How a board communicates difficult repair news

Board members hate being the bearer of bad news. A new roof will cost $250 ,000. There's water entering behind the siding and to fix each building will cost $95 ,000. But they were just built a few years ago. Step one is getting the experts to inspect the damage and write up a report. How prevalent is it? How long has it been there? The experts report might scare you. It might freak out the homeowners. But that report still needs to be released to your owners via conversation at a board meeting and then be available to them as a records request for everyone to be able to read and comprehend.

If you haven't report from an expert, you have to put it out there. But what could hold the board back? It's very easy to say. New board members have a newer community. Maybe the friendliness that they have with the builder could hold them back because they're on the transition board and they become friends with different people within the developer world and the builder world. They could be scared that owners won't like them as the bearer of bad news.

Everyone's emotional, everyone has feelings, and you never like bringing bad news to anyone, your spouse, your kids, or to other homeowners in the community. Or you might be just be scared to be associated with a possible special assessment. As a manager, you have a responsibility to draft the agenda. Get the president on board with putting the expert report on the agenda. There's a hard approach and a soft approach that can really relate to discussions with any board member, not just the president.

So a manager's soft approach. One, don't hide anything from the homeowners. They're going to find out. It's a question of when. Get in front of the situation. You want to go ahead and make sure that You present something before they hear it from other people in the neighborhood. That's a trust factor that you build up with them as representatives of the community. You also want to present it possibly as information only as a topic for the next board meeting. So you're not asking for a vote.

The pressure is not there. And you ultimately want to say, hey, this is what we got. And this is our job is to present it to you. And let it be digested. And in the future, we're going to have to take some type of action on this. Then you have the hard approach for the managers. There could be legal liability for not disclosing. You could have an increase in repairs if you don't do anything for the next few years. And then the owners would be less likely to trust the board if you're not being fully open and transparent with them.

Number four within this section is that there may be reducing the time allocated to the builder to fix the work. But you want to talk to an attorney as that's not my area. If the president isn't agreeing to put it on the agenda, document your recommendations in your management files. You're the manager in this situation. And then behind the scenes, start chatting with the influential board members. About the reasons it needs to be discussed openly and in a meeting.