For years, association boards, fearful of antagonizing cost-sensitive owners, have deferred maintenance, ignored the need to build reserves, and maintained common area fees at unrealistically low levels.  While these policies have maintained the good will of owners, they have failed to maintain the association’s buildings and property.  Now the day of reckoning for many communities has arrived.  Roofs need to be replaced, siding is cracking, heating systems are beyond repair, and long-neglected streets require repaving.  Age and deferred maintenance have taken a toll at many associations, while poor financial management has left them without the finances needed to address these problems.

Confronting reality, governing boards are belatedly taking the advice of managers and doing what predecessor boards should have done – creating reasonable budgets, undertaking essential renovations, increasing common area fees to cover rising operating costs, building (or creating) reserve accounts, and in many cases, imposing interim special assessments as well.  Although these measures are necessary, homeowners often respond in a hostile manner. Instead of thanking the managers and board members for finally taking the necessary steps to protect the community’s well-being, owners are moving to replace them, killing the messengers rather than recognizing the truth of the delivered message.  In response to board actions to improve their communities, owners in community associations have begun increasing their attempts to recall sitting board members.  Community association attorneys are receiving more phone calls from board members seeking advice on how to handle irate owners who want to remove them from the board. 
The governing documents in most communities require the approval of a certain percentage of all owners to recall a board member and hold a new election.  As a practical matter, owners actually getting the necessary votes for a recall often proves to be prohibitively difficult.  Despite this fact, boards should seriously consider complying with the owners’ demands for a special meeting regardless of whether the owners can evidence the requisite number of votes as they constitute the board’s constituents.  However, the possibility of a recall does not translate into the need for directors to follow all the owners’ dictates and studiously avoid decisions displeasing to them. 

On the contrary, directors' fiduciary obligation requires them to protect the community’s value, which may mean taking steps that some owners, and possibly most of them, oppose.  Recall campaigns, however, usually do not spring simply from owner disagreement with unpopular board decisions.  Often, such campaigns reflect owner anger and frustration in addition to a communication failure by the board. 

Although difficult to envision any scenario in which owners will applaud all board decisions, owner support may come more readily if boards work to keep owners informed of the community’s problems as well as the board’s efforts to mitigate them.  However, when efforts to manage the community responsibly still produce a recall effort, board members should launch an aggressive campaign to defeat that initiative (assuming they wish to continue in office.)  If necessary, directors should go door-to-door to explain the board’s past decisions clearly in an effort to diffuse owner criticism and/or send informational mailings to rebut or clarify the communications of those seeking the recall. 
Unfortunately, by the time owners begin collecting signatures for a recall, or even talking seriously about it, they have passed the emotional boiling point, making rational discourse difficult to achieve.  In addition, the directors vilified for their responsible behavior will often respond angrily and simply resign.  Such resignations leave the community confronting the same problems but without the experienced leadership needed to provide solutions to these issues.  If legal action becomes necessary, the additional concern arises that the resulting ill will may poison the community for years to come.

 Although some boards think that it is best to administer tough decisions quickly and in one large dose like medicine, this approach often serves to antagonize owners.  Owners will swallow bitter pills more readily if they understand the ailments that need curing and have enough time to digest the required treatment.  The following prescription should effectively help a board to manage a major change within its association:
1)     Alert owners early to the problems you face and the financial implications for the community and its residents.  Communication is essential in a crisis, but it should not be limited to crisis situations; it should be ongoing.  The necessary dialogue will be less stressful and more productive if the board has procedures already in place for sharing information with residents and soliciting input from them.
2)     Get back on track.  If your association is facing a crisis, do what you need to do to handle the immediate problem, and then take the necessary steps to ensure that the community will not have to face a similar problem again.
3)     Don’t wait for owners to demand a special meeting to complain.  The board should initiate an owners’ meeting voluntarily and use it to make the case for the decisions the directors have made. 
4)     Plan carefully and thoughtfully.  You will want to use professionals with solid reputations for doing quality work, not only to demonstrate that the board’s decision-making process was prudent, but also to ensure that you get the best advice possible.
5)     If your decision will involve the expenditure of money, it is important to consider the financial impact. If your reserves are inadequate (or nonexistent), a special assessment is one option, but it is not the only means of financing necessary renovations.  Financial institutions are now much more willing than in the past to loan money to community associations, and sharing the cost of a loan payable over several years may be more palatable to homeowners and more manageable for many of them than a lump sum special assessment.
6)     Control the meeting.  Give angry owners time to express their concerns – sometimes the opportunity to “vent” is all that is required; but don’t let the emotions get out of hand.  Imposing reasonable time limits on speakers and insisting on some base line rules for civil discourse – no cursing or personal attacks – can help.
7)     Document your arguments.  Come to the meeting armed with cost estimates for required renovations and budgets detailing rising costs for insurance, energy, and other expenses.  Be prepared for owners, and there will always be at least one, who will insist that fees at comparable communities are much lower.  As this information is often procured from a source without a basis for it, directors should prepare to disprove it by compiling and presenting comparative fee information of their own.