 And thank you for joining us for another episode of Condo Insider. My name is Jane Sugimura. I'm your co-host for this episode. And, you know, today I'm gonna be sharing with my viewers a situation that I hope a lot of you aren't experiencing, but I'm hearing, you know, anecdotally that this is kind of like an epidemic that we are having disruptive board meetings. And disruptive board meetings, which means where the owners will kind of take over the meeting to the point where the board can't finish its business. And I am sad to tell you that my board is, you know, we had one of those. And then we decided, you know, we had to get our business done. And because, you know, we were able to do that, I thought, well, maybe other boards are having the same situation. And my guest, and thank you, Rachel Glanstein for being my guest today. Rachel Glanstein is a professional registered parliamentarian and she was the one who fixed our meetings and brought order to disorder because my meeting in September this year was so bad that we couldn't, the owners were so disruptive. Yelling and screaming and wouldn't let us get a word in and tries, we had to cancel our meeting. And I think it was because there was a resolution on the agenda and the resolution was, we were to adopt the policy of no harassment or micromanagement of condominium employees and vendors. And this was based on a complaint that our board got from a vendor that a board member was micromanaging his employees. And, you know, which is very, very serious and those of you who sit on boards know that, you know, a board, the association is the employer. And so the board is the one who takes action on behalf of the association. And that means that if a complaint comes to you as the employer and those of you who are in the private sector and work in management know this, hostile work environment and micromanagement, you know that those are words that bring terror to management because you know you're gonna get sued. And those, you know, you end up paying a whole lot of money or your insurance company pays a whole lot of money, you know, to resolve those claims. And so that's why we did the resolution which we ran by our general counsel who said that was fine. And all we were doing was adopting a policy where the board would say we have zero tolerance and the upshot of it, you know, what we said in the resolution basically is that owners or board members engage in this type of conduct. The board is not gonna tolerate it. We're gonna turn it right over to legal and let the lawyers handle it. And we're not gonna get, you know, deal with it. And that's what, and I think what happened is we had maybe 15 or 20 owners. That may not seem like a lot of people, but we usually have 10 people. Maybe, yeah, maybe 10 people at our board meetings. And so if you get 15 or 20 people and they're all yelling at you, you know, that can be very disruptive. Of course they were saying that, no, we were telling them that they had no right. If they wanted to tell an employee how to do their work that they had every right to do so because they were owners and they paid their salaries. And this is, I mean, and this is what they were telling us. They, you know, they wouldn't stop. They, you know, no matter how much I pounded my gavel. So I terminated the meeting. And in executive session, my board said, well, what are we gonna do? What are we gonna do? And I says, well, the only thing I can think of is I'm gonna call Steve Bastian. Cause he's the parliamentarian that I always deal with. And I'm gonna ask him if he could assist us. You know, the only time I think that we've ever used him is we had an issue with trying to terminate, you know, a board member or, you know, and so we very seldom, I don't think we very seldom use Steve or we had an issue at an annual meeting. But when I called him, Steve was not available. So we had Rachel, his daughter. And so I wanted to share with you people out there. If you have boards and you're having disrupted board meetings and Rachel is here to answer your questions on how you can bring order to disorder. So thank you, Rachel, for being with us today. Can you tell people? I mean, what is it? I mean, what is it that a parliamentarian does? My favorite explanation on what a parliamentarian does is what I used to tell kids. I get to tell people what to do and usually they do it. But really what a parliamentarian is, is they're an expert on rules of order and running meetings. So there's different levels of credentialing and education that a parliamentarian can receive. I personally belong to the National Association of Parliamentarians. They're the largest parliamentary organization in the United States. And they have a couple of levels. You can just be a member, which means you're interested in studying parliamentary procedure. You could become a registered parliamentarian, which means that you are an expert on the current edition of Robert's Rules of Order newly revised. And you can work to study to become a professional registered parliamentarian. And that you have to prove your skills in serving as a parliamentarian, a presiding officer, a teacher, an author of parliamentary opinions, and a bylaws consultant. That we also do continuing education for as well. And you know, I know you helped us with our board, meaning do you work for any, do you work for people other than community associations? So I will say a majority of my business is condominium associations, but I do also serve community associations and sometimes just general corporations. I've served a couple of unions, a couple of churches and occasionally an individual will hire us to serve as what's termed a floor parliamentarian, to assist them from the audience at a meeting. And I know from just talking to your dad, Steve, that this usually is a situation where you have owners who have looked at the 514B statute and they know how to remove board members. And I think that's what they hire you for because that is a very complicated procedure. And I know for owners, it's kind of scary because it might be the first time they've ever done it. And so they want somebody to basically guide them and be there in case they do something wrong. And I know that that might be one of the situations where you guys are called to assist somebody who is an owner and be a floor person, right? You're right, it's often for removals. Occasionally there's been a time where an owner just wanted to make sure that a certain motion was reflected in the minutes or a certain point of order was made. But most of the time when we're hired to be in the audience, it's to remove one or more board members. Yeah, because that is a complicated process. And I know I've been involved in helping owners and been the person that's in the audience helping them. And I tried to let them do most of the talking, but sometimes, I mean, they've never done it before. So sometimes I'm the spokesperson. And so I do know that there are owners out there who would be requesting services from parliamentarians to help them enjoy that. And you took over our October meeting. So exactly what is the process? I mean, the board will hire you and you come to the meeting and as board chair, the first order of business is I asked the board to appoint you as temporary chair, right? So for running board meetings, yep, exactly. Because state law, for a first order meeting, state law, for community associations and condominium associations, state law provides owners with the right to attend and even to participate in their board's meetings. And so some owners get this idea that that means that they can make motions and vote, et cetera. However, that's why they elect a board. They elect a board to make decisions on their behalf. And if you look at their bylaws, every set of bylaws I've read for condominium association states that all the power is given to the board except things that are specifically reserved for the owners such as electing members to the board, removing members from the board, amending the governing documents. Pretty much everything else is a board power. But owners, good and bad, wanna be involved. So the state law says, okay, you can be involved, you can attend your board meetings and participate. But again, it's the board that is running the meeting. It's the board that has to take action. And as Jane pointed out earlier, it's the board that has a fiduciary duty to the association to make sure the required business gets done. So the board president will call the meeting to order, ask if there's any objection from the board members to having me or any other parliamentarian or professional presiding officer chair the meeting. And then we'll kind of take over from there. And it is easier for us to run a meeting, especially a homeowners type of meeting because we are impartial. We have no stake in the race. If you adopt a budget and you have a large maintenance fee increase or no maintenance fee increase, it makes no difference to how I operate because I'm not an owner there. So it's a little safer to have a non-owner run it because it makes me a much more impartial person. Also, especially if the board president and board members live on site, they do have to see these owners a lot. And so it's better to try to keep that relationship as friendly as possible. So it allows me to be more firm with people when it comes to sticking to time limits and telling people what they can and can't say during a formal meeting. And in fact, after the meeting, and our meeting went three hours when you were there in October, it went three hours. And there were owners in the audience who thank you for being there, didn't they? Did that surprise you? They did. They yelled at me in the beginning. But then once they saw that I was trying to be as fair as possible and give everyone that right to speak. Because again, they don't have the right to vote on these items. However, they do have the right to provide their input within reasonable limits. So when they got the idea that I would allow them all to provide their input within these limits and that I would listen and I would take notes as to what they were saying, they seem, there was a mutual respect that was built. And I think that that was what helped them to thank me after the meeting. Yes, did that surprise you when they did that? You know, it didn't. I actually had a meeting earlier this week. I had a meeting on Monday with a board that was online. And before I was hired to run the meeting a few weeks back and before I got there, the property manager told me, oh, there's a petition circulating amongst the owners to have you not chair the board meeting. And I said, wait, but they haven't even seen me yet. They don't even know what it's gonna be like yet. And so I went into the meeting knowing, okay, I have at least 25 owners that already hate me even though they haven't met me. So I'm kind of used to that. And I guess I become used to convincing people to slightly come over to my side. There'll be some people that it doesn't matter what I say, it doesn't matter how fair I am. They're not gonna be happy with me. But I would say that most owners, once they see again that fairness, that respect, they grow to appreciate it. And so by the end of my Monday meeting, I had people thank me for being there. They said, of course, that they don't wanna hire me for every board meeting. Cause again, we do charge for our services fairly, which I understand their point about not wanting to pay for it every time, but they did express their appreciation. So I would say, usually I come away with 85 to 90% of owners appreciating that I was there. There will always be the couple, but it doesn't matter. They're gonna be upset regardless. Right, and the meeting did go long. I mean, so it wasn't like it was a slam dunk and smooth sailing because we did have the owners try to speak up and they did. And there were the same group, I guess that always spoke up on every issue. One thing that I suggest to boards, especially boards that I serve regularly, is I have a couple of set of meeting rules that my father and I authored that provide for a little bit more stringent limits. So the meeting rules that I was functioning for your meeting, it had two and a half minutes per regardless owner or board member, I believe, or at least that was for owners. But it still allowed them the two speeches. Some board meeting rules will just allow two minutes per owner and or board member. And they are very specific, either two speeches or some will say board members get two speeches and owners only get one speech, especially if they have 20 to 30 owners that show up at every meeting. Because you wanna give everyone that chance to speak. But again, you also need to complete your business in a timely fashion. So I think board meeting rules help a bit. Another thing that helps is the meeting rules that I provide will also have time limits for reports, for discussion on reports, and for one that some motion is made. So that way it keeps business moving. The board of course can always vote to extend the limits. That's what I told you. So the time limits are the base. But if it's something big that needs more discussion like a budget, for example, then of course the board will usually vote to extend the time limits. And like with our budget, we had budget committee meetings. And the board got a copy of the draft budget. Let me see, we had our budget meeting on November 15th. I know they got their budget in September. So that means that board members actually had draft and because all the board members are members of the budget committee and not every one of the board members showed up for every one of the six budget committee meetings that we had that ran between two and three hours. We had six budget committee meetings. And owners were allowed to attend and participate. And so we had six meetings with several hours. They were provided with documents, they asked questions. But yet, our meeting on approval of the budget, it went on, I think the discussion went on for over an hour and a half. And part of it was because the owners, the owners were, they did everything possible to try to delay a vote. They tried to make motions to defer the vote. And they tried to make, they tried to claim that their special meeting was invalid. And so we couldn't vote. And so I had to deal with that during this meeting. And I'm just wondering if, and they were arguing with us about the amount even though we had all of those hours that we spent. And they were told and we explained the budget. They all had copies of the budget. And they all agreed that the inflation rate was somewhere between eight and 9%. But that didn't cover the insurance that all high rises, right? Our insurance is up in our, we got an estimate from our adjuster, our representative that it was gonna go up 18 to 20%. So that's above the eight and 9%, right? And so it was, and that doesn't take care of our reserves. And then, and we did talk about, and we had a brand new reserve study done for 2023. And I had to explain to people that the costs have changed because the cost went up after COVID, right? It went up and since we had it done in the last two or three months, that means that the higher interest rates were included in the cost. And we have supply chain problems that are increasing the cost and the cost of labor is going up. And yet, there was a lot of pushback on how come we got us, sock away money for reserves? And I said, I reminded them, well, look at Florida. Do you want your building to collapse? And if you're a board member, you're gonna be personally liable if that money's not there to make repairs because that's the main, the board members have a fiduciary duty to repair and maintain the building, the facility, the project. And they gotta make sure that the money is there for current owners and future owners so that the money is there and no special assessment. And I feel, I felt like I was a broken record. I kept talking to people and yet when we came down to the budget, people were talking about eight or 9% when the recommendation was 12%. And to me, that was too low because that meant that we weren't putting away sufficient amounts for our reserves. I mean, to me, it was just like an uphill battle. I mean, it was just really, really stressful this past week. And I don't know how, I mean, I don't know how we can explain that to owners without having a disruptive, I mean, yeah, nobody wants to pay more money. I get that, I get that. But the problem is, is that, you have 20 people out of the audience and they're raising their voices and they're yelling, it scares the board. And that's my concern. And so it intimidates them because we all have to live in the same building, right? And you have these 20 people that know who you are, you know who they are, and they're saying, don't basically, don't raise the maintenance fees because if you do, we're gonna hate you, right? That's the message you get from these people who show up at the meetings. I feel that sometimes owners forget that board members are owners too. And you're right, we don't wanna pay higher maintenance fees. Your insurance premium increase is actually lower than a number of the other condos that I serve in than my own condo. I've seen 40 to 50% increases in insurance premiums and great increases to the deductible. The deductible used to be maybe around 5 to 10,000. Now a lot of deductibles are between 50 and 100,000. Yeah, ours is 50. That's why we have, that's why a couple of years ago, we adopted that insurance thing where all the owners have to have an HO6 policy. And if they don't have one, the association buys one. We force place it, right? And then we charge them for it. But that's why, because we have a $50,000 deductible because of all of our water leak claims. Yeah. But you know, and I keep telling people, because of before the collapse that the government, the legislatures are looking at ways to try to prevent that even though we have one of the strongest reserve laws, budget and reserve laws in the country. Even though we have such a strong, it's voluntary, right? If the boards don't comply with the budget and reserve law, makes no difference that we've got the strongest statute in the country because it depends on whether or not the boards are gonna comply with that. And right now, I mean, the minimum amount you're supposed to have is 50% of the replacement value of all of your reserve items. And I know a lot of boards do not, mine doesn't. We don't have 50% in our reserve study and they are in our reserve accounts. And, you know, that's, and I guess that's hard for people to visualize. You know, like the building seems to be fine. We don't seem to have cracks, you know? So what you can't see, you're not gonna worry about. So why do we have to sock away money? You know, it's hard, I guess, for them to see that we need to raise the maintenance fees, you know, in an amount above the inflation rate or above the amount that's gonna pay just for operating costs. Because otherwise, if we don't sock away the additional money, we're not gonna have money to pay for repairs in the future. And what we do know is that the repairs in the future are gonna be more expensive. We do know that. And with older buildings, the repairs that we have to do are huge because you're basically redoing your building. You gotta do small work, that's a million dollars. You gotta replace your pipes. That's, I guess, yeah, several million dollars. You know, so nothing is hundreds of thousands. I mean, that was old time, right? Now everything's got a million in front of it, right? And a lot of us don't have millions of dollars in our reserve accounts. And that's the scary thing. If we have to, you know, address these problems, that means we're going, and I told my board, if we have to do a special assessment, that means we screwed up because you can only do a special assessment if you can show that you didn't know. And I mean, we've had all these discussions about the reserve. We have a reserve study that says that we're only 14% funded when we should be 15% funded and the reserve report says, and this is a weak financial position. And they've, and my board members have been told that, you know, the banks can come and look at your reserve study. And they do, right? If you wanna get a loan or somebody in the building wants to get a loan, they wanna look at the reserve study and maybe you're not gonna get that loan because we don't have enough money set aside for reserves. And why would the bank lend money if you don't have enough money set aside for reserves and that something catastrophic happens and then the borrower may not be able to pay back the lender, right? The lender sees, they've got a weak financial position. Why would I wanna lend the association money or anybody who wants to buy into it or even a unit owner who wants to do, you know, use the condo, you know, for collateral? I mean, they won't be able to, you know, get a loan because, you know, the associations finances aren't in good shape. And, you know, we might have, you know, enough money in our bank accounts for our operating but we don't have enough in our reserves. That's what they don't understand. Yeah, I think what a lot of people don't realize too is the Marco Polo fire really hurt a lot of us because then a lot of us who were built before 1975, my building is 1974, all of a sudden they're like, oh, now you need to install sprinklers. And if you don't install sprinklers, if you get enough owners to agree to not put in sprinklers, you still have to do hundreds of thousands of dollars of improvements to meet the, these fire life safety standards that they created. So that also increased the amount necessary for reserves and all of those come together to make some angry owners, which is understandable, but we still have to take care of the building. And I don't think that's what the owners understand. They don't understand that the board, and I told the board, it's not easy and you guys have got hard decisions to make. I'm not going to deny it and you're going to make some people angry, you know? That's a given because they don't want to pay more money but the facts are is that, you know, right now we're kind of stuck. And we have that thing about the, you know, the fire sprinklers hovering over our heads because we have an opt-out resolution that we're circulating and we're not close to 50%. So if we don't get to 50%, we got to do sprinklers, you know? And the good thing is that the city, I think they just passed a resolution that kind of makes the life safety ordinance maybe on shaky grounds because that- Yeah, they kind of pushed it off to the future more, which is helpful for us to plan because now we can start keep slowly building the reserves to try to catch up, you know? Right, and because they were, it was brought, that, you know, we testified at the city council hearing to say, you know, back in 2018, when we were talking about this ordinance, there was no worldwide pandemic and then there was no business closures. There was no supply chain problem, you know? There was no increase in insurance rate because of reinsurance market age, you know? Now all of those things are affecting us and the deadlines in the fire safety ordinance are undoable. Nobody can comply. And the city is at the bottom of it because there's 255 buildings in Honolulu that has not gotten passing scores on the LLC. They need building permits and there's no way the city is gonna be able to give us building permits. And so there's, so how can you make us comply with the law that we can't even, you know, get the building permit so that we can comply with the law? I mean, it's circular. And so I think they finally recognize it. Hey, this is not gonna work. We gotta go back to the plan, you know? So everything is on hold. And so, you know, this is a good thing, but, you know, I'm just saying that, you know, those of us who are in the know, we're kind of living with the fact that, you know, we've got all these issues. What the owners don't understand is that they're putting the board in really bad position. And, you know, when they disrupt meetings, it's not like they're going to win battles. And in fact, in my condo, my board adopted the 12% after a long meeting, you know? So in the end, they failed. They failed to stop the vote. They failed to stop the increase. And I'm hearing all over the state that the increases are going, you know, from anywhere from 14 to 20% and higher, right? Because of all the factors that we all, that has nothing to do with the individual buildings and associations. It's not that we are doing something wrong. It just means that the economy is not in a good place and the buildings are old, right? And it takes more money to repair and maintain them and somebody's got to pay for them. And unfortunately, that's the owners. They say no matter what, you should be raising maintenance fees two to 4% every year just to account for inflation. Yeah. So every year it should go up. It's just a lot of us don't like to make it go up every year. So maybe we'll wait a couple of years and then do a slightly larger jump. But it's helpful. Yeah, but I think after the floor counter collapse, now the government is going to step in and next thing you know, we're going to have building envelope inspections which is more costly. But anyway, I do digress and we run out of time and I want to thank you, Rachel, for saving, for being our savior. Thank you, thank you, thank you. And I hope the word gets out to all of you people who are watching and listening to the show that if you have disorder in your board meetings that there is a light at the end of the tunnel and you can call a parliamentarian to come in and bring order to your disorder. And I will attest to the fact that it works. We got through our October meeting and we got our budget and I followed Rachel's advice and we got our budget approved this past week. And hopefully our November meeting is uneventful. Let's make it short too. The goal is one to two hours top. Right. And so I urge you if you have disorder, you know, contact Rachel. Oh, how do they get in touch with you? If they want to get in touch with you? So the best way is by email, either arglanstein at gmail.com, that's me or my father, we work together. He's Steve G. High at gmail.com or you can give our office a call 808-423-6766. Again, that's 808-423-6766. Thanks, Jane. Okay, thank you, Rachel. And thank you for being on our guest, on our show. I'm just so grateful for your assistance in helping my association get through their disruption. And so I hope that those associations out there who are having disruptive meetings, you consider hiring a parliamentarian. And thank you for joining us today for our show. And please join us next week for another interesting show on people who live and work in condominiums. So I hope you do join us for another episode of Condo Insider. And thank you for joining us today. Thank you, Mahalo and Aloha. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn and donate to us at thinktechhawaii.com. Mahalo.