086 | HOA Board Heroes: Putting Your HOA Community First! - HOA Insights: Common Sense for Common Areas

Episode Transcript
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KC Holland (00:00):
But what we didn't realize when I while I was on

(00:02):
the board, was we had some homesthat were rented out, and the
renters weren't able to get onthe listserv because they
weren't the property, so we hadto make some adjustments to
allow them to be present at theHOA meetings even though they

(00:22):
weren't the homeowner, theylived in the community, and we
were there to serve thecommunity.

Jennifer Johnson (00:30):
A regular highlight of the HOA insights
podcast is our board heroesfeature, where we dedicate one
episode each month to celebratethe remarkable efforts of HOA
board members. To us a boardhero is one of the 2 million
elected volunteers who deserverecognition for excelling in a
role that often goes unnoticed.
Today, we're excited tospotlight one of these
exceptional board heroes andshare their inspiring story. If
you match our definition of aboard hero, or know someone who

(00:52):
does, please reach out to us.
Our contact details and those ofour sponsors are provided in the
show notes.

Robert Nordlund (00:59):
Welcome back to Hoa insights, common sense for
common areas. I'm RobertNordlund, and I'm here to share
the story of an unsung boardhero named KC Holland. This is
episode 86 and if you missedmeeting our other board heroes,
you can find them easily on ourwebsite, Hoa insights.org, on
our YouTube channel, or bysubscribing to Hoa insights on

(01:22):
your favorite podcast platform.
Now let's hear a little bitabout KC and his story.

KC Holland (01:28):
My name is KC Holland, and I served as a
volunteer on the board of SenecaRidge homeowners association for
18 years. I served as a memberat large the Vice President and
the President's role for 10years, while I wasn't actively
wearing my board member hat, Iwas working every day and
raising my kids and motorcyclingand just enjoying things. Three

(01:55):
words I would use to describethe job of being a board member
are thankless, satisfying andcommunities. The main story I'd
like to tell is to emphasizecommunity transparency and
simplicity.

Seneca Ridge is a housing development in
Sterling, Virginia, consistingof 182 single family homes. The
property is about 40 years old,and KC has lived there for about
24 years. As you just heard, KCserved as a volunteer on the
board of directors for 18 out ofthose 24 years in a variety of

(02:29):
roles, including boardpresident. We decided to kick
off this interview, as we oftendo, by asking KC what first
motivated him to join the boardat Seneca Ridge, I was

KC Holland (02:41):
approached the shortly after we moved into the
house, somebody knocked on mydoor and said, Would you like to
be on the board? We'rerecruiting new members. And I
said, Not yet, maybe next year.
Let me think about it. And abouttwo weeks after that, I think it
was maybe a little longer, myneighbors came over to

(03:04):
congratulate me, and I was veryconfused what they and I said,
were you congratulating me for?
And they said, We see you'rerunning for the board. So I was
hijacked, and that's really thehow I ended up on the board.
Right away. So I was okay withit, because at that point, the

(03:26):
ballots had been printed andmailed to everybody, and I just
hadn't opened mine yet to see myname. So I said, Well, okay, if
it doesn't work out, I canalways design and that's kind of

it. I had a fair amount of sympathy for a KC
where I leftsudden nomination to the board,
because, as some longtimelisteners of the show will
recall, I became president of mycondo association In a surprise
move at my first board meetingwhen I attended as a resident.
Needless to say, board memberscan't, just as KC put it hijack
homeowners to join them on theboard whenever there is a

(04:02):
vacancy. So we decided to askhim what the election process
usually entails. So

KC Holland (04:09):
generally, the election process is that a board
member serves for a three yearperiod as a board member every
year there's an annual electionfor it's supposed to be roughly
a third of the board, which iswhy it's a three year period, so
that it can be staggered, andwe've got carry over between, so

(04:30):
that we don't have a case wherethere's an outgoing board that's
and again, completely brand new,incoming board with no
historical knowledge orbackground. After the general
elections for board members areheld. The officers are then
elected from within the boarditself as to who they want, who,
who the board wants to berunning as president and who

(04:53):
they want to be the secretary,etc, etc. Generally speaking,
there's some static positionslike the secretary. Okay, while
the secretary could be voted inas president, they usually
aren't. They usually don't wantthat role. They usually are
happy being the Secretary or thetreasurer, which is good,
because if they had, likeselected me to be the treasurer

(05:13):
instead of the President, wewould have been in a world of
hurt.

KC mentioned a key ingredient to successful
board transitions that has comeup time after time on this
podcast, maintaining staggeredterms for board meeting seats.
This ensures that institutionalknowledge is preserved between
elections, because there willnever be a completely new board
taking the place of the previousone. This talk of board

(05:38):
transitions got us wonderingabout how KC transitioned into
the role of president in thefirst place, and how he
successfully exited the boardafter serving for 10 years in
that position. Here's what Caseyhad to say. I

KC Holland (05:53):
transitioned into the president role somewhere
around 2007 or eight, I think,if memory serves correctly. The
former the former presidentbefore me, had was moving out of
the neighborhood, and we neededsomebody else to take over, and
I was the vice president, so itnaturally fell on my shoulders,

(06:18):
and then it just continued to bere elected as president every
year after that, I was notspending an inordinate amount of
time in the position ofpresident, because we have a
reasonably small community andthe board itself was more run,

(06:38):
more Like a committee than aboard, if you will. The
President was a key, key personfor some things, but not most
things. So it's, it wasn't atremendous a lot of time that I
was spending in any given week,unless there was something

(07:00):
really odd. Going my time tospend on the board was less and
less, and it was limited attimes. It's an all volunteer
board, but the President'ssomebody that needs to be pretty
approachable and reachable. Andbecause of job constraints and
family issues and other things,I wasn't always available as I
needed to be as the president.
So that's how I ended uptransitioning out. It

was good to hear that KC was self aware
about his availability or lackthereof, and that graciously
stepping aside for someone elsewas the best thing for the
Board's operational success.
With that being said, 10 yearsis a long time to serve as the
board president. On top of theeight years he served in other
volunteer positions, we feltthat there must have been

(07:50):
something motivating KC to stayon the board and continue to
serve the community at large. Sowe asked him what that
motivation was. What motivated

KC Holland (08:01):
me to stay involved in the board was that I liked
what we were doing for thecommunity. I liked being part of
the decision making process onwhat was right and what was good
for our community. And I really,really liked being the voice of
reason for some of the otherboys board members, there were a

(08:22):
couple that were very boisterousin their opinions on how things
should be and how they should berun, and what we should be
doing, and it didn't alwaysalign in the community's best
interests. So I stayed on aslong as I did to be a good point
of pointing out things thatsomebody didn't think about,

(08:43):
like, what are you kidding me?
The residents are going to be upin arms over that, those kinds
of community check or notcommunity but board checks,
right? Somebody thinking throughfrom a different perspective and
voicing it so that it was atleast considered. I think one of
the most positive aspects overthe year was being able to do

(09:06):
things that supported thecommunity and helped the
community. Our board being smallis much more personal than some
of the surrounding neighborhoodsthat are three or four times our
size. In fact, there's aneighborhood the borders ours
where the President puts on arobe and a gray wig and stands

(09:28):
behind a gavel or behind apodium with a gavel and bangs
the thing to order and oh, it'scrazy. It's nuts. Ours was so
not like that at all ours was abunch of community members that
got together in a room, talkedthrough things that were
impactful to the neighborhood,reviewed, you know, people's

(09:49):
submissions for theArchitectural Review changes. It
was a very easy going board. Itwas both. Is on the community
and not on the conferenceceremony of the fact that it's a
board.

KC had repeatedly mentioned that he
enjoyed how Seneca Ridge was arelatively small community with
a board that runs its meetingslike a committee, given the
dictatorial operation of theneighboring community. He
mentioned in his last answer, wedecided to ask KC what his
definition of a successful boardmeeting was. So my

KC Holland (10:27):
definition of a successful board be meeting is
when we would get together as aboard and work through the
issues and resolve the toughones favorably. Almost
everything's resolved resolvedfavorably in the end, but there
may be some contention along theway with people's opinions. But,

(10:47):
uh, a good board meeting is whenwe were able to actually make a
difference and take someactions. KC

had more to say about resolving contentious
situations during Seneca ridgesboard meetings, but first, let's
take a quick break to hear fromone of our generous sponsors.
Hi,

Kevin Davis (11:04):
I'm Kevin Davis, the president of Kevin Davis
Insurance Services. Ourexperienced team of underwriters
will help you when you get thatdeclination. We provide the
voice of reason, someone whowill stand by you. Our
underwriters bring years ofknowledge to our clients that
can't be automated by technologyor driven by price. As a proud
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(11:28):
clients. We are your communityassociation insurance experts,
and

we're back before the break, we heard KC
talk about how he defines asuccessful board meeting, yet he
alluded to the need for him tosometimes step in and resolve
contentious disputes betweenboard members at their meetings.
It's only natural for boardmembers to disagree with each
other, but we still decided toask if he had any special tips

(11:54):
for resolving these situations.
Contention among

KC Holland (11:58):
the board members was never violent or boisterous,
but everybody's opinions aredifferent, sometimes on various
topics, and it becomes a matterof resolving that by just
talking through things, askingpeople pointed questions about

(12:18):
their perspectives and theirpoint of views, trying to sway
one group or the other to lineup just so that we could come to
enough of a vote to get the jobdone? As President, it was kind
of my job to guide that. When ithappened, it didn't happen an
awful lot, but when it didhappen, it was my job to try and

(12:41):
get enough people in the roomtogether to come to an agreement
one way or the other, regardlessof what my own personal opinion
was, it was not my job to toinject my opinion and say mine
is the right way to do it and myit was My job to guide the group
and get them

to agreement.
In a post COVID world, it'scommon for HOA boards to hold
meetings in either virtual orhybrid meeting formats. This has
had the added effect of someboards, including ones we
featured on this program,significantly increasing the
attendance at board meetings assuch, we asked KC about the
current level of accessibilitythat Seneca Ridge offers for its

(13:23):
board meetings. Accessibility to

KC Holland (13:28):
the HOA board meetings was open to the public.
We held them in public locationsfor a while we were using the
library at the local high schoolbecause the principal had said
he would support the communityand donate that space to us for
our use. Sometimes there was aclassroom in the high school
because the library was alreadyin use that lasted until the
County School Board said, Wait,you can't do that. They can

(13:51):
request it through us. And atthat point it became a real
hassle. But that's okay, becausethe local library had rooms that
we could sign up for that wereeasy to sign up for. It wasn't
as convenient as the school,which is right in front of our
neighborhood, but it's only ahalf mile away, so it wasn't
horrible. Either the meetingswere open to the public. We

(14:14):
didn't do video conferencing oranything back at that point
because, well, we like to havean in person meeting. We like to
be able to see people. We wantedto see the residents, if they
came to the meeting. Somemeetings, we got lots of them.
Others, we didn't have any atall. It was full transparency.
All of the notes weretranscribed and released to the

(14:36):
neighborhood, the neighborhoodlistserv, because back then, we
didn't have a social mediapresence. We had our own
listserv that one of the memberswas running out of his basement.
So any emails that went out fromthe board went out through the
listserv, you had to be a memberof the listserv to even get the
emails. Only residents wereallowed to join the listserv,

(14:57):
because we didn't want it fullof. Uh, people trying to drum
up, you know, business and, youknow, have you want your Bucha
call this guy that that wasn'tthe intent of the list serve. It
was to serve our community. Butwhat we didn't realize when I
while I was on the board, was wehad some homes that were rented
out, and the renters weren'table to get on the listserv

(15:22):
because they weren't theproperty, so we had to make some
adjustments to allow them to bepresent at the HOA meetings,
even though they weren't thehomeowner, they lived in the
community, and we were there toserve the community.

It's not very common for community
associations to keep renters inthe loop of the goings on at the
community, but we felt that itwas a great idea that the board
Seneca Ridge includes renters intheir email lists as members of
the community. After all, whilethey may not have a vote,
renters spend as much time inthe community as homeowners do

(16:00):
so they absolutely deserve toknow what's happening. We want
to know more about the renterhomeowner dynamic at Seneca
Ridge, so we next asked KC whatpercentage of the community's
homes were occupied by renters.
I honestly

KC Holland (16:15):
couldn't tell you that we didn't keep track of
that. What I can tell you is wedid have issues with dues
collections at times because wedidn't realize there were
renters in a home that wethought was lived in by the
resident or the owner, not thenot that they had rented it out.
Those types of cases, there werea handful that we discovered

(16:38):
were renters that way around,and that was purely because the
dues didn't get paid. Thenotices went to the home the
renter didn't think theforwarded to the homeowner who
lived in whatever state. Pickone. So it eventually came to
light, we had to figure out howto reach them and collect it is

(17:01):
later. But as far as percentageof renters versus the actual
owner, couldn't tell you, but itwas, I suspect it was very low
at that point. I think it's goneup a little bit in the most
recent years, but notsignificant.

At this point in the interview, we felt that
we had a pretty goodunderstanding of Seneca Ridge
homeowner association, and couldconfidently say that it was a
pretty well run organization.
However, we wanted to know howKC felt about the association,
especially now that he has somedistance from it. Here's what he
had to say.

KC Holland (17:36):
So our eight to eight is a little bit different
than most of them in the area,especially here in Northern
Virginia, where there's lots ofmoney and lots of big houses and
lots of very rigid HOAs, we arecompletely self sufficient. We
don't have anything externalthat we deal with, as far as the

(17:56):
management of the board or ourdecisions. Long

time, listeners to this program will recognize
that our board heroes opinionson professional management have
differed wildly from episode toepisode. Some such as Bill
Turney in episode number 73 feelconfident that they can manage
the community on their own,while others, such as Pam home
from episode number 82 seeprofessional management as key

(18:26):
to prevent Community Associationdysfunction and chaos. That's
something we obviously try toavoid. Well, KCappeared to
firmly fit in the formercategory, so we decided to ask
him if he had any tips for boardmembers that are seeking to run
their community without the helpof professional managers.

KC Holland (18:46):
My biggest tip to boards in general that are
hoping to be self sufficient,and maybe they have a management
company now and they're tryingto get rid of them. My biggest
tip would be transparency. Betransparent with your residents.
Bring your residents in, getthem involved. Be personable.
Don't be a machine. Don't be abusiness. If you are upfront,

(19:08):
transparent and work with yourresidents, and you have
residents that are willing tosupport the board, that's also
key, because your onlymembership of the board will be
your residents. You've got to beopen and honest with them 100%

as the saying goes, honesty is the best
policy. We next asked KC if hisdedication to honesty and
transparency between the boardand the homeowners was a key
ingredient in the success oftheir association. It's

KC Holland (19:38):
been community driven since the beginning. The
neighborhood was established in1984 85 timeframe. Our house was
built in 84 actually might havebeen 83 to 84 some of the older
homes are a year older thanours, and it's just how it was
built out in the beginning. Andit was built in such a way back
then, there was no i.
Metropolitan area surroundingthis neighborhood. It was

(20:01):
nothing but trees. It was alittle community, and everybody
had, pretty much got to knoweach other. And you know, if you
needed help from somebody, yourbest bet was to go next door and
see if they could help first,right? Because it wasn't a big,
sprawling metropolis that's, youknow, come in the time that I've
lived here even, I mean, when wefirst moved into this house, in
2000 there were still dirt roadsin this town, not many of them,

(20:25):
and only in, you know, thehedges of it. But those are long
gone. The trees are all goingaway. Everything's being chopped
down and built up, and all ofthese new, you know, multi use
communities with businesses,residences and entertainment and
food, all in, you know, threebuildings. It's just, it's it's

(20:47):
not what this town used to be,and this neighborhood is a
reflection of what it used tobe. I pointed out that we didn't
have anything because that crazyneighborhood where they have a
robes and wigs. They've got acommunity swimming pool. They've
got a community center where youcan sign up and, you know, rent

(21:07):
it for pennies, I guess, veryinexpensively, to have like,
birthday parties and things ordo things. There are aspects to
having those things that ourneighborhood really would have
benefited from. But the flipside is there's a cost
associated with it, because wedon't have that. We don't have a
reason to charge exorbitantfees. We don't have any

(21:30):
maintenance overhead costs forwe're not paying the board.
During my time as President, wedecided that the board, based on
the way the covenants werewritten, the board could be
exempted from the HOA duesbecause we were providing a
service to the community. Andthat lasted a few years, until

(21:51):
somebody decided that theydidn't feel right about it,
because we are also residents,and so the board reversed that
the decision. But for a fewyears there as a board, we
didn't pay our dues. We didn'thave dues that we were required
to pay because of the way thatthe board had decided. The
initial decision was based onthe fact that we can't be paid.

(22:12):
This is volunteer time, so itdoesn't say that we can, we
can't be exempt from the dues,so that's how we took it for I
think it was three or four yearsthat we did that, and then
somebody been one of themeetings, brought up that they
didn't really feel comfortabledoing that, and were transparent

(22:33):
to our community. So all of thiswas in the minutes that were
sent out. Nobody objected, butone of the board members brought
it up and said they just didn'tfeel right. So as a as a board,
we voted, and we voted ourselvesback into paying dues every
year.

We were pleased to hear that KC and the rest of
the board at Seneca Ridge weredoing their best, as my co host
Julie admin often puts it, fillthe communication vacuum in
their community. Well, given theCOVID pandemic, recent
hurricanes in the southeasternUS, as well as the ever present
threat of wildfires here inCalifornia, we wondered how the

(23:10):
board was handling communicationin the event of an emergency. We
asked KC about this, and if hehad any specific examples, the

KC Holland (23:18):
board leads the community in the event of an
emergency, whether it's COVID orsomething else, more
specifically else, I'm going tospeak to something recent that
happened, even though I wasn'ton the board, because it
happened very, very recently. Wehad a house in the neighborhood
that literally exploded onenight and unfortunately caused

(23:41):
the death of a firefighter, andit's was a very, very tough time
for our community. Throughoutall of it, the president of the
HOA stayed in touch with thehomeowner and with the fire
department and the investigatorsthat were doing the
investigation and keeping thecommunity informed on what was

(24:01):
happening and what was going onwhen the investigation was
concluded, he let everybody knowthat when they were starting the
investigation, they were goingto walk off the streets so they
could do their investigation. Sohe let everybody know that as
well, which was especiallycritical, because in our
neighborhood, there's reallyonly one road that comes into
our neighborhood and goes out ofour neighborhood, and if you
live in front of that, you wereimpacted by the traffic that was

(24:27):
just trying to get in and getback to their homes. Because the
roads were blocked for theinvestigation, we had a police
checkpoint so that the onlypeople pass could be residents.
So if you're going back to Ilive back behind that I had to
go through a police checkpointand show an ID that had my
address on it before they wouldlet me pass the area. So the

(24:51):
President was very good aboutkeeping people informed and
updated on things as they weredeveloping and then they were
occurring, and making sure that.
Residents knew, to the best ofhis ability, at least, what was
coming at us and what was goingto be impacting our daily lives
throughout the whole process.
Throughout

the interview, KC repeatedly mentioned that
Seneca Ridge's size and lack ofcommon area amenities
differentiated itself from manyof the other communities in
northern Virginia. We wonderedhow that affected the
association's assessments, theiroverall budget, and whether or
not they ever had to pass aspecial assessment. Here's what

(25:31):
he had to say. With

KC Holland (25:33):
regards to special assessments on my during my time
on the board, we didn't reallyhave a need for them. We had a
couple of times where there wereunexpected expenses, and we
talked about maybe doing aspecial assessment in order to
fund it. But the reality was wewere, or always, and probably

(25:53):
still are today, even though I'mnot involved anymore and can't
save a certainty well, wellfunded through just the
collection of our dues. So ourannual budget was determined
every year based on what weforesaw coming at us. As an
example, if the common areapaths needed to be repaved, that

(26:14):
was figured into the annualbudget, if trees on the common
grounds needed to be trimmed,that was figured into the annual
budget. Snow removal was figuredinto the annual budget. All of
those things, of course, hadtheir own processes to determine
what that was going to cost.
Snow removal, we would get threeor four bids from companies on
what they would charge us. TreeTrimming was the same. Paving,

(26:36):
the pass was the same. So it wasreally a process of getting
those bids, figuring out whichcompany we were going to go
with, and then adding that intothe total tally for what we were
going to project as the nextyear's budget. Our dues were
used to support the annualbudget every year, as well as
feed into our surplus forexpected expenses and so. And as

(27:01):
I mentioned already, we have asmall community. We didn't have
monthly dues. We didn't have,you know, a lot of services that
we are collected for. And so ourdues were always low, and still
are today, but they are morethan enough to cover all of the

(27:23):
financial needs of theAssociation as well as build a
surplus. And in fact, to thatpoint, when I first moved into
my house, I think the dues were$50 a year, and they stayed that
way for probably the first 10years that I lived in this home.
We retained a lawyer to reviewthe bylaws, because the bylaws

(27:46):
said that we could only increaseby a certain percentage every
year, and we wanted to confirmit that was, in fact, the case,
and have our bylaws reviewed andmake some changes to them. So we
brought in a legal expert toassist with us, to assist us
with that had a non retainer,and just discovered that, you
know, we could increase our duesby this percentage. I believe it

(28:10):
was 3% every year. And over theyears, we built that up to
somewhere just over 100 I thinkit was $107 a year for dues. And
then we discovered that thesurplus that was building as a
result of that was way too muchmoney for us to need. So we
talked to the lawyer aboutreducing he said, you can reduce

(28:33):
it all you want to. Justremember you can only grow to 3%
a year. So we cut it back to

$75 together.
Finally, we decided to close outthis interview, as we often do,
by asking Casey if he had anyadvice to share with the board
members that tune into thisprogram.

KC Holland (28:52):
I think the one point I would make to people
that that are consideringserving their community and
joining a board is that theyshould do it, and they should do
it with the with the mindsetthat they're doing it for the
community, and they should bethe voice of reason on the
board. And when they hearsomething that has a negative
impact on that community, theyshould bring it up, and they
should speak out against it. Andthey should, you know, make the

(29:14):
effort to keep it communitydriven and for the betterment of
the community. And maybe they'llwin some battles, and maybe they
won't at all going to depend ontheir board and their
neighborhoods, but you justdon't know until you try to be
that you know voice of reason onwhether or not you're going to
be able to affect change. Wewant

to publicly acknowledge Casey for performing
a thankless job well, andcompliment the entire board of
directors at Seneca Ridge homewars association for taking
their responsibility seriouslyto act in the best interests of
their association. We hope yougain some HOA insights from
Casey's story, and that it helpsyou bring common sense to your

(29:55):
common area. Well, thank you forjoining us, and we look forward
to another great episode nextweek. Week. And remember, if you
match our definition of a boredhero, or know someone who does,
please reach out to us. Ourcontact details are provided in
the show notes.

Jennifer Johnson (30:13):
You've been listening to Hoa insights,
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The most important thing thatyou can do is engage in the
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(30:35):
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(30:56):
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086 | HOA Board Heroes: Putting Your HOA Community First!

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