135 | Deck the Halls: Reducing HOA Liability During the Holidays

135 | Deck the Halls: Reducing HOA Liability During the Holidays

Kevin Davis 00:00

Let’s say we don’t have rules or guidelines, and all of a sudden we start drinking, okay? And all of a sudden we’re drinking. And we know that, we tell them that either the clubhouse is available from this time, this time, but they continue to go on, and we say, there’s no alcohol, whatever the rule is. But then they disobey the rule, and then and now, somebody gets hurt, as far as the board’s concerned, if they say, Listen, we gave guidelines out and we approve the guidelines, we have a defendable position. We’re back to the defendable position when we’re sued.

Announcer 00:30

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Robert Nordlund 00:44

Hi. I’m Robert Nordlund of association reserves,

Kevin Davis 00:47

and I’m Kevin Davis of Kevin Davis Insurance Services. And this is HOA Insights, where we promote common sense for

Robert Nordlund 00:55

common areas. Welcome to Episode 135 where we’re again speaking with insurance expert and regular co host Kevin Davis. We’re hearing from Kevin twice in a row because he has some important insights to share about reducing liability during the holiday season. So we made room in our schedule for this program last week’s episode 134 where Kevin shared some big picture ideas about insurance here at the end of 2025 with the key issues that, due to insurers returning to profitability after some years of losses, it’s likely that insurance premiums will soften a bit as we turn into 2026 In addition, he reminded us all to speak the love language of the insurance providers that you’re working With, and that means tell them proactively what you’re doing to maintain the property, collecting assessments and enforcing the rules. So do everything you can to distinguish your association from other other, average associations, average properties. Now this is all great material, valuable to you. If you’re a repeat listener, you know, we deliver valuable content week after week. So if you’re one of the 50% of our audience who just drops in periodically for an episode now and then, I encourage you to subscribe from the pot to the podcast on our YouTube channel or on any of the major podcast platforms, and recommend the podcast to your manager and other board members. It’s all free, and I’m asking because the more subscribers we get, the higher the podcast is listed on search engines, and that means even more people will find the program helping us do a better job of improving associations all across the country. Those of you watching on YouTube can see the HOA insights mugs that Kevin and I have kind of fun to have here on my desk. We got those from our merch store. And you can browse through the merch store from our Hoa insights.org website, or the link in the show notes, you’ll find we have some great free stuff there, like board member zoom backgrounds and some specialty items for sale, like mugs. So go to the merch store, download a free zoom background, then take a moment look around, find the mug you’d like, if you’re the 10 person, to email us at podcast at reserve study.com mentioning episode 135, mug giveaway. We’ll ship that mug to you free of charge. Well, we enjoy hearing from you responding to the issues you’re facing at your association and using those questions to create future episodes. So if you have a hot topic, a crazy story, or a question you’d like us to address, you can always contact us at 805-203-3130, or email us at podcast at reserve, say.com but as I stated a moment ago, today’s episode comes straight from Kevin. He wanted to help you be aware of and be prepared for the unique holiday risks faced during the holiday season, and that ranges from electrical fires caused by the lights that are up to disputes over decorations and liability at holiday events. So Kevin, all the way from physical risks to tempers and conflicts. What do we need to know?

Kevin Davis 04:02

Thanks. I’m glad we were able to put this in because it’s a holiday season, and this is a holiday this holiday season, we want to be happy. Some of us haven’t been happy for a while, but we want to be happy. And so in order to really enjoy this holiday season, we have to be aware of some exposures, serving on a Community Association Board of Directors. These are specific to holiday time. This is a December through Thanksgiving, all the way, you know, towards the end, beginning of next year, where we are more excited and we do more than we’ve done through the rest of the year. So what I want to do today, to kind of simplify it is divided up into three areas based on the three responsibilities of Board of Directors of community associations. Okay, so we talked about three areas. We’re talking about assessment, collection, financial management of the Association. We’re talking about enforcement, enforcing the rules, enforcing the documents of the association. And then talking about. Maintenance of the association. So there’s, there’s, are the three areas, if you are a board member, does your three primary responsibilities. If you do those three things, you end up doing them a great job for your community association. So basically, those basic three things you need to do. So so now we’re going to do is take each one of those and say, okay, when it comes to enforcement, what kind of exposure this association has based on this, you know, holiday season.

Robert Nordlund 05:25

Yeah, you want to promote happiness. You want to promote Joe joy. But you also don’t want to be a Scrooge and say no decorations, or, you know, you don’t want to be too harsh about things. So you want to find that happy medium and this.

Kevin Davis 05:41

So this is how we’re going to do it. So when we talk about enforcement, we’re going to divide up into three areas, people, places and paper. So we talk about exposure enforcement, those are the three areas that we’re going to talk about. Okay, so when we talk about people, that is your number one exposure if you are enforcing the documents, because during the holiday season, people are very unpredictable. They have a lot more people than normally going to see in the community. So you’re going to have to be able to kind of outline certain behaviors. Because again, and you mentioned it before, we have people who drink a lot during the holiday season. So So you got people kind of just, you know, taking too much to drink, and people who may not like each other before, kind of may not like each other more. So so it’s an awareness that people right now your number one exposure where you so again, you got to enforce the rules of the association. So, for example, if you have a rule in terms of HOA decorations, okay, what time you can put them up, what time you can take them down? So it’s a December, November 15, where you can start putting decorations up. Well, that means you can’t put them up November the first, okay, and you take them down by January the 10th, or whatever date you have, you can’t leave them for a year. So people right now are the thing number one area. And talking, we talk about this one area talking about really enforcing the documents you got to make sure that they understand that these are the rules, these are the guidelines when it comes to the holiday time. Okay, so number one is the people.

Robert Nordlund 07:21

How much explaining do you need to do? Do you need to justify it? Do you need to say, in order to

Kevin Davis 07:28

have a peaceful, quiet, enjoyable, you know, we want you to these are things you should these are reminders. These are guidelines. Is a guideline? A rule? No, no, no, these are guidelines. Because if you start having rules, then all of a sudden, that’s where, you know, you start raising How dare they tell me what to do. These are got behavioral guidelines for people during the holiday season, because we said, okay, for example, we said, people like places. What are the places that I’m a big concern about this time of year? Is the parking lot. So you have a lot of people in the parking lot. A lot of people want to park close to the clubhouse. So you have places, is another issue. So you got the people, is the issue. But places, when I’m talking about places, I’m talking about, you know, the parking lots of place the clubhouse is a place. You know, you have people’s houses that are decorated more so than other houses. These are places that enforce your documents. Are very, very important. You have to make sure that those people who are we have to go to certain places, understand, again, the guidelines there. These are the things we have to do. If you want to come to our holiday party. We have the holiday party or holiday celebration. There’s a place you can park. You know, you can’t park wherever in the people’s assigned parking spots, it might be parking for visitors. Can’t just park anyone in the park, okay? And, and if you have a clubhouse, you can say, well, this holiday season, we’re not going to obey the clubhouse rules. And again, it’s the decorations. We want to overly decorate everything. So again, it’s, we’re talking about awareness of the three areas in terms of enforcement,

Robert Nordlund 08:59

yeah, people you’ve talked about people, you talk about places. And I’m wondering here, just thinking about associations I lived in, can you get ahead of this? Can you communicate saying, Oh, welcome to the holiday season. These are our guidelines. Remember to remind your guests that clubhouse parking is limited. They may need to park on the street or things like that. Can you get ahead of it and promote success?

Kevin Davis 09:24

Guess what? That’s number three, that’s the paper. Part of it, when we talk about the paper, that’s the paper. Part of it is to notify, communicate often that these are our guidelines for the holiday season. These are our guidelines. This is the way we think is the best way we all can enjoy the holiday season

Robert Nordlund 09:43

to share and enjoy to share. Well, yeah, because we’re talking about a lot of people living in tight space, and we want to get along and not be bumping elbows. And so what’s what does that look like? And I like that. Okay,

Kevin Davis 09:56

so again, we’re talking about enjoy. And again, if we do that. At guess what happens? The liability drops. So let’s say we take any one of those three things, okay? Let’s take the people part. Let’s say we don’t have rules or guidelines, and all of a sudden we start drinking, okay? And all of a sudden we’re drinking. And we know that. We tell them that, you know, the clubhouse is available from this time, this time, but they continue to go on. And we say there’s no alcohol, whatever their rule is, but then they disobey the rule, and now somebody gets hurt. As far as the board’s concerned, if they say, Listen, we gave guidelines out and we approve the guidelines, we have a defendable position. We’re back to the defendable position when we’re

Robert Nordlund 10:35

sued, If a fight breaks out, or if someone trips and falls and hurts themselves, the board can. Number one, I’m sorry that a fight broke out, and I’m sorry that someone tripped and fell and hurt themselves, but hey, we we laid out the rules and guidelines, and so it’s not on us, it’s on them, something like that.

Kevin Davis 10:53

What we were saying is that this is what the our procedures and policy is for for the holiday season. We have them all in writing. We let everybody know, in a timely manner, paper, part of it. So guess what? If they disobey, if the union owners or guests of the unions come in and disobey, we can hold them responsible and say, Listen, you know, you know our guidelines. You disobeyed our guidelines. Okay, so now a sudden, because of this claim, that’s happening again, we can’t walk away from it, but we want to have a defendable position when we’re sued. That’s all we’re doing right now, is saying we want to have a defendable position when we’re sued.

Robert Nordlund 11:30

So while I’m seeing it actually two parts. Number one is you want to minimize the chance that there is conflict or damage or something bad happening, and if it does happen, then the board is or the association is in a defensible position. So you get two things for the price of one, you

Kevin Davis 11:49

exactly, exactly got it. So that’s the first one. That’s the enforcement part of it. So we got a clear idea of what the enforcement issues are. So now we go to number two. Okay. Number two is the maintenance part of it, the board responsibility, has to maintain the association. So when we talk about maintenance, the three areas that I’m concerned about, and number one, you mentioned, it is fire. Fire is, that’s the big, big deal right now in community associations, because electrical, because you have people have candles out, you know. Again, it’s about awareness. You know we are as the maintenance group. You maybe have maintenance policy, and it goes back to the paper. Part of the maintenance policy says that, if you have, you know, electrical decorations, make sure you don’t have all plugged into one socket, or,

Robert Nordlund 12:40

like, what was that? Chase net? Remember chevy chase in that movie? Yeah,

Kevin Davis 12:47

that’s it. There are basic things that as board of directors, okay, we have a maintenance policy, okay? Our maintenance policy is to make sure that our guidelines are followed. There are guidelines out there that says these are things you should not do during the holiday season. Okay? And to go back to paper Park, if you’re going to plug lights in, you don’t plug them in. It all to one little, tiny, little, you know, you got to make sure you have adequate wattage, and just make sure that’s done correctly. Got it? Okay? Avoid fires as much as possible. That’s the number one exposure right now. Is the fires happening from dried Christmas trees or plugging too many in there and candles.

Robert Nordlund 13:24

You know, Kevin, when I think of fire, I continue to think of wildfires. And I think it’s so important what you’re talking about is that I think maybe we’ve been distracted from the fires that start within a unit, or even you’re boiling something on the stove and it goes dry. You’re making a recipe that you make just once a year, and you forget about it. When people are coming in and all of a sudden you got a fire in the kitchen. It

Kevin Davis 13:47

just and during the holiday season, again, the likelihood of happened is greater because we’re rushing around, we’re running we’re cooking the big meal. And these things happen inside. You know, fire is the biggest exposure in during the holiday season. Second one we have is this failure to maintain. You know, we you talked earlier about the slip and falls. You know, it’s the holiday season. So we’re in California, we don’t worry about the snow and the ice. But guess what? If you’re in other parts of the country, you have to worry about snow and ice, and you’re outside more, you have community gatherings. You’re going from the parking lot, maybe to the clubhouse, and you may have been drinking so, so you’re worried about the raised sidewalks, you know, you worried about the railings that might be loose. So you’re worried about the things that you may have put aside for the past six months. Guess what? It’s time to tighten everything up, because we know during the holiday season and we’re going to be seeing more guests in our common area. We’re talking about the common areas. There’s more people to common areas. We have to worry about decorations that are too bright, so you can’t see any signs, yeah, but you end up missing some things because the decorations too bright, yeah?

Robert Nordlund 14:51

And people that are unfamiliar with the property, because they’re guests, and they get lost, and they’re going the wrong places, and they’re not in the normal traffic routine. Scenes, and there will be some people that want to join the, what is it, the polar bear club, and jump in the pool at midnight and slip and fall, and may have been drinking, but those kinds of things, okay, that’s it. So,

Kevin Davis 15:14

so that’s this maintenance. You know, we maintenance. We talk about the importance of maintenance during a holiday season, maintenance is really important because there’s more people in the common areas that have been before. And you’re right, they will do things that they haven’t done before, and job in the pool will close on is one of the things people like doing.

Robert Nordlund 15:31

You just mentioned the risk. But what’s the proactive step? Should the board 10 o’clock at night do a walk through and just see what the place looks like at night. Where are the light bulbs out? Is the pool gate closed? Because again, can they should they do a dry run, walk through again?

Kevin Davis 15:49

It goes back to we I said before, they should have a holiday like it may be even emergency planning session that this the holiday. What happens if, if somebody does pass out, what do we do? If somebody gets too drunk, what happens? What are we going to do? So again, you know how they have an emergency preparedness, set a set situation, just in case there’s a fire, or, for us, earthquakes, or, you know, we all have emergency planning. Let’s say, Okay, we noticed certain things happen during the holiday season. Okay? Number one thing happened is we have to deal with people and places, so we have to make sure that, instead of just ignoring certain things, maybe we should. If we know that the clubhouse have to close at 1111, o’clock, we got to make sure that we’re walking around to make sure, and make sure they get into the area, get back to one one thing they can do is, let’s say that the board decides to have a holiday party and invite the people in the community. Sometimes you may want to say, well, guess what? If we’re going to have alcohol, maybe we should have a party outside the premises. Go down to the local restaurant, because once we have a party in our and we start serving alcohol, and guess what? And now, all of a sudden, Robert Norlin is the bartender, because he’s the president Association. Okay, yeah. So what happened is, again, you’ve increased your exposure, so obviously now have a party. I’m saying is that when you start having out, we get to a point where you say, You know what? Maybe this party should be done down the street at the restaurant that we like that way, if there’s a situation where a person gets too much to drink, guess what? It’s not our exposure. It is the restaurant exposure. We don’t have to say, No more drinking. No more they have to say. So that’s one of the areas, again, talking about, how can we protect the board of directors? Sometimes I make a decision and say we don’t want that exposure at all. We don’t want that exposure.

Robert Nordlund 17:44

I like that very much, because I’m concerned that we we’re not. We don’t want to be telling associations. Ba humbug closed down. No lights, no trees, no wreaths on your doors. You know. No, no, no, no. I want to be hey, let’s have community. Let’s build community, and the yeses and the yeses are Hey, ABC restaurant down at the corner has a wonderful happy hour. Let’s all go there exactly, and let’s and let’s be and let’s do and if you say you’re from Happy Valley villas, they’ll give you $1 off your first drink, or whatever it is, okay,

Kevin Davis 18:19

because we know that when alcohol is involved, our exposure increases. So the best thing to do is to limit it by saying, let’s go down the street for it. So yes, now here’s the third one, in terms of the maintenance part of it, to me, the most important one that we ought to be concerned with, that is safety and security during the holiday season, safety security is so important, especially in community associations, because we let outsiders in. There are people. Are predators out there who’s looking for packages. There is, there’s a lot there on safety and security. There’s vandalism there. You know, people come in and just park their trucks just to put lights up. People will steal the I mean, it’s just a lot of things happening out there that you’d be

Robert Nordlund 19:04

aware of. I’m reminded that I’m glad I’m not in your world, Kevin, because you you hear all the bad things that happen. Oh

Kevin Davis 19:10

yeah, yeah, we do. I mean, salt and battery, just stuff happens, you know, and and this is, this is not internal for the alcohol likes to think this. People who are outside, and they know you’re bringing packages in, just like we again. It’s like going to the mall. They have predators at the mall, waving people come in the packages. They have predators who you know may be hanging around your community association, maybe a condo. You park your car in there, you bring in packages up. So it is about awareness. Be aware of your security lights at night. And you mentioned that earlier that the security lights got to be on, it got to be checked. Make sure that the light bulbs are not out. Make sure that a blind spot so just again, be aware of the security once we enjoy ourselves during the holiday season. In order to enjoy ourselves is very, very challenging, where you know, if we know there are predators. Was outside who’s doing one thing, targeting us because we live in a controlled environment that we’re we believe we are safe and secure, and we know there’s no such word as safe and secure today. That’s the one area I think that we miss more so than anything else, is that there are predators out there, and they’re after the people who live in those human associations because they feel safe,

Robert Nordlund 20:24

I go back to thinking that you don’t necessarily need to be safe, but you need to look like you’re a safer place. And so a predator would say, I’m going to go somewhere else. So does that mean if you’re an association that right now only has security at night and weekends. Maybe, do you add a few more hours to bring the security down to afternoons through overnight? Or maybe, do you add a few hour or another more coverage, like you boost the swimming pool cleaning during the summer? Do you? How do you? How do you add more security or make make your association look less like a target?

Kevin Davis 21:07

First of all, go it goes back to that we said earlier about the paper. Just notify everybody to be aware this is the holiday season. Just be aware that there are people out there who will prey on people who want to enjoy the holiday season. So notification let people know that these things can happen. Just make them aware. If you have lights at night, you just make sure those lights working working properly, and making sure they are, you know, the time is, the time changes now, so make sure that the lights supposed to come on at eight o’clock. Make sure they shift over to five o’clock, you know, because there’s certain things that we need to be aware of, so that as we become aware, and again, for me, it’s about protecting your insurance. Because when you don’t do these things, that’s what happens. You end up having an insurance lawsuit against you, because guess what, if somebody gets hurt and because that light that’s supposed to be on has been burned down, or the time hasn’t been changed from 8pm to 5pm now, of a sudden, you open your up. You open yourself up to more potential liability.

Robert Nordlund 22:09

Yeah, what you’re talking about is simple things and inexpensive things and almost trivial things, but they can make

Kevin Davis 22:15

all the difference. That’s what we’re talking about. We’re talking about the small things that make a difference.

Robert Nordlund 22:19

We need to find a stopping point here too, because we’re way past midpoint, but it’s time to hear from one of our generous sponsors, after which we’ll be back with more common sense for common areas, the little things that make a big difference at your association during the holiday seasons.

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Robert Nordlund 23:03

And we’re back. Well, Kevin led us through the idea of enforcing the rules and the documents, people, places and the paper. That’s the communication, taking good care of the association, the maintenance. So Kevin you led off the episode talking about collecting assessments. So bring us home with part three.

Kevin Davis 23:23

Okay, to me, financial management is something we can’t take our eye off the ball during the holiday season. Okay? Because, as I said just a few seconds ago, there are predators out there who are looking at this time of year as a way of making money. So we talk about community associations. To me, I’m talking about fraud. I’m worried about fraud. I’m aware of people who live in community associations fraud, people who don’t live in fraud, who don’t live in association, looking at them for ways of fraud. I’m looking for fraud where people just don’t know any better. Board members don’t know any they make decisions. So start with that one, because at board of directors, you have a budget and guidelines. So within the budget and guidelines to tell you we can do what you can’t do. So we just talked about say, hey, take the board of directors, go out to the restaurant down the street there. Okay, so the last thing I want to see is Association get sued because they unlawfully or they illegally use funds they’re not entitled to. Okay? So if you are going to do that, make sure you budget and make sure you have the authority to do it. So whatever you do in the community association and when it comes to money, make sure you have the authority to do it and it’s in the budget. So those are the two key things when we’re talking about the financial part all the way around, but during the holiday season, more so than ever. Because guess what happens? We say, I got an idea. We should go all to go down to the restaurant that and and celebrate. We had a great year. We you know, we’ve been board members for a full year now. Let’s go do it now. It’s sounding a great idea. But do you have the authority? And is it in the budget that you may say, Well, we have the authority, but it’s not in the budget. Then what happens later is that we all, Robert, you and I, come back to the party. We had a great time. We’re laughing and joking past unit number six. You’re number six. Look out that window and saying, look at that. Oh, I wasn’t invited to the party. What party was that? Oh, for board members only,

Robert Nordlund 25:22

right, spending my money? Yeah, exactly, exactly. Now,

Kevin Davis 25:26

if you say, Guess what, it’s been budgeted and has been approved, then you walk away. You don’t care. But if you first leave that person to Unit Six, who always goes on everybody’s nerves, what are they going to do? It has been budget, you have the authority for doing that.

Robert Nordlund 25:38

Okay? Otherwise, it’s a great idea. And you need to shift to be a potluck over at my house, and Kevin bring a bottle of wine,

Kevin Davis 25:47

exactly. But again, that’s why these are little things we’re talking about, certain things you can do just budget and make sure you have your authority. So that’s, that’s, that’s the key thing, because the last thing we want to see is people being accused of theft. Because, again, and that person unit six, mine, they can say you took $2,000 for this restaurant. You have the authority for so guess what? You embezzled $2,000 from the association. You did it for yourself. No, we just, you know, but it’s just a headache you have, you know. Look, it’s a mistake. We didn’t mean it, and we’ll put the money back. And all of a sudden you raise a headache for yourself,

Robert Nordlund 26:26

and you damage the credibility of the board. You damage transparency. And, you know, we’re trying to build peaceful and productive associations. Here. You talk about lowering the temperature, and all of a sudden you just created an irritant, made things worse,

Kevin Davis 26:41

which goes to the next level of a actual theft for my boy. Remember, say, the Treasurer gets the money, and then again, they decides to do things that maybe no out and out dishonest. They take the money and decide, and this kind of thing. So you know what, we got holiday decorations. We’re gonna put it in the direct center and in front. And guess what, I’m put someone in my house there. So I’m gonna have to add an extra $1,000 because, guess I’m tired of the house down the street that everybody loves. I’m gonna do it on my street too. I’m gonna do I’m gonna decorate my house better than everybody else’s, and those kind of things that happen in

Robert Nordlund 27:18

association notice, they gave me $500 to spend on decorations. I spent 300 on the clubhouse decorations. 200

Kevin Davis 27:25

on me. That’s it. Ouch. That’s it. That’s that means those kind of things, and again, in their mind, versus mine, is like I have the right to do that, because, guess what? I I’m doing the work. I’m the treasurer Association. I did how many hours all these years? And who cares about two or not? Who cares about board decorations? You know, they don’t need that much decorations. They finish. And I’m using, you know, how we justify, in our mind, these kind of things? Yeah, this is a tough one. Cyber. So now, Sonia, you live in a community association, okay? And now you’re buying things. You’re buying all this equipment, okay? And now you got to pay for the equipment, and so you hired a contractor to do all your Christmas decorations, you know, okay, put them up, and we agree. And now, all of a sudden that that contractor gets hacked, and what he does is says, Guess what? I’m sending you. I’m sending, you know, I want payment right now because it’s overdue. Or guess what you’ve paid me right now, we’ll discount it by 10% and guess what happens? And then they’ll say this, here’s my new bank and routing number. Send it over here. Or here’s my Venmo. This is it. Send me immediately. What discounted by 10%

Robert Nordlund 28:35

Yeah, I’m getting anxious just thinking about that. Because that you see it more, I hear it. It’s just, it’s not good.

Kevin Davis 28:43

Got to be aware of the cyber so whenever, again, these simple solution, though, whenever you get a invoice from anybody that says, This is my new bank and routing number, be aware because call, because we don’t really change our banking routing numbers. I haven’t changed my banking routing number ever. I’m used to say what I’ve had for, I don’t know, open up a bank when I was 12, but when you see that on there, be careful, because again, they are. They’re predators out there, and they understand it’s the holiday season. And guess what happens on the holiday season? People are not as aware. They’re not as sharp as they normally are. So if you get a contractor come in your last year, whoever it is, and they get hacked, and all of a sudden you’re having so much joy and celebration, they say, Here’s my new banking rally number. Oh, sure, here’s the money right now. Oh, we give the discount. Great, wonderful. And all of a sudden it’s fraudulent.

Robert Nordlund 29:38

And then you have a problem on your hands. You have a hand. Oh, yikes. Okay. A related question, are we at a tipping point where, if you are okay, if you’re tipping someone, that’s cash, okay, but there are Christmas bonuses. Are we at a tipping point where we should be doing that electronically, rather than a paper check? Our checks now almost. Turning into hazards, or are checks still okay, rather than checks getting stoke and reused and things like that? Or is that a is that another episode?

Kevin Davis 30:08

No, no, no, no. It’s a great question, because one of the exposures right now in community associations is people will use these keys, master keys, open up the mailboxes and take checks out of all the mailboxes. Okay, okay. So whenever it is checks used, there’s more exposure to data than to have been in the past. So I don’t, I don’t use checks anymore, because you easily wipe them out, easy, you know, change them. And guess what? We don’t do monthly bank reconciliation anymore either. So checks goes out, we don’t look at it. We don’t see it in paid, not been paid. We don’t know until we get that phone call saying, you know, I haven’t been paid yet. So right now, checks are target in community associations, because easy to get that little key open up and look through everybody’s mail and get the checks and move on. So again, just the holiday season, we got to be more aware of it during normally, because we are January, February. We are aware, because those bills come in and we there’s more awareness of things. But right now, you know, we take, kind of take our eye off the ball a little bit. Well,

Robert Nordlund 31:09

I think that’s a big summary for what you’ve been talking about, that you’re not talking about anything new or different. Comes to enforcing the rules. That’s something you should be doing all year. You should be the communicating all year. The new pool hours are the pool will open on Memorial Day. It’ll open earlier this year. Whatever it is you’re you are communicating, and all you’re doing is giving us a focus here at the holiday time of year. Do these kinds of things? Give your guidelines, maintain the property. It should always be maintained. It should never have trip and fall hazards. When in the fall, when the leaves come down, you know it’s going to be slippery, yeah, that you’re going to have ice and more slippery cheese so many things and assessment collections, it’s your as a board member or a manager, you’re a fiduciary. You’re caring for someone else’s stuff, so you should be careful. So, yeah, exercise. This is

Kevin Davis 32:00

what this is really a miss, a risk management talk more so does holiday season. But it is for a reason, because right now, there is more exposure. We see more fires, more slip and falls. You know, we see more people drinking, and we’re seeing things, and the main thing is that they don’t have one thing, a holiday policy or holiday guidelines. You know, if they have guidelines, they can avoid a lot of these different things. And we have the holiday guidelines. You have a defendable a defensible position when you sue, because how come you didn’t stop? How come you didn’t do it? And can you imagine that lawyer says, Robert, you’re the president of Happy Valley Association. Do you have a policy for holiday how you should behave? And you say, no, what happens?

Robert Nordlund 32:45

Then you are exposed, yeah, and what you’re talking about here is all simple, inexpensive, changing a light bulb and the things that we should be doing anyway, yeah, I’m relieved, and I am encouraged. Okay, yes, Kevin, great, talking with you. I like finishing on a high note, any closing thoughts to add at this time? No,

Kevin Davis 33:05

enjoy the holiday. Guys. Enjoy, enjoy. We look forward to next year. 2026 should be a lot better year than 2025 for a lot of us. We all hope it will be so I’m looking forward to 2026

Robert Nordlund 33:17

so am I, and I’m optimistic. Well, we hope you learned some HOA insights from our discussion today that helps you bring common sense to your common areas. Thank you for joining us. We look forward to bringing many more episodes to you, week after week after week, we’ll be here, and it’ll be great to have you join us on a regular basis. Spread the word

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