The plan was never shown in the proposed budget that was required to be presented in the February 2018 Annual Members Meeting. Not only that, if you can imagine, no mention of the plan was presented to the community at the same meeting.
So how did we know this was being hidden from the community? When emails from the then board began correspondence with Signature Property Management in October and November of 2017, copies were being sent to all board members.
Our current Vice President Dan Smith was on their board then and was receiving copies of those emails. Some of the emails to Signature in November indicated they would be signing the contract “once we are through with our annual February Members Meeting”.
Not long after the February 2018 meeting the board hired Signature Property Management to the surprise of a most of Sugarhill.
While hiring something as community intrusive and expensive as a property management company without openly informing the community is allowed in our bylaws, it most certainly is unethical by every stretch of the imagination.
Since, as far as we could tell, no one in the community had ever seen the contract other than the board members, I drove to South Stewart to the Signature Property Management's office.
I requested a copy of the contract. This was my legal right as a homeowner. They were very evasive. They requested identification, and when I asked to see the contract, they said well we can't give it to you now because our owner has to review the request.(What???) That gave them time to inform our board and cleanup irregularities on our bulletin board which they did later that afternoon.
Signature's Contract was evasive. At first glance it looked reasonable but in the fine print on the back Signature was allowed to send out "violation" letters and tack on an additional $100 per letter fee to the monthly association billing above the contract set price.
Signature Property Management, in the five months operating in Sugarhill, did indeed prove to be incredibly intrusive and hugely expensive. The community would have suffered relentless fee increases to even come close to the mounting costs of Signature PM.
(e) employ a manager*, an independent contractor, or such other employees as they deem necessary, and to prescribe their duties.
We feel a change to the bylaw is needed to prevent this from happening again. Here is our idea to bring this bylaw change to a vote:
- If a property management contract is being considered, it should be presented openly to the community and copies of the contract, prior to signing, should be sent to all owners.
- All aspects of the budgeting of the contract should be presented openly to the community.
- The property management company should be thoroughly vetted and the results should be presented openly to the community.
- Finally, using the above 3 items, the action of hiring a property management company should be brought to the community for an approval vote either in a Special Meeting or The Annual Members Meeting before the contract is signed.
*The intent would be to not alter the rest of the bylaw, only the employ-a-manager (aka: property management company) part.
We also strongly believe volunteers should not be doing the bookkeeping for Sugarhill. We hire Patterson Accounting Service for this at a reasonable cost and amazing accuracy. This should remain at the board's discretion.
This change won't be coming to a community vote soon, it may take a year to accumulate other items to go with it before an election.
The process of the current board is to make self management streamlined enough to avoid any board ever having to hire a manager.
Florida Statutes require HOA's to amend their controlling documents. We prefer this process to be done in a small number of voting changes that don't overwhelm the voters,