Spring cleaning isn’t just for the home. The idea of a fresh start can apply to many things, including your association. This time of the year can be ideal for auditing your procedures, catching up on unfinished business, and tackling some administrative activities like reviewing vendor relationships, updating passwords, and purging old records. Here are some of our favorite tips for streamlining your association’s processes. They’re sure to make managing your community less stressful and make your work as a board member more enjoyable.
Revisit Existing Association Procedures
It’s easy to let years go by before updating processes and procedures. It’s worth making the time to review existing association processes for a couple of good reasons.
- Many might now be able to be automated.
- Some may be so out-of-date they’re no longer used, or they don’t meet local and state regulations.
Allied Property Group offers a range of financial, real estate, and association management services designed to help lessen your daily board workload. When reassessing current processes, look at things like communication guidelines, HOA fee collection, and bylaw enforcement.
Check-in on Committees
In our New Year’s resolutions post, we suggested recruiting some help from the community and establishing committees to handle things like website updates and newsletters. If you have groups working to increase association member involvement, now’s a good time to check in with them and see how things are progressing.
Schedule Regular Maintenance
Does your community have a pool, tennis courts, and other recreational areas that see higher use in the summer? Spring is the perfect time to confirm with your vendors they’ll be performing whatever maintenance needs to be done. And if you haven’t scheduled it yet, it’s a good idea to do it as soon as possible, as summer’s often the busiest time of the year for pool maintenance, HVAC, and landscaping companies.
Review & Update Legislation Changes
Florida’s association regulations sometimes change, with many rules revamped to make operations more transparent for association members. For instance, in 2020, the state passed five community association-related bills, including adjusting provisions related to emotional support animals, clarifying fireworks usage, and nullifying discriminatory language in covenants and Florida HOA laws. And on April 21, 2021, a bill updating homeowner association rules, particularly with respect to board emergency powers during a state health crisis, cleared the Florida House.
Isn’t It Refreshing?
Spring cleaning your association board procedures can give the community a nice breath of fresh air. Getting up-to-date on legislation, improving community relationships, and clearing out the cobwebs from outdated processes can be just what you—and your community members—need.
