Amendment 4

The most important Thing

Proposed by-law amendment 4 (3-year Board Terms) is probably the most important amendment we decide this year.  Originally proposed in 2018, it narrowly was not passed among the 18 amendments we considered that year (47% yes, 53% no), but it's time to revisit that.

Photo by Alessia Cocconi on Unsplash

Our current Board terms cause us to fill 4-5 positions every year. This is disruptive to Board efficiency and progress. Three-year terms would remedy many of these challenges:

• Year-to-year continuity improves when only 1/3 of the Board are newly serving directors​
• Higher quality candidates are more lidely to be seated when we only need to fill 3 seats per year.
  
• ​A better operating Board will attract more people wiling to participate in our governance
  

Digging deeper

Let me talk about each of those in more depth.

Continuity
Each year, half our Board is up for election. That means that any year, we can lose half the institutional knowledge that is on our board, half of the good will, half of the relationships and collaborative behaviors that have (hopefully) allowed the Board to become more effective in their business.

​Staggered 3-year terms only places 1/3 of the board up-in-the-air each year.  Three year terms allow board members to gain a deeper institutional knowledge as they serve, and reduces the adjustment period that a board has to go through when new directors are installed.

Quality
It is interesting to look at the history of our candidate results.  Reviewing previous years' election results, you find a clear break between third and fouth place.  
The top three vote receiving candidates are usually clustered within 10 votes of each other.  Then at four and five, you see a gap of 40-50 votes.  Today, the 4th and 5th elected directors are often elected with less than 50% of owner support!
This tells me that, our community is able to field 3 per year that the majority of voting owners think will do a good job. At fourth 4th and 5th place, we begin to compromise on candidate quality. We don't have as high of confidence in their Board fitness. It's like we think #1, #2, #3: easy choices.  #4 & #5, ummm, do I have to pick?"
Past vote tallies actually show a portion of owners are sometimes only voting for 3 candidates and abstaining from voting beyond that. This is likely because they don't see a quality candidate they support. That's a big problem!  
This amendment fixes that. In the future, we don't have to compromise; we only need to seat three quality candidates. We don't have to fill the slate with less optimal choices just because we need warm bodies. This year is an example of that, we can't even get enough declared candidates to fill the open positions. 

More participation
​We don't have a deep bench of volunteers that will ever run for the Board. There's a 90%+ chance that you haven't run for the board and won't even if I begged you to.
Each year, I do a lot of recruiting--asking people to consider running for the Board. I have less than a 10% success rate in these efforts.
Sometimes people have other obligations, or can't due to their employment contracts, but usually it is because of a distaste for the people that they've seen on the board.  Not the board as a whole, but 1 or 2 directors that make Board service so unappealing that they are turned off to even considering Board service.  We are so fortunate to have a current board that is collaborative and civil, but that hasn't been the case; people remember that.

Recap why this is a good thing
We need to have consistency for our Board to be effective.  Not the same people all the time, but we can't have half the board turning over in a year.  A high-functioning Board has a balance of people who are collegial and professional.  A director with an activist agenda and who approaches their Board role with a combative attitude is horrible for Board effectiveness. The culture of the Board is important. A disfunctional Board discourages future volunteers from serving on the Board.

​Finding rational, level-headed, friendly people who will  run for the Board is hard.  

• Finding three is hard.
• Finding four is very hard.
• Finding five is nearly impossible.

(I shudder to think if we ever had to field six or more due to early vacancies.)
Each year, I believe our community will be able to find three sane, rational, collaborative people to serve on the Board, but for that to happen, we need to have three-year terms.
​

Yes, but...

Let me address some of the things that I've heard from concerned people who want to support this but are worried about some other things.

Longer terms need term limits
​While adjacent, they are separate items.  Term limits were discussed, but General Counsel recommended against it.  They advised that our average board tenure is 2.4 years and suggested that Harbour Square has a much bigger challenge filling Board positions with high quality Directors rather than poor performing Directors serving too long. I would agree.  
Additionally, in the last 10 years that I've lived here, only two Directors come to mind as having 10+ year tenures. Both of those Directors would routinely receive the lowest vote tallies of those candidates that were seated.  Had 3-year terms been in effect (and only needing to fill three slots on the Board), both of those directors would have not been re-elected much earlier.  Adopting 3-year terms, allows for the community to more easily correct Directors that would be overstaying their welcome. 

What if we need to get rid of a bad board?
Some may argue that going to staggered terms takes away the ability of residents to remove board members that aren’t doing what they want,  But our by-laws already provide a way for residents to remove board members at any time (existing by-law 17).

Longer terms would discourage people from running
This tends to be a comment from people who won't run for the board now when it's only a 2-year term.  The motivation for running or not running is usually based on a passion or sense of obligation to service.  In my conversations with people encouraging them to run, resistence to be a candidate falls into three buckets:

1. I don't have the time.
2. I don't have experience.
3. I don't want to deal with the politics. (Digging deeper this really is “I don't want to deal with 2-3 specific people”

Length of commitment has never been an issue.

Final thought

I deeply hope that you support proposed Amendment 4.  If you want to discuss this more. Please call me.  I am personally invested in this issue because of the limited candidate pool that we have this year.  I am exclusively running as a write-in because we are only fielding four candidates for five open positions.  My name-recognition and the good will that many of you have towards me is providing a tenable write-in option over other more extreme personalities.  This wouldn't need to be the case if we were only filling three Board positions.  Board turn over and candidate recruitment is stressful for those serving on the Board and causes a lot of the burn-out that high quality Board members experience.  Unless you personally are willing to run, I implore you to support this more sustainable option for future candidate recruitment and service.