« June 2006 | Main | August 2006 »
July 31, 2006
Helping get the message correct
I've spent the past week trying to straighten out various members of the the media on a variety of issues. The one they are most often getting wrong these days is about the "Freedom to Display the American Flag" Act, signed into law by President Bush over a week ago. A local headline shows the problem "Condo Owners Can Now Fly Flag Where and When They Want" The story then opens with quotes from owners who are going to run right out and buy that 20' flag pole to put in front of their unit. OOPS! That's not what the law says, especially regarding condominium associations. I grind out a letter correcting the writer of the story, but it rarely sees print, so when the owner puts that flag pole up and the condo association tells them to take it back down, they can thank their local newspaper for both misleading them and failing to correct it. For the record, the law prevents condo associations from preventing the displaying of "the flag of the United States on residential property within the association with respect to which such member has a separate ownership interest or a right to exclusive possession or use." That basically the condo association can't stop them from displaying the flag inside their unit or from a limited common element, such as a patio or deck. Oh, but they can restrict the size of the flag, possibly the days, and the manner of displaying the flag. In other words, as far as condo's are concerned, not much has changed. The new law has the biggest impact on HOA's and POA's, but the writers rarely make that distinction. If a story like this has appeared in your lcoal paper or on the local TV news, you may want to get a letter out to the owners ASAP, before that one owner buys that flag pole and concrete. Check with your attorney as to the need for revising your rules, and then let people know. (For the record, the legislation doesn't bother me, but bad reporting does).
Other issues from the media that needed correcting during the last week:
No, not all board members are the spawn of Satan.
Yes, associations have periodic problems, just like any other segment of society.
No. a $12,000 special assessment is not normal, but neither were the hurricanes that created the shortfall.
Yes, most board members do live in the community and they were elected by their neighbors.
No, I don't know why the manager is sending out violation notices about dead grass in the middle of a drought. Maybe inspecting all of those properties in the heat has gotten to him.
Yes, there really is a difference between condo's and HOA's.
Well, you get the idea. A suggestion to reporters---go beyond the first few listings in Google when you're doing research. Just because they might be ranked high doesn't mean they have all of the answers.
Posted by joewest at 12:51 PM
July 12, 2006
Programs starting to seek out community associations
This week I was approached by one governement agency and ran across another that was targeting community associations as focal points of their efforts. This is somewhat new and is an acknowledgement that community associations touch a rather large part of our population and are increasing in importance.
The first is the "ENERGY STAR® Change a Light, Change the World” program run by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). They want to encourage people to change light bulbs to those with the Energy Star® label in order to save on electricity consumption and reduce emissions from power plants. A good cause, a simple request. It's worth re-printing in your newsletters and even making a project out of it yourself. The details can be found at:
http://www.communityassociations.net/articles/energy_star.html
The second one I ran across in a nes story when an association was awarded it "Firewise" certification. "U.S Firewise Communities/USA" is a program to help those communities who are in areas where wildfires are possible. The program undertakes a risk assessment and works with the community towar a set of goals to improve their communities ability to reduce the risks of having a fire seep through them. This include a variety of projects. Gor information about the program, visit their web site: http://firewise.org/usa/about.htm and to see how one community gained their accreditation, see the article. If the article is gone, here's another link about them: http://firewise.org/usa/kohls_ranch.htm
Posted by joewest at 11:53 PM
July 1, 2006
Push one if you wish to read this again
This weekend, before July 4th, is one of the busiest travel weekends of the year. Local news often do stories about how crowded the roads and airlines are. This week, in our local paper, they focused on the fact that Northwest airlines, which handles about 70% of our traffic, had the worst customer service rating of any national airline. To those of us who have been forced to fly this airline over the past twenty years, this comes as no great shock. Personally, I do long, hard internet searches for ANY other reasonable alternative before flying Northwest. The bad experiences I've had are too numerous and tedious to outline here, but suffice it to say, that the majority of travelers on NWA are not thriled that they dominate our air travel choices. The decisions (or lack of) by NWA's ownership and corporate leadership, will someday be a textbook of what not to do, in order to operate a successful company. Along the way, they have totally destroyed the morale of the employees, who no longer care about performing their jobs. They are simply putting time in, and the passengers are suffering because of it. They're in bankruptcy now, demanding pay and benefit cuts from all of the employees, but of couse not for senior management, futher reducing morale. They are overloading planes, charging extra for aisle seats, gotten rid of pillows, blankets, meals, or any form of personal interaction with their customers. They are simply herding cattle.
Unfortunately, they are not alone. I talked with someone who had just returned form a family vacation to DisneyWorld in Florida, and their comment was that the service had deteriorated greatly from prior visits. Disney used to be the shining example of how to treat customers in order to encourage them to stay longer and spend more. It seems companies are praying at the altar of increasing "shareholder value" while reducing customer service.
All of this is to get to the point that I'm starting to see this trend in in our industry. Call a management company these days and it takes 5 minutes to of automated instructions to reach the voice mail of someone you hope can help you. The industry, which has almost always been behind the technological curve, is racing to catch up so fast that it isn't thinking out the ramifcations of the changes they are implementing. If it reduces costs or time spent, then lets plug it in. We'll worry about what our clients think later. Well, I'll tell you what they're thinking - the same thing I'm thinking about Northwest - where did it go, and why should I continue to use their services?
Before you buy that cutting edge piece of technology or implement that new policy to handle some assocaition issue, don't just ask yourself if it will improve efficiency or provide better service, ask yourself whether the customer will actually recognize that service is improved, or better yet, ask them.
Posted by joewest at 10:21 PM
News Feed is back up and running
Thanks to Lawrence at Radio Userland, the news feed is back up and running. He stuck with the problem until he got it fixed. I'll send a note to the company letting them know how much help he was. (See later post)
Posted by joewest at 10:18 PM