176 | Hire Your HOA Attorney Before You Need One

176 | Hire Your HOA Attorney Before You Need One

Roger Minch 00:00

And so that means if I’m a new member of a board of managers and I see that the board doesn’t already have a relationship with an attorney, the first thing I would be telling the other board members is, “Do you realize the fiduciary responsibilities that we have to this nonprofit organization? Have you read the bylaws? They outline for you exactly what your responsibilities are.

Announcer 00:25

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Robert Nordlund 00:41

Welcome back to HOA Insights: Common Sense for Common Areas. I’m Robert Nordlund, and I’m here today for episode number 176 with a repeat guest. Now, while he’s a board member, you heard previously on episode number 39, I also consider him a valuable subject matter expert. So, with us today is Roger Minch, a condominium board member and attorney from North Dakota. He learned some important lessons as a board member about passing a significant special assessment at his high-rise condo, and he shared those lessons with us and also in a November-December 2021 issue of CAI’s Common Ground magazine. Now I also have a signed copy with me today. There we go, signed by Roger, of his Capital Projects case study, and that’s available at the CAI bookstore. And that’s a very well spent $15 that will save you a bunch of headaches, and I’ll have a link to that in the show notes at the end of the program. Well, we are here weekly, so if you missed last week’s episode number 175 with Eric Davis, a young leader at the Kevin Davis Insurance Services Company, you missed all his insightful thoughts about the future of our community association industry, and the simple list of five things that are in your control to improve your association and your board member experience. He’s a thoughtful young man. He’s a person I think you’re going to hear a lot from in the next few years. Well, if you missed that episode or any other prior episode, take a moment after today’s program, to listen to our podcast website hoainsights.org or watch on our YouTube channel. But better yet, subscribe from any of the major podcast platforms or our YouTube channel so you don’t miss any future episodes. Becoming a subscriber increases the podcast’s ranking in search results, helping others find this free resource, so they can be better equipped to lead their association. So join the team, help others, and subscribe. Those of you watching on YouTube can see the HOA Insights mug that I have here on my desk. puts a smile on my face. I got that from our merch store, and you can browse through what we have there from our hoa insights.org website, or the link in the show notes. And while you’re there, download a free Zoom background that you can use for your next board meeting. Well, we enjoy hearing from you, responding to the issues you are facing at your association. So if you have a hot topic, a crazy story, or a question you’d like us to address in a future episode, you can contact us at 805-203-3130, or email us at podcast at hoa insights.org. We try to shape our episodes based on what you ask, but today this episode is based on Roger and I continuing to be in correspondence, and Roger letting me know that he’s got a new article out, so that’s going to appear in a future issue TBD. Of Roger assures me it’s on the they’ll fit it in when they have the space list, and I he gave me a preview of the article. I’ve got that here. I liked it, and I wanted to share that with our audience. So we got Roger here on the program today, and he’s going to talk about the appropriate use of association legal counsel. So Roger, welcome to the program.

Roger Minch 04:17

Wait, you’re over.

Robert Nordlund 04:18

It’s great to have you here back. Are you still a board member at your North Dakota high-rise?

Roger Minch 04:24

No, I’m just the association secretary.

Robert Nordlund 04:28

Okay, so let’s let me dial into that. You’re an attorney, so you’re going to be careful with words. So I think of I think of you as a board member. You’re an elected leader at the association, but explain that nuance. The

Roger Minch 04:44

difference is the board members have the fiduciary responsibility to take care of the building and to take care of the owners, and most of those duties are outlined in the doctrine and the bylaws. Principally, a lot of times it comes from the common law, but all. Of those duties are with the members of the board of directors or board managers, are more often called. A lot of those duties are non-delegable. Some are, some aren’t, but the important ones are really non-delegable. So that all falls on the heads of volunteer board members. Most associations, the secretary doesn’t have to be a board member. Most of the other offices, like treasurer, vice president, president, they do have to be board members. But in our association and many others, the secretary doesn’t need to be a board member. And so I made a transition about five or six years ago, where I just indicated that I didn’t want to be on the board anymore because there was time for younger people in the building to start assuming that responsibility. But that I’d be happy to stay on as the secretary and make sure that the minutes were properly kept, that the records were properly kept. I get significant input in setting the agenda at the meetings and at all the meetings, frankly, that’s a pretty good role to have. You can have an awful lot of influence on association as secretary and a non-board member, and you don’t have the fiduciary responsibilities that the four volunteer board members have.

Robert Nordlund 06:17

Okay, so you’re still a volunteer, and it sounds like you were not elected. It’s just a volunteer position. The board appoints you. Okay.

Roger Minch 06:28

Yeah, because every time we have an annual meeting and election, one of the first things that that the new board does is designate who’s going to be the president, vice president, treasurer, and secretary. And so far they’ve they’ve been willing to nominate me as the secretary, and I accept. So that’s how that works.

Robert Nordlund 06:48

So you do not vote when they vote.

Roger Minch 06:51

No.

Robert Nordlund 06:51

Nice. So you’ve figured out a nice little sweet spot at your association where you can exert influence. You can help them make sure they’re moving in the right direction without the legal responsibility.

Roger Minch 07:05

That’s right, and I’ve I’ve got I always have the authority to speak up as an owner, and we have open meetings, and so we allow people to put suggestion box items in. It’ll automatically they come up for discussion, and we have a time at all of our managers’ meetings where any owner can speak, and so that includes me,

Robert Nordlund 07:24

because you’re there taking down the meeting notes and making sure they they stay nice and orderly. Okay, and we’ve caught you today. And again, everyone watching on YouTube can see you’re in your law office, so you’re still practicing law. Do you practice community association law, or I do. I don’t even know what kind of law do you practice.

Roger Minch 07:46

Well, I used to be a creditors’ rights bankruptcy specialist, and I’m about done with that work. Although I can still bring work into the firm and then give it to other lawyers. And what I focus on now is representing homeowners associations, writing about homeowners association issues. I find it an absolutely fascinating thing. And to any lawyers listening, I’m here to tell you that it’s hard for a young lawyer to find a new specialty area. And I’m I’m telling you that there are vast areas of this country where there just simply aren’t experienced homeowners association attorneys. For example, in North Dakota, we don’t even have a community associations institute chapter, and so if you go into the community associations directory, they have a professional services directory. They’ve got a they’ve got a directory of lawyers. There’s another. I should find the exact wording. This here. It’s called a professional services directory that has a case law database and all of that. There’s a directory of credentialed professionals. All kinds of things like this that are helpful for new lawyers. So if we’re just using Community Associations Institute, you’re well on your way to becoming an expert on condominium association law, owners association law. There’s a case law database, all kinds of information. So if there’s any lawyers out there looking for a specialty area, especially in parts of the United States where there’s not already established association attorneys, that would be a good specialty area to get into. And as far as associations that might want to be hiring a new lawyer that’s just starting out his or her career in this area, I would say give that new young lawyer a real good look if they’re interested and if they’re willing to engage in a fruitful conversation with you, and if you can tell that they’re engaged and they’re willing to listen and they’re willing to learn and that they’re interested in it. So many of the more experienced lawyers, myself included, we’ve heard and seen it all before, and we get bored. We’re not very good listeners, but like my mother used to say to me and my brother and sister when we’re fiddling around and not focused on things, she would say, “Land somewhere, Roger, so that we can pull it. And and some of the younger lawyers, they they are willing to land and they’re willing to listen. I think what you need is a lawyer that’s willing to really be invested in your association. If you have an experienced, expensive lawyer that thinks they’ve heard and seen it all and done it all, they don’t want to go to your board meetings. They’re perfectly happy to just have you bring particular problems to them when things have gotten to be a problem or gotten out of control. I would much rather have a young lawyer that’s interested in condominium association law, who would say, you know, I don’t know a lot about this, but I’ve got a lot of resources. I’ve got somebody else in my firm that can help me. I’m really interested in this. I’d like to know about your association. I’d like to come to all of your association meetings. I won’t even charge you to come to your meetings, but I want to see what’s going on in your association. I don’t want you to have to get to the point where you’ve got a problem where you have to come to me and explain everything. I’d like to be part of the process so I can discover along with you as problems arise, and I can suggest to possible solutions. And the best part of all of that, I would say, if I were the young lawyer, the discussions that we have are probably going to be covered by the attorney-client privilege. That’s a huge issue nowadays, Robert. Because if an association gets involved in litigation, for example, if somebody has ordered a reserve study and they’ve ignored it, or they’ve left it at a minimal funding level, and then all of a sudden, people find out that there’s a $200,000 roof that’s needed. There’s $300,000 worth of pipes that need to be repaired, and now there’s a there’s a huge problem with all of that.

Roger Minch 12:13

If you’ve got a lawyer and you’ve been discussing those issues as they come up with the lawyer, that will likely remain confidential, but if you haven’t had those discussions with a helpful lawyer, the first thing that will happen if there’s a lawsuit, a group of owners decide that they want to sue the board of managers because you got a reserve study three years ago, you didn’t follow its recommendations, you ignored it. Now we’re facing special assessments of $20,000 for the roof and $30,000 to repair the piping. We think that you violated your fiduciary responsibility. The first thing I can tell you from experience that the plaintiff’s lawyer will do in that case will start the lawsuit, send out some interrogatories and request for reduction of documents. They will ask for all of the email exchanges and correspondence between those board members, between the board members and whoever provided the reserve study. And if you’ve got things in there, in your minutes, even where one board member says, “I don’t think we’re satisfying our fiduciary responsibility of look after this building because we spent $5,000 for a reserve study, and three years ago we just put it in the file and we haven’t looked at it since. I think we’re going to get sued over this? That may be an exchange that occurs in your minutes. It might be an email message between board members, but you can imagine if there’s a lawsuit that starts and that kind of thing comes to light. If you don’t have insurance, you might as well write the check and start planning your own bankruptcy case at that point, but if instead of that, if you’ve had an engaged attorney all along, and it first comes up with the board of managers saying, “We there’s something here we better discuss with our lawyer, the correspondence that you have with your lawyer, the meetings that you have with your lawyer, all of that your lawyer can figure out how to tell you can be protected by the attorney-client privilege, and that’s a hugely important thing for having a lawyer and properly using an association attorney.

Robert Nordlund 14:31

I like that. So that two things that gives us a hint about where we’re going to go in a few minutes, but just the way you’re talking about needing a a good attorney on your side makes me think of the problem I’ve heard of there not being enough doctors in rural America. Churning doctors out of med school, they want to go to the local hospital in Chicago or Los Angeles or Detroit or you know somewhere. Even the TV shows. Where’s the. The pit, so it’s Pittsburgh. It’s got to be. I think there’s just such a big need for a local doctor to be treating just regular people, and who has a few moments to listen to what’s going on in their lives, rather than just being churned out. To my knowledge, CAI has a whole. You talk about a database. There’s a hierarchy where the pinnacle is the College of Community Association lawyers, and there are attorneys who can mentor and be the the people that will help you get into a specialty that is, like you say, valuable. And so, maybe we should have had the secondary topic of if you’re a lawyer, this is a good career path. So you talked about some of your concern for having someone on your side. What did you see in your experience as either being on the board or being board adjacent at your association got you started thinking about what does an association know or not know, and give you the idea to start documenting this and writing an article that will soon appear in the CAI Common Ground.

Roger Minch 16:17

Here’s what the problem is, and this is not an original thought on my point, but I’ve only heard one other person talk about this. 40 years ago, I can remember when we had our first condominium association in Fargo, North Dakota. Back then, our population was probably 30,000 people. It was somebody that built a four-unit building, and they thought it would be a good idea to make this into a condominium, small developments. It always was, but now they’re big time. Even in a place like Fargo, North Dakota, population $250,000. If you people, if you include all the bedroom communities, we now have associations like mine, which is a nine-story tall concrete high-rise that’s got 72 units. We’ve got some other developments that are getting to be that big in Fargo Moorhead. So these are big time businesses. Our particular building, I think the last time we had it appraised for insurance purposes, was something like $25 million. We’ve got a budget of $350 a month times 72. So these times 12, yeah, times 12. These have gotten to be big time businesses, Robert, and people in the audience. Big time businesses, big time money, big time budgets. I haven’t run across an association yet that would allow board members to be paid for their service. Now imagine, if you will, that major and even middling corporations in the United States had to be run by volunteer board of directors. To take an extreme example, could you find volunteers who would be willing to sit on the board of General Motors, or how about just a local major manufacturing concern? No, they’re all paid. So the problem that you end up having, I think, all over the country is, you’ve got volunteer directors of a volunteer nonprofit organization. They’ve got tremendous fiduciary responsibilities. They’re not paid for any of their time. They’re not paid for any of their effort. They come from diverse backgrounds. There may be retired people. There may be people like me who are lawyers that you might get lucky and have an accountant serve on your board. But they they really aren’t trained. They’re not very well suited to run major organizations. So what you have to have as a result is the team, and you can identify who those people happen to be. It would be a professional manager. It would be a professional attorney. It would be a professional accounting firm. It would be somebody who can do engineering studies, structural audits of your building, and most important, someone who can do a research study now. The volunteer board needs to have that team because they don’t have the expertise themselves to provide those services. More important, even if they did have the expertise to provide those services, they likely would have a conflict of interest if they were trying to do that for their own association. And more than that, they can’t get paid for all that work. So what ends up happening is you have to put together the team, you have to make the best of the team, and then you at least, if you can get a majority of the board of managers using the business judgment rule, you can hire the team members to do things, and you can pay the team members to do things from association funds, and that’s the model that we’ve got right now. And the only downside that I really see with that, other than the cumbersome nature of managing all those relationships, is one thing that. I’d notice not just in my association, but really all over the place, is the board over time can get too dependent on the professional manager, and they think we’ll just have the manager take care of that. We’ll have the manager find a vendor to take care of that. We’ll have the manager take a look at the reserve study and figure out whether or not we’re on track. We’ll have the manager get a hold of whoever did the reserve study and find this out and do this and do that and everything else.

Robert Nordlund 20:32

Yeah, double check for errors or accuracy or whatever.

Roger Minch 20:36

Sure, that that can work real good for a number of years, but little by little, the board members start to lose track of what’s going on in their building. And heaven forbid, if that professional manager were to resign or decide that it wanted to sell its business, and you couldn’t use that professional manager anymore, think of the problem that the board would have trying to refigure out all the things that the manager had been doing. Who are the major vendors? What’s been the communication with the purveyor of the reserve study? Where are we with the reserve study? And it’s just gets to be real hard to get caught up. So that’s why you have to have this team of professionals, but then you have to make sure that you keep track of what they’re doing and you keep current with what they’re doing. And a lot of board members just simply don’t want to do that. They don’t want to spend the time. They don’t want to spend the attention.

Robert Nordlund 21:37

Roger, I’ve heard a lot here, and I just want to summarize my notes. You’ve talked about the problem that we have volunteer directors who are not well trained to run a multi-million dollar nonprofit, which is really what most associations are. And so they need a team: the manager, the attorney, the accountant. I added a tax professional, engineering studies, reserve studies, and I started to get the the visual concept of being a conductor, where the conductor doesn’t play an instrument, but the conductor makes beautiful music. And then I started thinking about a baseball team, a hockey team, basketball team, football team, where the the coach again is not out on the field, but it’s important to have a good coach who’s involved, who knows this person needs to be here, this person needs to be there. This is our situation. This is our strategy. Involved and not letting, for instance, the pitcher on the baseball team do everything. The pitcher needs to be the pitcher. Needs to work with the catcher. The fielders need to know what’s going on. Everyone needs to be involved and engaged, you can’t just say you know just go do. So this this is fascinating, and I want to get to your your article on how to do this selection. But I’m looking at the time, and it is time to take a quick break to hear from one of our generous sponsors, and then we’ll return to hear more from Roger with some more common sense about common areas to hear about selecting an appropriate association attorney.

Paige Daniels 23:09

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Robert Nordlund 23:40

And we’re back. Well, in the first half of the show, we were speaking with Roger about this concept of a team, and the board members are the volunteers. The team is the professionals, and I started to think that costs a lot of money to have these people on the team. But isn’t that kind of essential to how a community association runs effectively and successfully.

Roger Minch 24:01

Yes, with these fiduciary responsibilities that board members have, the last thing you want as a volunteer is to have an association that won’t support you, and you end up operating on a penny-wise pound foolish basis.

Robert Nordlund 24:16

Now we’re going to, in just a moment, talk about again your article: how to specifically look for a good attorney to be on your team. But are a lot of those lessons going to apply to the manager, the accountant, the reserves day provider, all the other professionals that you have on your team?

Roger Minch 24:36

Yes.

Robert Nordlund 24:38

Okay, so you’re looking for credibility. You’re doing not a background check. You’re checking the references. You’re looking for their credentials, their experience. You maybe you interview them. Those kinds of things.

Roger Minch 24:51

That applies to every professional that you’re hiring, whether lawyer or non-lawyer, and that all boils down to the number one way to find a proper. Professional is word of mouth, and so that’s going to make across the board with attorneys and other licensed professionals like engineers and so forth. There’s other accreditations. There’s other directories. There’s other services that can help you with your search.

Robert Nordlund 25:17

Got it. Okay. Now I had the advantage of being able to read a copy of your article. You already kind of went through point number one, the why, because you’re going to get the wisdom. You’re going to get things potentially covered under attorney-client privilege that could be dangerous if it was discoverable. What steps would an association’s board go through to find someone qualified or capable.

Roger Minch 25:44

If you’re in a decent-sized market, probably a good place to start would be if you’ve got a professional manager. Ask your professional manager who do you use as a lawyer? Who do some of the other associations that you know about in the area use as a lawyer. You might know some other people that live in some other condominiums or some of the bigger homeowners associations in your area. Ask those board members. Hey, we’re looking for a lawyer in our association. We finally have gotten to the point where the law is starting to change. It’s getting a little hard for us to catch up. Who do you use as a lawyer? And you should be able to come up with a list of three or four people, and then just start interviewing them. And when I was preparing for this talk, I was just amazed. I I asked Chat GPT,

Robert Nordlund 26:38

uh oh,

Roger Minch 26:39

be the best condominium associate attorney in Fargo, North Dakota.

Robert Nordlund 26:44

Okay, it

Roger Minch 26:44

listed a bunch of people. It did include me. Oddly enough, it did not list the lawyer that we use for our own association.

Robert Nordlund 26:54

Interesting.

Roger Minch 26:55

I felt that to be kind of a major omission, so I wouldn’t put a lot of effort into that, but one of the things that it had at the end that was just absolutely spot on, and if we’ve got time, I could go through some of these. It said at the end, “Here are some questions that you might ask a profess a potential attorney when you’re going through the hiring process. It listed five of them, and I’m here to tell you, Robert, they were absolutely spot on perfect, and I would only do more to those.

Robert Nordlund 27:26

Or that’s both a plug for Chat GPT and a reminder of the limitations. You talked earlier about you don’t want to be pennywise and pound foolish. So guide our listeners through how do you know when it’s time to call the attorney, and you know start the clock and get some billable hours? How do you know when it’s time to to make that call?

Roger Minch 27:51

That’s interesting. Remember what if if you’re old enough like I am to remember Ann Landers. One of her sign. Do you remember one of her favorite sayings was, “The problem with life is you get the grade first and then the lesson. Now, in the in the case of reserve studies, we get the grade first and we get the lesson later. With reserve studies, everybody is fretting about legislation all over the country now, and in my opinion, that’s all playing catch-up ball. If you want to have legislation to really help homeowners and help directors with their fiduciary responsibilities, why not require developers before they start selling units in a condominium to have a reserve study and to have the recommendations of the reserve study built into the condo feed, it’s in place when they’re first starting to sell units. Now, if we go to using an attorney, you get the you get the grade first and then the lesson. You get the grade first if there’s a problem that’s developed in the building, all of a sudden there’s a fair housing complaint, or all of a sudden there’s a group of disgruntled owners that are threatening a lawsuit. Well, you got the grade, you’ve gotten an F. Now you have to go try to find a lawyer, and there’s a lot things that a lawyer can’t do when they’re in back, what I call back and fill mode. The best way to make sure that you get the lesson first and the grade second when you’re hiring a lawyer is hire the lawyer before you have any expectations of ever even needing that lawyer. And so that means if I’m a new member of a board of managers and I see that the board doesn’t already have a relationship with an attorney, the first thing I would be telling the other board members is, “Do you realize the fiduciary responsibilities that we have to this nonprofit organization? Have you read the by?” They outline for you exactly what your responsibilities are. We need some help with this. We should have a lawyer that’s involved with us right now that can help us review our bylaws, help us review what we’re doing, help identify for us the things that we should be doing, and at what point, like for example, when should we have the first structural audit of our building? When should we do a reserve study? What should we do about publishing the results of that reserve study with our owners? All those kinds of things done right, Robert. You and I have talked about building up clinical capital in an organization before. If you work with a professional, Ramp suggests that you work with an attorney. All of those things will help you automatically build political capital because that lawyer will probably tell the board, “Thank heavens, I. You have no idea how nice it is for me as a lawyer to be able to get involved in an organization before things have started to go wrong. We’ll work on this together as partners. I’ll read your bylaws. I’ll read the minutes of all of your meetings. You let me know the minute that something seems like it’s going wrong in your building, something that might be eroding the political capital and the reputation you need in our building, and we’ll work together as a team to address that early on when it’s real easy to fix.

Robert Nordlund 31:30

Keep your problems small.

Roger Minch 31:33

Yeah, and an example that you’ll never forget about that is addressing things early makes all the difference. Now you might remember, 10 or 15 years there was a big deal. Everybody was worried about an asteroid claying with the Earth, and the solution was that if we can identify where that asteroid is far enough from the Earth, we can probably hit it with a rocket and knock it just a 1,000th of a degree off, and that will cause it to miss the Earth and destroy the whole Earth. But if we wait five more years, we won’t have a big enough rocket. We won’t be able to divert that, and we’ll just be counting down the days to our device. So there you go. You got to get things early. Then it’s easy. It’s an easy problem, but if you wait too long, it’s too late.

Robert Nordlund 32:25

You know that I think that says so many things. Keep your problems small. Address things early, because our audience is all about wanting to have a safe and successful community, and you’re talking about a little bit of legal fees on an ongoing basis, just tuning things up, and like the engine in your car. For those of us who have gasoline or diesel engines, keeping it tuned, keeping it running smoothly, and so you don’t have a problem on the side of the road that where you’ve blown an engine. Yeah, it is getting to be a very complicated world out there, and having someone on your side, someone sitting on your shoulder, to look after what you’re doing and make sure you’re headed down the straight and narrow. That’s just a wonderful concept. And so, yes, a little bit of money spent on an ongoing basis will save the big problems that is going to break the budget, just break the spirit at the association, a lot of things like that. Well, Roger, it was again, it’s great to have you back on the program and have you share your insights. We went down a couple of rabbit holes about recruiting young attorneys and getting them on a great career path, but I love having people on the program that are trying to improve the community association industry, and that’s that’s what you bring to the discussion here. Any closing thoughts to add at this time?

Roger Minch 33:52

I think that if this is not done right, and if you don’t properly use an attorney, I’ve already explained what can go wrong with discovery and things that happen where they’re not covered by the attorney-client privilege. But I can’t stress enough the scope of the fiduciary responsibilities that a board of managers has. You have to take care of your board of managers just as well, or more than you have to take care of your owners, because if you don’t have the right team and you don’t get the right team together early on, eventually the members of your volunteer board are going to catch on, and you’re going to start to think. I read the bylaws the other day, and it says that I’m responsible responsible for the budget. The treasurer thinks to himself. The other members think I’m responsible for making sure that this building doesn’t collapse by Champlain Towers in Florida. And I look around here and I I don’t care for our manager. He’s not engaged very well. It just. On me that we don’t have an up-to-date reserve study, or we don’t have a reserve study at all. We have a lawyer that’s just barely capable of taking our phone calls, treats us like a nuisance, only wants to handle isolated problems at the time. I don’t think I want to endure this anymore as a volunteer and a potential breach of these duties. So I’m going to resign from the board. Yeah, yeah. Make sure you’re painting a

Robert Nordlund 35:29

scary story there.

Roger Minch 35:31

But that’s what that’s what can happen. And once that happens, then what you’re talking about is an association going into a receivership, which is another whole terrible thing, and the backup, if you’re not managing these these associations properly, is, and you get sued as a board. You may, if you’ve had a good insurance agent, gotten directors and officers insurance in place, that’s not a real good solution. That just means you’ve got an insurance company paying to defend you with fair selected lawyer in a lawsuit, but it’s still taking up all of your time. It’s possible that your attorney and I would check when I’m hiring a lawyer, make sure that the lawyer’s law firm also has malpractice insurance. That’s a backdrop if the lawyer ever does anything that causes big damages, and you think you could prove a case of malpractice. But those things come way too late. They’re not adequate fixes to what we’re suggesting here. Get the right team, get it in place way earlier than you think that you’ll ever need it, and then you’ll be fine.

Robert Nordlund 36:39

Yeah, and you said too often in life you get the grade first and the lessons later. With a good team, it sounds like you can keep getting A’s and B’s, and that way you don’t have to go to study hall, you don’t have to go to detention, you don’t have to get the bad things going on. Keep on that straight and narrow. Well, stay tuned for Roger Minch, M I N C H. Stay tuned for Roger Minch’s article in CAI’s Common Ground. It’s still titled “Using Association Council, unless they change it.

Roger Minch 37:13

No, that’s it. Unless unless Dan changes

Robert Nordlund 37:16

1. Okay. Well, we certainly hope you learned some HOA insights from our discussion today that helps bring common sense to your common areas. We look forward to having you join us for another great episode next week.

Announcer 37:31

You’ve been listening to HOA Insights: Common Sense for Common Areas. You can listen to the show on our podcast website, HOA insights.org, or subscribe on any of the most popular podcast platforms. You can also watch the show on our YouTube channel. Check the show notes for helpful links. If you like the show and want to support the work we do, you can do so in a number of ways. The most important thing you can do is engage in the conversation. Leave a question in the comments section on our YouTube video. You can also email your questions or voice memos to podcast at hoa insights.org, or leave us a voicemail at 805-203-3130. If you gain any insights from the show, please do us a huge favor by sharing the show with other board members you know. You can also support us by supporting the brands that sponsor this program. Please remember that the views and opinions expressed by the podcast do not constitute legal advice. You’ll want to consult your own legal counsel before making any important decisions. Finally, this podcast was expertly mixed and mastered by Stoke Light Video and Marketing. With Stoke Light on your team, you’ll reach more customers with marketing expertise that inspires action. See the show notes to connect with Stoke Light.