HOA President making decisions without consulting.

As Crazy as this sounds, our lobby and sitting area has been approved to be renovated. We had a arcutechural committee select and provide our HOA BOD plans and color schemes to redo the lobby and sitting area.. the plan was to start on Friday and finish today

I was out of town until this afternoon. Being on the arcutectual committee I was rather excited to see what our place was looking like..

The lobby has tiles that were not he original one's selected. There are a marble looking light color vs the dark blue slate the commitee selected and presented to the board. I was worried as I thought the installer made an error. I called the HOA President as I had heard nothing about a problem via email like we usually communicate or cell

I was told that the tile we originally selected via committee was not available and in a pinch that the HOA President made the decision at the local DIY to pick this color scheme and she changed the paint to go with the tile. She claims she emailed me.. I didn't get that notification.

My spouse as a homeowner knows what the colors were that the committee had chosen months ago! I called a fellow board member to see if she knew anything.. she said she did but that she doesn't think it matters as "none of the home owner's knew what colors were originally chosen anyway.... "

I have a bad feeling about this.. and my spouse wishes to address it in open forum next week.. ( the colors are ok.. just drasticallly different and since a committtee made this decision and had it approved in our minutes.. is it ok for one person to alter this and go ahead with the decision not notifying the HOA?? }

Sorry.

I misread "light" as "white" somehow.

Brain malfunction, no doubt.

Still though....a light tile on a high traffic area.

I hope you still like it in about 6 months.

Do you have a cleaning crew come in once a week?

IMO - the president should have held the job up until the committee could have figured out Plan B. In any case, it did not show respect for all the work the Committee did.

But there really should have been a Committee person to oversee the entire project. (I never leave remodelers or handymmen alone)

The president - is it a man? Just wondering. A woman would have never chosen different colors

She's obviously never had clean-up duty on high-traffic-area light colored tiles. . . .they may LOOK pretty at first, but . . . .

Agree.

VERY strange. . .

Conveniently strange. . .

Francesca,

IMO, the most you can do is give her ten lashes with a wet noodle and make her promise never to do anything w/o board approval again! Of course I say that with tongue in cheek, but the bottom line is that it's done and surely you don't want the tile ripped up and a different color installed. Perhaps the other board members might want to mete out some other punishment (remove her from the ofc of Pres.??) if this isn't the first time she's acted on her own. Otherwise, just let it go and learn to live with the tile, even though you don't like the color. Even if other members object to the chosen color you should know there most likely would have been objections to the tile chosen by the committee also. Nothing is ever right with everyone!

I must either be in a "I don't have enough information" mood or a forgiveness mood today. I think what should be done about the situation depends on the circumstances.

Certainly, I would agree that no individual, not even the president, has the authority to unilaterally make decisions on behalf of the association without board approval, unless the authority for specific decisions or actions is granted in the governing documents. As an example, our president has been given the authority by the board to decide when it is necessary to have the snow removal contractor clear our roads since calling a board meeting every time it snows to decide when the roads need to be plowed is just not practical.

Unfortunately, some individuals don't understand that the authority of the president is limited and mistakenly believe it's OK for them to make some decisions without board approval. They sometimes think of their position more like that of a surpervisor or a project leader in a work environment, which it is not.

It may simply be that the president, faced with what was perceived as an emergency situation where a decision had to be made, went ahead and made it, assuming that being president, it was OK.

If no harm was actually done, then perhaps the best course is simply to remind the president that no decisions can be made without board approval and that some sort of consulation and approval should have been sought.

If the president is one who regularly makes unilateral decisions on behalf of the board without it's approval, then that situation needs to be addressed and corrected by the board.

If the decorating scheme is definitely intolerable, the contractor is certainly not going to redo it at no cost. It would appear to me that either the association lives with it, or has it redone at the president's expense since the president exceeded her authority. The real solution could be anywhere in between those two extremes, depending on the circumstances.

Francesca,
I would request this be an agenda item for the next Board meeting. Ask the President why a decision had to be made prior to going back to the committee for another recommendation. Perhaps the job had been scheduled and an emergency decision was required. Sometime a President (or managing agent) faces such a situation and must decide. If the Board does not like the President's answer they can establish policies and procedures to be followed in the future.

I appreciate your disappointment when the committee's recommendation was not followed. BTW, didn't the committee or the contractor check on availability and cost of the dark blue slate in advance?

John,

Susan or Michelle, I cannot remember, is an ex military individual. They learn from day one to--make the right decisions , take no hostages and take no crap. You go girl!!!

Susan,

I was asking about your album collection, not questioning your love interests.

But as to color blindness in males, it's actually less than 10%. I know this because I have a problem with the blue/green spectrum. When in doubt, I always ask Mrs. K to help sort things out.

Donna:

I'm the Vet.

But I would have been proud and honored to have served beside someone like Susan! I'd trust my life to someone like her.

And, while I never owned a copy of "I Am Woman," I would also consider it an honor to be confused with someone who did.

She is from my generation, and her spirit and femininity and her "take no crap" attitude is something to which I would like to aspire as well.

And men who are not designers, as a rule, do make ridiculous design decisions. So much so that most of the ones I know would gnaw off their own appendages before making one.

. . . because we are social animals, on a social networking site, trying to keep our sanity and not get overwhelmed with all the frustrations of our chosen volunteerism?

But on topic, I do agree with you that it should be formally entered into the record that what the president did was not sanctioned by the committee and that, if the governing documents support it, that the president is also to refrain from further unilateral decision-making, absent a true and legitimate emergency.

I would not consider this scenario "emergency" material.

Susan and Michelle,
I like the idea I am a social animal. Now what do I do and who do I chase down and make them a member of my herd?

Seriously, I really think this kind of stuff should be stopped when it starts.

A social animal friend and I were out today in our gardern separating Amaryllis bulbs. We had a little patch when I first got here and over the years I have spread them around. This year we separated a large planter area that sits on concrete deck of our condo. We dug up around 150 large bulbs and transplanetd them. Just she and I and numerous owners came by and asked what we were doing. Not one asked if we needed help and this included our president. Now that kind of stuff don't bother me much, our courtyard is ablase with xmas lights and a few of us did that job also. Next year this area, probably 30 feet square will just be a red field of color, that is enough for me. But when I wittness an elected Board Member or the manager making noises or actions that denigrate the position of an owner, I get upset. I say again, the Board is a volunteer, that is all when the rubber meets the road.
I will also respond when I think an owner denigrates the position of any elected representative. That position is to be respected and supported. Now, not all Board members are pure, but the position is time tested and proven worthy of respect.

Anyhow, as usual, I talk too much, so enough said.

John,
Well I said I was loking for a way to shorten my posts. I am not sure I want to go as far as your reference to one of my posts.

I honestly think we at times (me included, in fact if anything can be done wrong, I am the guy to do it) forget the one postiong is looking for specific answers and since we all seem to love to banter we, may get lost once in a while.

BUT, A Big But, your suggestion about a "catch all site is an excellent idea." Why not write the web master and suggest it. I am on record of trying such a venture. I also feel the sponsors of this site would provide it, if necessary to make any changes in format. I suppose that would make it a Blog. A word I am not sure has a definition.

John,
I think what might work is a separate page or button on discussion page that would be assigned to regular contributors. I don't suggest we vet everyone to be able to post, but certainly it could be labled as a "Free for all site for regular contributors." I think we have all demonstrated we can flit from one subject to another and something in our mind sort of blanks out any recall of what we post. We just do the best we can with the information in front of us, for the most part.
But many of us have some concern about this whole structure of HOA and Condo's. We know there is lots of big money involved, very little oversight except by those who just can't stand to have things run badly. This whole concept may well slide into a different direction with close state authority. Anyway, let's ask Mikey, what do you think Mikey (I REALLY MEAN DONNA, SUSAN, and everyone else else that contribute here)???????????????????

Susan,

Never heard the term "crafting years" b/4 but I sure am in that phase of my life too! Very cute. Thx!

FWIW: I've been using internet discussion groups since before Al Gore knew what the internet was. Unless the group is 100% moderated so that nothing is posted until the moderator approves it, discussions will wander. Sometimes even with full moderation the discussions will wander. Accept it. Like Michelle said, it's just the nature of social discussion groups.

You can try to remind people to stay on-topic and reprimand them when they go too far off-topic, but if you do that too much then you run the risk of being labeled a net-nanny and generally ignored. If you find yourself getting annoyed with the way a thread is running, best to take Michelle's other advice and hoist another bottle of stout (or whatever your favorite libation is).

If wandering off topic is the biggest problem encountered on this group, HOA talk admin should be proud of their website! I've belonged to HOA discussion groups for about 10 years and this site is soooo tame by comparison. This is one reason why this site has become my favorite HOA talk group. Hostility and flaming are a rare occurence here and it's very, very refreshing, to say the least. I just wish there was a way to communicate privately as there is on other groups. On most groups, you can reply to the poster or the group. Sometimes it's best to take a thread private and other times you might just want to drop a private note to someone.

. . . my sediments, perzactly.

I've often wished I could PM a poster or two so as to not interfere with the topic flow.

Nice option if they can swing it.

None the less.. our lobby has been done and completed what is an avocado green or olive green paint and tan marble flooring.. tiles. It's a far cry from what the minutes reflect as a warm sunny yellow venetian plaster and slate flooring. It seems to be a consenses amongst the board, myself excluded that it's ok that the president changed everything.. after all... the homeowner's don't read thier minutes and won't remember what was originally selected.. I am appauled.

Actually, here is how I see it. You should always figure that something could go wrong with any project. In light of this, you should decide how such problems will be handled in advance.

I would think the best thing would have been to have had the committee that made the first choice sitting in standby mode to deal with such a problem. But if that isn't available then you need to decide what is most important.

I don't know how long the delay (or financial impact) would have been had the mission been scrubbed the weekend (or week) it was planned for. I don't know if others on the committee were available. But these are all things to consider in advance. How will you deal with the tile not being available? Or better yet, make the purchase as soon as you know for sure that is what you want.

What I do know (even as a man) is that if you change the color of the tile, it can have a ripple effect on the whole works requiring a change to other things. I know that when we were purchasing our house that one choice in the process caused us to revisit a bunch of prior choices. And when the bricks were not available that we chose, then I had to go pick another choice of brick. Then I had to go back and pick another choice for the trim.

Francesca,

Well, it's water over the dam, or under the bridge -- whatever. Best to just let it go and move on. Besides there's probably more truth in the statement: "the homeowner's don't read their minutes and won't remember what was originally selected" than you care to admit at this point.