Creating and maintaining an association budget is part of a board’s fiduciary responsibility. In order to keep your community economically stable, good financial practices are needed to prosper both today and into the future. As fall nears, many associations shift their focus to the upcoming year and begin working on the annual budget process.

The board has recently decided that the roads within your housing complex need to be repaved. As a resident and member of the board, you’re very unfamiliar with how the process works. Board members are discussing engineering terms and bids and contract administrators. And, to be frank, you sit silently in the meeting asking yourself “What even is contract administration?”

Sadly, homeowners associations are sometimes tasked with the responsibility of collecting dues in the aftermath of a unit owner’s death. When an owner dies, leaving his or her unit vacant until its fate is resolved through the legal process, a community’s board of directors faces the challenge of balancing empathy with accountability. But, what happens when a former owner’s successors fail to pay association dues?

When it comes to medical marijuana, it’s not what you know but who you know. That’s the best advice experts can give homeowner associations tackling smoking cannabis for medical reasons, according to Joel Meskin, Esq., CIRMS, CCAL, Vice President of Community Association Insurance and Risk Management at McGowan Program Administrators in Fairview Park, Ohio.