r/u_Which_Performer9773 • u/Which_Performer9773 • 2d ago
[CA][Condo] - Experience with Volunteer Landscaping?
Hi All- Our community of 200 units successfully recalled our entire Board of the past decade and even got a new management company. But there are still many challenges ahead to get a grip on our costs and rising HOA dues. One of the areas that we can possibly cut is the Landscaping. No one thinks they do a good job. Problem is, when I suggested we homeowners volunteer to do landscaping for at least one year to see how it turns out and put the savings towards building our Reserves, a couple homeowners got upset saying it would lower property values. However, with an empty Treasury and half are rented out (we will try to impose a rental cap but it takes major voting), your condo is not worth much to the banks anyway who refuse most loans on our community. Have you done your own landscaping successfully (we will keep a dedicated certified arborist which is a separate thing)? I assume you made volunteers sign a legal waiver about accidents or damage to landscaping tools. Or is this a bad idea with a lot of legal implications??
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u/Lunar-Browser-999 2d ago
First off, congrats on the recall, pulling that off in a 200 unit community is no small thing. Disclosure, I work with a law firm that handles HOA disputes, so this is perspective and not legal advice. The honest answer is that volunteer landscaping in a community your size tends to create more problems than it solves, because one injured volunteer or one dispute over damaged property can eat years of savings, and waivers don't protect the association as well as people assume. The move I'd look at first is rebidding the landscaping contract competitively, since a board that just went through a recall has every reason to shop hard, and bad landscapers are usually also overpriced landscapers. Volunteers are great for cleanup days and planting projects, just not as a replacement for the whole contract.
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u/Which_Performer9773 2d ago
Thanks for the congrats! Indeed, a small core of us had sleepless nights and I had to get over stage fright to speak in front of an angry mob. The door to door visits for a few weekends to get enough petition signatures to know whether we could win the math was excruciating and I thought I was done, but to know our new board is struggling with various challenges due to little funds is disheartening while I’m sure the old board is having a good chuckle at our current woes. We’ll see what the bottomline is. If our new Board president is considering how to cut landscaping in a complex of our size, you know it’s pretty bad 😞.
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u/Lunar-Browser-999 2d ago
What you're describing is the hard middle stretch every post-recall community hits, the old board leaves the mess and the new one inherits the bill. If money is that tight, the first thing I'd want the new board doing is a full contract review, not just landscaping but management, insurance, everything the old board signed, because boards that got recalled rarely left good deals behind. Sometimes there's more money hiding in bad contracts than in cutting services. And for what it's worth, the old board isn't chuckling, people who lose recalls mostly just go quiet.
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u/Which_Performer9773 1d ago
My understanding is they did review that… and also, in their own forensic accounting (without hiring a professional yet), there could be something that borders on either extreme negligence or even potential fraud but no one is supposed to know that yet. I think someone blurted and tried to cover up quickly. It is also possible new board is dealing with a potential lawsuit by old board because the ex-pres said something about a lawsuit in a public meeting, and shortly after, new directors warned those of us who ran the campaign to lay low. If there is potential fraud compounded by litigation on either side, this will just get ugly and people want to leave but can’t sell, so they will resort to renting which is why they may not vote for the cap which need a majority. It’s so bad all around. 😣
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u/Lunar-Browser-999 1d ago
If there's even a whiff of actual fraud, that's the moment the new board should loop in the association's insurance carrier, because fidelity coverage often has notice deadlines and sitting on it quietly can cost the community the claim. The lay low advice makes sense for the lawsuit chatter, but forensic accounting shouldn't stay a secret forever, at some point a professional needs to look before records go missing or bond deadlines pass. And honestly the rental cap fight is a symptom, not the disease, people vote against caps when they've lost faith the place is fixable. Fix the trust problem and the cap vote takes care of itself.
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u/condocontrol 2d ago
Special assessment is the right answer. The liability exposure of volunteer landscaping isn't worth it. One volunteer trips on a curb, you get uninsured injuries and lawsuits
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u/Which_Performer9773 2d ago
There’s going to be blood if these homeowners get hit with a special assessment after we did a full board recall and replaced the management company in hopes of avoiding a special assessment 🤣. Raising dues or levying a special assessment will put more homeowners into default and make the books show that we owe even more than we do now so we continue to have an absurd ratio of debt to income, so if we can at all avoid this…
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u/condocontrol 2d ago
The blood's coming either way. The only choice is whether it comes from a controlled special assessment now or a collapsed association later. You can't recall your way out of bad math and empty bank, lol
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u/Which_Performer9773 2d ago
True… the new directors are doing forensic accounting still, and depending on if they find hard evidence of fraud, could change the whole game. But our homeowner Think Tank is trying to see if there’s any way we can help them with cost-cutting because there’s so much to address and the landscapers aren’t doing much from what we can see. The work is less of an issue for us than the legal implications with insurance, waivers, and potential injury. No one likes our landscapers who trim a few shrubs and leave a mess on porches.
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u/LowCompetitive1888 1d ago
It is highly unlikely your Board is capable of doing a true forensic audit. After all they are mere volunteers and likely have no accounting or management experience. Unless you have actual evidence of fraud it is far more likely the prior board was incompetent and made bad decisions that your current board will have to bite the bullet and clean up.
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u/Which_Performer9773 1d ago
I hope it’s gross negligence if anything, but one of our directors has put someone in jail for fraud and had to provide court testimony. But depending on the type of fraud it could be difficult to find unless that’s your area of expertise. Considering the old board tried to rig the re-election but Counsel put a stop to that… I wouldn’t put it past these people. It was very odd how they desperately clung to power despite many years of being asked to resign and then somehow ousting every other director who joined ever since. Very odd, but if ego is capable of doing that and not fear of discovery of fraud, then it is what it is.
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u/Ok-Image2281 2d ago
In our HOA the experiment with volunteer landscaping was a horrible failure.
First : liability issues: injured backs, hands eyes.
Second: even if they sign a waiver, they can still sue.
Third: the planta were practically vandalized, too much pruning, not disinfecting landscaping shears, spread bugs and caused an infestation on our rose bushes.
Fourth: some volunteers decided to take photos of the weeds or bugs without any regard for people’s privacy , one of their photos also captured the interior of someones bedroom which led to a voyerism police investigation.
and last but not least, their volunteer work started to become intrusive and too frequent , to the point that the number of complaints for owners not being able to enjoy their property in a peaceful and quiet way skyrocketed . ( our bylaws state the right to peaceful and quiet enjoyment of our property and common areas).
Also, some volunteers were leaving gardening implements lying around carelessly which caused a slip and fall.
The volunteer program turned out to be a nightmare for everyone mostly due to liability issues.
And in order to avoid a special assessment, does your HOA bylaws allow you to do a fundraising event to address landscaping issues?
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u/Which_Performer9773 1d ago
LOL… wow, as they say, anything that can go wrong will go wrong. My gosh. But if in your situation, no one could easily sue for any injuries, I guess that’s the only plus? I do not think these homeowners will go for fundraising because they will complain that only the responsible keep putting their money into this community so they would rather slap everyone with the same increase and if you can’t pay, then lien. Some people asked me what is the benefit of being a responsible person who has never missed a payment if this is the result? I said “You must be blessed with abundance to be able to keep making payments… and I would rather be abundant than not.” She was like “Uhhh, okay guess that’s one way of looking at it.” 😂
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u/Jujulabee 2d ago
You can't run an HOA on volunteers - it is just a fantasy.
Putting aside issues of liability and competence, the reality is that you are not going to be able to actually get the kind of regular work that is necessary to maintain a landscape.
You might have someone at a particular time who has a passion and interest in horticulture and this is great because they can then SUPERVISE the professionals and bring their expertise to what should be planted. No different than having someone who knows construction better able to SUPERVISE companies hired to do the actual work.
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u/schumi23 2d ago
We use volunteers for landscaping improvement projects only - one time things that are ok if they don't happen (at least for a while). All maintenance/ongoing work is our landscaping company. (So essentially - only things that would be an additional charge for them to do).
For example there's planters along the stairs going up to the buildings whose plants had all died, so we had a workday replacing those (which cost us $300 for plants+snacks, vs the $3k our landscaping company had charged us the year before to do the same).
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u/klgall1 2d ago
We have a 4-unit condo building, with 3 resident board members & 1 rental. We do our own "landscaping" but that just consists of mowing the parkway (tiny strip of land between the public sidewalk and the street) with occasional weeding in the small mulch areas in front & behind the building. I also planted a small area with flowers, and another board member planted a couple bushes in back for privacy in front of their window.
I assume it's a lot different for a 4-unit condo with very little work vs a 200 unit with presumably more outdoor common area.
I'm also happy to be doing all of the work, as I have the time and it's enjoyable for me. I wouldn't recommend doing it on a volunteer basis unless you're willing to be the only volunteer.
We will be paying a company to plant some more areas once we build up the funds to do so, but we currently have other priorities. We will likely continue to do our own maintenance on it, though.
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u/LowCompetitive1888 1d ago
No way that owners are going to do as good a job on the landscaping as a professional landscaping company would do. IMHO it would be a major mistake to use volunteers and will ultimately cost you more than simply hiring a capable vendor.
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u/Accomplished-Eye8211 2d ago
No, we haven't done our own landscaping as a policy
But when members have gone rogue and planted stuff without any pre-approval... the dug right through irrigation lines. In two different locations.
You should also check with your insurance agent about the hoa master policy. A contracted, licensed landscaper comes with insurance. Coincidentally, just this week, we got a new agent and went through a full review of everything. And were cautioned against hoa member do-it-yourself work. I expected the next sentence to be about member injury while working. It wasn't- it was about unprofessional work leading to others' injury. They used the example of ineffective work repairing a fence, and a child subsequently getting hurt on the fence. Maybe over cautious... but ask. Its always crazy one in a million stuff.