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SwanB (Washington)
Posts: 199
Posted:
At our recent AGM (annual general meeting) we had a bylaw amendment before the assembly. The amendment proposed including the following sentence: No director of the Board may also be an employee of our Community Club.
The rationale stated it was consistent with common ethical business practices but the most outspoken opponents claimed by including the sentence in our Bylaws we were actually instituting unethical business practices (?).
Unfortunately our recent HOA history has had two Board members who have also worked for us and have used their positions of power to cheat, lie and remove monies from the membership. The Board members who were responsible for handling those situations resigned enmass when the truth was starting to come forward about this five year legacy of theirs.
Too many complacent members have continued to bury their heads in the sand over these past activities.

Do others have this sort of amendment in your Bylaws? It certainly doesn't restrict a Board member from contracting with their HOA for specific work and that wasn't the intention. What it does is restrict the HOA from hiring the Secretary of the Board to also be the office assistant. Or, for that matter, the Grounds and Maintenance Director to also be hired as the full-time caretaker who would then supervise themselves.
RogerB (Colorado)
Posts: 5,067
Posted:
Swan, setting up procedures to monitor activities IMO is a better means for eliminating the problems which you mentioned. I would focus on procedures rather than restricting employment of Board members.

It is my opinion that the Board be can allow bids by and award contracts to a Director or to a company who has a Director in their employment. However, if hired the Board must very careful to try to remove any appearance of a conflict of interest.

Why do you need/want employees? For small organizations such as an HOA I subscribe to using independent contractors who can hire whomever they want. When using independent contractors supervisory control is lost, but a carefully written contract can provide necessary control.

SwanB (Washington)
Posts: 199
Posted:
We are in a remote location and our membership is worldwide. I am fortunate enough to own my primary residence just 30 minutes away from the HOA but we have a members in Pakistan, South Africa, New Zealand and numerous Canadian members. Of course the Canadian border is only 60 miles from us.
Our caretaker is full-time and lives on-site in a club residence. Our office staffer is a member who is an part-time employee.
Our HOA is located in the last town before the wilderness up here and we are in skiing, snowboarding and river kayaking heaven so finding employees is not a problem.

LuciusD
Posts: 139
Posted:
I agree with the intent of the amendment. It is simply a violation of good organizational management for an employee to sit on the board that ultimately supervises and oversees employees.

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