal blockwatch meeting was set up, 5 people showed up. When the second one was arranged, 1 person showed up. When we did a phone tree back to the list to try to work out more compatible meeting times, everyone just had too much going on.

Anyway, again, your comments are dead on, but the reality is, it just doesn't happen. Even in those communities where the board does not sequester itself into some ivory tower, people today are just too busy and too satisfied with the status quo. It's just the reality.

No . . . a little more than 6 months - try 25 years on various boards.

This has to be the same philosophy as Walmart of Mcdonld's uses. Get 10 people and hope that 3 show up and hope for 1 good person.

Keep trying.

Sherill,
We do have several folks that post here and Colorado is there home so maybe they can help. You mentioned your lawyer declined to help. Have you approached her with a formal letter for her opinion in writing. Frankly, if she declines that, I wopuld get together with whoever is helping you run the show and talk about getting a new lawyer.

If she has those documents or was reponsible for thme, she needs to cough them up, they do not belong to her. As to help, try a local representative, get a personal meeting. Try legal aid. Write you State attorney General for an opinion. He will tell you to get a Lawyer but it's worth a shot. Go to your local county council, or Police department. Work the phones, get names and suggestion as to who can help you. And log it all down, at some point you will find a crack. I am not saying you should not take your lawyers advice, I am saying consider what is best for you and your association first. Maybe a little different mindset on your part might open a door, and I don't know your mindset, but it is still a valid consideration.

I'm not exactly sure Sherrill meant that the attorney has declined to write a letter.

I think maybe that the person who still has the material has continually declined to return it, even after Sherrill has gone the attorney route.

Maybe she (the one holding the docs hostage) fears larger things than just an attorney letter asking for the material.

Maybe she fears that there are things in the material that could show either unethical or illegal things that were done. In which case, she probably, illogically, believes that what they don't know and can't find out, won't hurt her.

Well, we know that, but if she were smart to begin with she probably wouldn't be in this position! Who knows, maybe it's taking her this long to go through and scrub her tracks. I dunno. I watch too much CSI, I think.

You could be right about what Sherrill was saying. I really don't know. I just read it the other way, that the "she" who declined was the former president.

But this is the treasurer who we discovered had never filed any taxes on our behalf, let our annual report go unfiled for 2 years, and was paying our landscape guy with cash instead of checks in some months.

It certainly sounds as if there was NO follow up or questions place upon the treasuerer by either the board or the HOA memebers kind of like carte blanche.. do what you want we won't ask anything.. that is frghtful. . That is too bad as I feel it's part of the financial reports and annual taxes that we review as a board and are monitored by our PM....

No, that's not what happened at all.

This was in the early years of the organization and we had no idea that the HOA was supposed to file taxes. In fact, he is the one who told us that we didn't have to because we were a non-profit. He was also working as the treasurer for one of our local churches, so we figured he knew what to do. He always had great charts and graphs and very pretty "reports." We didn't know what we didn't know.

We also did not have monthly meetings at that time, either, and we suspect that as we got to the point where we were asking for more and more receipts and more and more back up of things that were on the "financials" but not supported by docs, that he just stopped coming to whatever meetings we were having.

The head of the Arch Comm was also a board member at that time (the Vice President, I believe) and he was the next door neighbor of our landscaping "contractor." They had worked out a system where he would provide the treasurer with the landscaping contractor's "invoice," and would request the payment in cash. They two of them knew that the landscaper was not filing taxes on the income, but the rest of the board didn't. That's again why we think he just walked away from it as we were getting closer to uncovering their nifty little operation.

The head of the Arc Comm also resigned a few months after the treasurer. That was the year I became president and started developing policies and procedures on the board for various things to increase the visibility and accountability.

One of the policies I put into place was that only one board member was allowed to pick up the mail at the post office box. That board member would open the mail and create an email to everyone describing each correspondence. If it was the bank statement, he would list each item on the bank statement. Only after the "mail call" would the mail be disbursed to the board members.

The treasurer, then, would not be the first or only person to collect the bills or bank statements, as was happening.

In addition, any Arch Comm request for approval HAD to be presented in writing, and the committee chair would scan and email a copy to each board member. The approval would then be provided IN WRITING, and an inspection date scheduled to review the project at completion to ensure the project was built in line with the contingent approval.

Prior to that the Arch Comm chair would simply give a verbal "okay" or "no way," and file the request away and never once check back to make sure the project was built per the approval specs.

Some people he would deny simply because he didn't like them. In fact, he would brag about that in board meetings. But until I had the opportunity to be president, no one every challenged him on it. The former president and the other Arch Comm board member were very close friends with him.

As I said, we've had some issues over the years, and much of the early period, not a one of us had ever participated in an HOA before, much less as board members.

There was a definite learning curve, an opportunity for a few difficult personalities to do some unethical things, but as the other board members became more knowledgeable about it, those less-than-satisfactory board members drifted away.