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Tiffany Marzouk: Okay, so good morning. Everyone welcome. My name is Tiffany Marzuk. I am an attorney with Alcock and Marcus.
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Tiffany Marzouk: Welcome to Episode 20 of the Marcus hour.
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Tiffany Marzouk: I want to thank everybody for taking the time out of your morning. I know it’s a busy time of year, so we’re excited. That that everyone is here this morning.
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Tiffany Marzouk: Few housekeeping tips, and then I’ll introduce the episode and introduce our hosts today. So just want to make sure everybody’s muted. I don’t think that’ll be a concern, but I just want to avoid any kind of disruption to the presentation this morning.
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Tiffany Marzouk: Secondly, any and all questions are
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Tiffany Marzouk: welcomed, encouraged. Ask as many as you have. I know some people did submit questions beforehand. But you can just put them in the chat. We will monitor the chat, make sure all those are answered.
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Tiffany Marzouk: depending on how long the presentation goes. As I said earlier, we do want to be respectful of everyone’s time. We will hopefully be able to have a dedicated QA. Session at the end. But if not if we only get to a couple of questions, or if we don’t get to any, we will make sure. That, we respond to everybody’s questions, and we’ll send it out to all of the attendees
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Tiffany Marzouk: and everybody that signed up, as we’ll also send out a recording of this and the slides, so that everybody has that information, and if some people weren’t able to join us, everyone will be able to to take part.
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Tiffany Marzouk: Lastly, we do have a little trivia game. We’ll have 2 questions, little trivia questions. One will be Celtics focused. One will be patriots focused, and I’ll give a little bit more information about that, as the questions pop up, so pay attention, and maybe you’ll be lucky winner of some of our tickets.
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Tiffany Marzouk: So now that that’s out of the way. Welcome again to episode 20. This is electronic voting for board members and property managers. What has changed and how to implement electronic voting and virtual meetings in your Community Association. That was a mouthful, Jake. I’m going to assume that that was your title.
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Jake Marcus: Yeah, probably.
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Tiffany Marzouk: Our hosts here are, Stephen, Marcus and Jake Marcus that Jake, Marcus is a partner with Alcock and Marcus and Stephen. Marcus is our chief information officer. Both have
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Tiffany Marzouk: quite a bit of knowledge and expertise on general representing Condominiums and Homeowners Association, and also on this topic so
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Tiffany Marzouk: very lucky to have them, but most lucky to have Peter Westhaver joining us here from bark and companies. He’s a vice president
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Tiffany Marzouk: there. Not only does he have 25 years of experience in property management, but he also helped to helped with the passage of the electronic voting section of 1 83 a. And helped to draft the bill that was passed, so very lucky to have him, not only with his general experience, but also with his expertise on this particular topic.
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Tiffany Marzouk: so he will be very helpful to us in answering any of those more pointed questions. So with that, I’ll pass it over to Jake again. I’ll monitor the chat. Make sure, you know, to put all of your questions in there. We’ll make sure that those are answered, and again. Keep your eyes peeled for the trivia, so I’ll pass it over to you, Jake.
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Jake Marcus: Thank you. Tiffany. Yeah. We shared the screen halfway through Tiffany’s intro. Those are our mug shots, and you don’t have to look at our actual panels during the episode. So you’ll get a little more of a break from that as we go through the slideshow. But yeah, we’re very excited to discuss today. Elections have been a huge topic across the nation, but not
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Jake Marcus: what we’ll be talking about today, and we will be getting to specifics of best practices with voting. How electronic voting is being implemented. We can all agree, I think, based on the changing times with Covid
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Jake Marcus: in the pandemic in 2020. That kind of set the tone for a lot of what occurred in the years that followed, virtual meetings being on zoom every day there was zoom, fatigue was of common phrase, similar expressions of just being caught up in the in the virtual world. And it was a no brainer to introduce in the condo world
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Jake Marcus: electronic voting and virtual meetings. And we have Peter to thank for getting that in front of the the House and getting that passed as a bill.
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Jake Marcus: and it is now a law in Massachusetts. It’s a law in a few different States, and I will go through an infographic on that, and we’ll be able to discuss kind of what we see as best practices before we get started. I do want to do a poll, because I do want to have an idea of
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Jake Marcus: our, you know, demographic of who is participating today.
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Jake Marcus: and mainly what we want to see is if you are a manager, a property manager or board member, you would have a different kind of position than or if you would have a different capacity if your yours, your involvement with
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Jake Marcus: participating in electronic. I probably should have had unit owner as well on this one. But I think board member and property manager, we want to see how you’d be involved, because sometimes, or if you’re an attorney as well, or a vendor or otherwise. But I think we can agree, Peter, that with a lot of these
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Jake Marcus: voting mechanisms, there will be a different involvement
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Jake Marcus: if you’re a unit owner who’s just placing the vote versus if you’re a board member. And and so you can. Can you kind of explain a little bit about what
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Jake Marcus: manager’s involvement is with? I guess, tabulating votes or operating an election it I’m sure it’s quite the process.
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Peter Westhaver: Yeah, absolutely. And and I think it’s it’s beneficial. If we start going backwards and take you back to March of 2020 a little bit, and when Covid came out and kind of put a halt to the way that that we do our normal day to day business and in property management. You know, we’re used to having monthly meetings, annual meetings.
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Peter Westhaver: special meetings, whatever they may be, in order to help operate the community. Never mind, you know the regular meetings with with the Board and just the Board members, and not the entire Association. And when Covid happened, and and you know the world kind of came to a stop we still needed to operate. It’s the one in one of the few industries that had to keep going.
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Peter Westhaver: You know we you could be considered necessary staffing at properties, because
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Peter Westhaver: just because the property has a concierge, even the concierge might be considered not really essential, but
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Peter Westhaver: When you don’t have anyone else at the community that can help you get to various locations. Property management staff became essential.
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Peter Westhaver: So you know, the the impetus of this year was really
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Peter Westhaver: we couldn’t meet with boards. We couldn’t go anywhere. We couldn’t see anybody. We couldn’t talk to people face to face, and our Condominium documents are written as such that everyone must be in person.
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Peter Westhaver: And so myself and a few others from the Cai Community Associations Institute Legislative Action Committee for Massachusetts. We
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Peter Westhaver: got together and start thinking about what it’s gonna take to
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Peter Westhaver: help change the law. Chapter 183 a to include this for everyone. And I think what we we started off with. We started back in
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Peter Westhaver: in 21 January of 21 and
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Peter Westhaver: put some language together, and it became a long, arduous process to get it into the government. The focus right away was to get the schools back up and running, get the government up and running. Figure out a whole bunch of other things
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Peter Westhaver: as we were coming out of and working with Covid that we try to push our bill through, and each session it seemed like the bill wouldn’t go through. Fortunately, with the assistance of the mass lack, we were able to get the
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Peter Westhaver: the bill included, with another bill in regarding to housing, and we were fortunate to have this passed.
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Peter Westhaver: and so
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Peter Westhaver: how does this change property management? How does this change the way that we operate within the communities? Well, the ability to have a meeting virtually and have it
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Peter Westhaver: account.
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Peter Westhaver: As a an actual meeting is phenomenal.
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Peter Westhaver: You mentioned Zoom, and I know that there are other platforms that are out there for virtual meetings. But zoom has really helped transform our industry. We can have meetings where homeowners don’t have to be home any longer. They don’t have to be in the lobby of their communities. Board members who may travel can zoom in rather than not be not, have not have the meeting at all. And so
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Peter Westhaver: the
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Peter Westhaver: the way that the community operated became a little bit more fluid. We were able to actually work with the boards, work with the unit owners provide information.
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Peter Westhaver: on a more streamlined basis.
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Peter Westhaver: and this kind of spills into annual meetings, and having annual meetings, virtual
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Peter Westhaver: again, during Covid, we were not able to to meet in large groups and having virtual meetings. Became the way to go, and
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Peter Westhaver: the I’m pushing here a lot on the the virtual meeting, because
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Peter Westhaver: the meeting itself. If you look at most condominium documents. And, Steven, you probably know more about this than anybody. They had the word, you know. You must be present. It must be a physical person and must be in physical presence. And that just wasn’t working anymore. So
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Peter Westhaver: we helped with identifying the ability to have a quorum and a meeting electronically, voting electronically
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Peter Westhaver: and just having, you know, operations occur electronically.
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Peter Westhaver: So that’s really kind of how it all started and what we were looking to do.
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Jake Marcus: Absolutely, and it’s it’s
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Jake Marcus: it. It only made sense. It only made sense to have virtual meetings. It it
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Jake Marcus: there! There is just no way, and there are, as as Peter touched on.
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Jake Marcus: There are some governing documents that may say
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Jake Marcus: at the annual meeting is to occur on the 3rd Thursday of March at the Town Hall of our association. There are other governing documents that may say it shall occur on the 3rd Thursday of the month, but may not specify a location.
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Jake Marcus: So I think this kind of enables boards and managers to ensure that there’s more clarity on that you can do it basically virtually regardless. And we’ll kind of we’ll touch on some of the. And it does look like we have an even pretty even vote for board members and managers. And then there are also others who have voted
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Jake Marcus: and and looks to be a good split. So we will definitely try to address what we’re seeing from board members. Perspective versus a a unit owners even, and their participation and being able to attend meetings virtually
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Jake Marcus: the statute in Florida does say specifically. And and Peter touched on this as well. There’s Zoom and other platforms as long as the electronic or interactive electronic
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Jake Marcus: video conference call allows you to simultaneously communicate. You’ll be able to hold these meetings virtually. And yeah, so so it’s basically a zoom or that type of that type of similar.
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Peter Westhaver: If I may as well, just because you you can. You need to have the ability to go back and forth. But it doesn’t mean that similar to this meeting here doesn’t mean that you can have people just interject throughout the entire meeting you can hold all questions to the end. You can have questions in the beginning, have questions at the end, and have your meeting in between. But it’s just having the ability
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Peter Westhaver: to communicate via the chat function, or the you know, raise your hand, function, or whatever, as long as you can speak throughout the the meeting, or at least communicate whether it’s.
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Stephen Marcus: So, as you said, as with this webinar.
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Stephen Marcus: there’s an ability, as I read the new law, to have a
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Stephen Marcus: meeting where the communication is either by chat or raising hand and not opening the mic.
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Stephen Marcus: Have you
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Stephen Marcus: thought about? Or is your experience with boards who have done this even before the law passed. As to
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Stephen Marcus: how boards and managers are handling that whether you want people to raise their hands which can sometimes get out of control, or if you can keep more organized, if there’s question and answers and chat.
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Peter Westhaver: So so similar to what we’re doing here. It’s a team atmosphere. So you have your manager, who is most likely running the meeting or the board chairs running the meeting.
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Peter Westhaver: But there’s usually at least 2 people, you know, more than 2 people providing this meeting, and so someone can go through and read through the chats and hold questions to the end.
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Peter Westhaver: And then you can go through those questions systematically and answer the questions
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Peter Westhaver: or you can do the raise your hand function
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Peter Westhaver: when there’s an open time period. So we have some meetings that start with a 30 min, 20 min, 30 min
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Peter Westhaver: open session of question and answer. So it’s random unit owners can ask any questions they want.
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Peter Westhaver: Then they they close off everyone’s microphone, so you can’t hear anybody, and the board has its meeting, and then they reopen the meeting again for 30 min at the end of the meeting, and they go through the questions and through the chat function. And then they have the raise, the hand function. So they’re really trying to be as interactive as possible with the unit owners while still having an open meeting for all.
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Stephen Marcus: And and one of the benefits even with raising hands. Maybe I’m digressing too much. But with the raising hands and with zoom or teams, meetings or gotomeetings. You can unmute one person.
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Stephen Marcus: So you don’t have the problem, for example, that we see at some board meetings, but definitely at annual meetings, where 20 people want to scream or talk at once.
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Stephen Marcus: There’s more control where people are able to
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Stephen Marcus: have the time to ask that question.
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Stephen Marcus: Then go back on mute. Have it answered without there being a free for all or interruptions. Have you found the meetings where you have done this already. Have you found the meetings to be more controlled?
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Stephen Marcus: They’re more orderly.
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Peter Westhaver: Much more orderly. That’s that’s more. The the key here is. So when when Zoom 1st came out, or when it 1st became prevalent in 2020 and through 21 and and whatnot as we’re all still trying to figure out what is zoom, and how does it work? And and how do? How do electronic
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Peter Westhaver: meetings actually occur? You know, if you recall there there were individuals who would
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Peter Westhaver: come in and hijack a meeting and then play, you know, racy videos, or someone would just have their microphone off and just be talking to their neighbor the entire time and completely disrupting meetings. I think we’ve all now gotten to a point where the zoom etiquette, or the virtual meeting etiquette has come to a place where
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Peter Westhaver: you can have a meeting. People know that they’re just gonna raise their hand. They’re gonna come off a mute. They’re gonna go back on mute
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Peter Westhaver: self regulate themselves, and it’s become a much more efficient way of having a meeting.
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Peter Westhaver: instead of having, as you mentioned in person meeting, where you could have 2, 3, 4, 5 different people, raising their hand and asking questions, and being more important than the other one, and causing a little bit more of a catastrophe at a meeting.
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Stephen Marcus: And do do you envision boards doing meetings both
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Stephen Marcus: in person and and virtual? In other words, having having the option of either.
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Peter Westhaver: Hybrid version, hybrid versions of meetings.
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Stephen Marcus: Hybrid. That’s the word. Yeah.
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Peter Westhaver: Hybrid versions of meetings in, in my personal opinion, are tough to manage.
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Peter Westhaver: because what typically will happen is you’ll have individuals with a computer.
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Peter Westhaver: And that computer volume can only go so far.
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Peter Westhaver: And if you’re in a room and there’s 30 people in a room, and there are people that are on zoom.
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Peter Westhaver: You may not be able to hear everybody in the room, or they may not be able to see what’s happening on the screen. So your technology for for an association might need to be amped up. You may have to have a screen that you can show everybody that what’s what’s happening.
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Peter Westhaver: You may have to have in one of my communities we have what’s called an owl, which is a video
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Peter Westhaver: piece of equipment that essentially it spins in 3, 65, and anyone who speaks
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Peter Westhaver: it, the camera focuses on that person so that everyone seems to be a part of the community. And if you’re virtual away from that meeting, at least you can see who’s talking in the room and direct your questions or or comments to that individual.
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Stephen Marcus: Okay. I’ve also this is going very 3,000 miles west.
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Stephen Marcus: But in on September 20, second, 2023, California. The Governor signed into law revisions to their electronic meeting, virtual meeting law.
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Stephen Marcus: whereas before the law in California had been that you had to do it both in per at a location.
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Stephen Marcus: but you could offer virtual as well.
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Stephen Marcus: There’s now, unless there are votes, for example, election, the ability to just have it all electronically. And the only reason I mentioned California is, I know that at least one person on this webinar is asked the question from California, and the other reason is, as Jake knows very well trend seeing the future.
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Stephen Marcus: All you have to do is look to California or Florida, and maybe they overregulate. But if something’s going to come up
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Stephen Marcus: for some reason over the past 40 years. It seems to be Florida or California that that introduce things first.st
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Stephen Marcus: So, but they’re a little behind us on this one, but they’re they must have had some unit owners who are concerned about why they had to be a physical
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Stephen Marcus: location. But I’m I’m not sure what it was.
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Jake Marcus: Yeah, that I mean, I think that’s.
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Jake Marcus: I think. And that kind of goes to this infographic that we’re showing on the screen right now a lot of States came in at different times, and Steve touched on Florida. I’m licensed to practice in Florida and Massachusetts, and, as I mentioned, I will be going to the dolphins versus patriots in Miami. This weekend that’s a
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Jake Marcus: tipped for the the the trivia question coming up in a little bit. But anyways in Florida they they actually enacted the the the statute, 718.1 2 8 in. For electronic voting in 2015. So they were. They were way ahead of the curve on this. And they’re they’re
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Jake Marcus: Obviously the the Florida one which Will or the Massachusetts one which will show on the screen is A is a 3 paragraph
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Jake Marcus: pretty pretty straightforward and and very to the point of what entails virtual meetings. What is a electronic voting?
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Jake Marcus: And when we’ll kind of get to that, Florida’s is counting on my screen
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Jake Marcus: one paragraph with 3 subsets that are basically that it entails what the each unit owner must provide. Second paragraph, the online voting system requirements with that. And it does say something about, I do see, we had a question about storage of votes. It says in paragraph
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Jake Marcus: 2, subsection E. It says, able to store the association uses an online voting system that is able to store and keep the electronic votes accessible to election officials for recount inspection and review purposes. So election officials that’s kind of a that would probably be either the manager potentially the attorney.
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Jake Marcus: But also this, whatever software you’re potentially using, that’s something I think we we should touch on as well.
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Jake Marcus: But yeah, back to the. So Florida has 6 paragraphs with multiple subsections. So it’s a lot more involved. But either way, I think let’s touch on. Let’s.
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Peter Westhaver: If I may, Jake. So you mentioned that Massachusetts is 3 paragraphs, and and that is correct. It’s it’s short and and sweet. But
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Peter Westhaver: even so, we could also
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Peter Westhaver: amend it, going forward to add different things as well, because it was not perfect when we wrote it. It’s not perfect now.
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Peter Westhaver: I don’t know if it’ll ever be a perfect way of doing it, but at least it’s a start.
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Jake Marcus: Yeah, no. And that’s I think that’s a really good way of putting it. It’s a start. It’s it’s here. We’ll see what works and what doesn’t work. We’ll be right in the I mean, as managers, as attorneys, as board members will be involved on the day to day and see how these elections unfold with this this new statute enacted. And yeah, I just sent another poll out. So we practice in Massachusetts, Florida, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, and Maine.
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Jake Marcus: We have, and we cover a lot nationally as well. We’ve gone to a lot of national cai events which is community Associations Institute. We encourage all participants to
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Jake Marcus: become a member of Cai. It’s a great organization. It has a lot of resources for board members, for property managers. But yeah, we? So we’ve been involved. A lot have seen a lot of what has occurred with not only this topic, but a lot of other topics.
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Jake Marcus: so yeah, we have a lot of Massachusetts participants. And I think the important thing that Peter noted
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Jake Marcus: is, and with what we’re seeing in California there can be changes there most likely will be changes. We just have to see kind of how it unfolds. As we as we move forward.
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Stephen Marcus: There’s another point, and it goes into a couple of questions that somebody in the audience asked.
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Stephen Marcus: and it’s the Lar. Gives the ability of associations. So boards to come up with
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Stephen Marcus: policies, procedures, and rules relating to how meetings will occur. So, for example, a board could say, all meetings have to be at a physical location. All meetings can be
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Stephen Marcus: electronic or virtual, or that all all meetings can be be hybrid and make other such decisions. So the question was, can an annual meeting be structured to defer a live election and allow for what I call a candidate’s night? So the candidates can speak. And then, after that.
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Stephen Marcus: that session after that, after the candidates night to then have a digital election after the annual meeting has concluded, and I think the answer is that as I read the the new law, it provides the flexibility
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Stephen Marcus: for the Board to
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Stephen Marcus: do, to do that, or to do make any other decisions that it may, in terms of the administration of annual meetings, board meetings, and and votes. The second question, which same person but this has come up a couple of times in pre-submitted questions is the idea of private or secret ballots.
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Stephen Marcus: So I’m gonna focus on Massachusetts for a moment in Massachusetts
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Stephen Marcus: beneficial interest percentage interest of unit owners also dictate how unit owners vote. So unit owners with a higher beneficial interest
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Stephen Marcus: get a higher, bigger vote than people with a lower percentage interest based on relative fair value. When the master deed was recorded, and because of that
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Stephen Marcus: there was with live meetings there was always, and without the technology there was always A requirement that we had was that unit owners had assigned the the balance
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Stephen Marcus: and
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Stephen Marcus: people are expressing a lot of concern and questions about the privacy issues. And I guess my answer is that I still think that
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Stephen Marcus: a an electronically signed or a paper ballot signed
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Stephen Marcus: election ballot still should be used.
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Stephen Marcus: but with this condition that we’ve used for the last, or I’ve used the last 45 years. but
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Stephen Marcus: That allows that the ballots once collected, whether they’re held sometimes as attorneys for the association. We hold the ballots. Sometimes the manager does, but the idea, and the approach we take is we are not going to let unit owners
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Stephen Marcus: go to the manager’s office or to the office at the site and look at individual ballots and see how their neighbors voted. Because it’s bad for the community. It’s bad for privacy and opposition is. We will only release the votes
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Stephen Marcus: to see how people voted. If there is a order from a court.
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Peter Westhaver: Agreed.
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Stephen Marcus: The Association has to provide that information, and so far we’ve been lucky. But such a case has not been brought in Massachusetts, at least that we’ve been involved with.
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Peter Westhaver: Yeah, agreed Steven. So at at my company, we typically do not provide the responses, the individual responses of who voted for whom we provide. If it’s a trustee election, we provide only the beneficial or only the beneficial interest
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Peter Westhaver: and in some cases I also may not even provide the the the percentage, and that is really dependent on what the percentage is.
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Peter Westhaver: I may not release it simply to bear the individual who may have lost any embarrassment if someone were to to go up and want to be a trustee and receive only 5% of the vote.
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Peter Westhaver: whereas everybody else received
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Peter Westhaver: 50% or more. I may want to spare that individual any community embarrassment, and just simply say, here are the winners. That being said.
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Peter Westhaver: again, we we don’t provide specific.
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Peter Westhaver: Who voted for whom? Answered.
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Peter Westhaver: that’s as as you mentioned. That’s that’s bad for business, bad for community.
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Peter Westhaver: So we stay out of that as much as possible.
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Stephen Marcus: But but you’re I guess what I’m getting at is, do you think that back in position and advising boards going forward is gonna be to continue having the electronic votes or the paper ballots but them kept either by the manager or by a 3rd party.
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Peter Westhaver: Our push, our push and our our request to to associations is gonna be to go to an electronic voting system.
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Peter Westhaver: There are many different options that are out there today. You could Google electronic voting in Massachusetts or electronic voting options. And there are tons of them that are out there. Personally, we’ve used vote hoa! Now, or election Buddy. They are options that people can pay for to get into. Some of them are more expensive than others. We also have another option
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Peter Westhaver: bark, and we switched to a property management system called Sync and
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Peter Westhaver: Sync itself offers a platform for voting, which is also easy to do. It’s a matter of the biggest challenge I think, with with
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Peter Westhaver: the online voting portion is setting up the account, if you will. So every association has beneficial interest, as you mentioned so many units, so much beneficial interest, and then.
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Stephen Marcus: Well, well.
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Peter Westhaver: And.
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Stephen Marcus: In some states it’s equal. But Massachusetts, anyway, it was.
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Peter Westhaver: But you still have to assign that beneficial interest to somebody right? And so that upfront
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Peter Westhaver: loading of the data is generally the most time consuming component of any electronic vote.
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Peter Westhaver: And as I mentioned some, some.
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Peter Westhaver: some companies charge more than others. There’s a way that you can work with your association and with your property managers to figure out which which solution is best for you. But once your information is in
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Peter Westhaver: it becomes relatively easy to have any votes. What will happen is
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Peter Westhaver: I will. I will use a vote. Hoa! Now, for example, I’ve used them in the past before this this law passed
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Peter Westhaver: and they seem to work pretty well. What ends up happening is you? You upload all the information, all the units, all the beneficial interest, and a single email address for each
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Peter Westhaver: homeowner. Because every home only has one vote.
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Peter Westhaver: and we send out a notification from Vote Hoa! Now it goes out and says, dear Homeowner, you have a vote. Please follow these instructions, click the link and and take the vote.
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Peter Westhaver: and
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Peter Westhaver: it will send a follow up, vote it will send another follow up. It will send another follow up as many as you’d like it to have automatically, so that it makes sure that there’s enough for a quorum. It makes sure that there’s enough people that are actually voting before the end of that vote
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Peter Westhaver: or before the end of the annual meeting, or whatever meeting may be coming to to discuss the vote. And so those programs are out there, and they are very helpful right now, or
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Peter Westhaver: previous to August, you would have to go to everyone’s home, and if you don’t get quorum you might have to start knocking on doors the night of an annual meeting to make sure people are home and and get them to sign a paper, ballot or sign something for quorum, a proxy, anything to make sure that meetings are legitimate meetings in the eyes of the Condominium Association.
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Peter Westhaver: But with this this new law we’re able to, and the help with vote hoa, now, or other electronic voting platforms. It actually helps establish quorum and helps establish
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Peter Westhaver: the annual meetings for associations.
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Stephen Marcus: And if I could pick off another question, questions are sort of pouring in. How do you limit digital voting to one vote per unit. And I think, Peter, you’ve
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Stephen Marcus: in the in the past that the software is sophisticated enough that it will only allow that it will only allow the one unit to vote once.
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Stephen Marcus: it still may be by beneficial interest in Massachusetts, but not in other States, might be equal in other States, but there are safeguards, and the software is pretty sophisticated that it can make sure that there aren’t, too, that if you have a hundred units in the condominium that you don’t get 150 ballots.
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Peter Westhaver: That’s correct. That’s correct.
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Stephen Marcus: And the other question, this might apply to me, what about accommodating owners who are not computer literate or even smartphone literate? I think the law at least infers that the way that meetings and elections and votes are held that
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Stephen Marcus: that people should be able to communicate. So I assume that associations would be kind enough to offer some kind of accommodation, and if there’s a disability, is the reason, then you probably have to provide the reasonable accommodation, and then to pick off one other question. There’s a question as to whether
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Stephen Marcus: you have to amend the master deed or bylaws to allow for this. So the master deed is declaration in other states the answer is good with what Peter and the mass lack did, which is this applies to Condominiums born before, during or after the effective date of this law. So there is no need
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Stephen Marcus: to amend your documents to provide for what? Section 24 provides. Section 24 trumps. The anything in your governing documents.
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Peter Westhaver: So, Steven, if I can go back, you mentioned the individual that had a question about if they’re not computer literate or smartphone literate. So certainly there are people that are out there that that are not capable of using computers for various reasons, and generally at least in the associations that we manage. They’re known individuals. They’re known individuals in their association. And so we know that there is, for example, 6 people at Xyz community that
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Peter Westhaver: don’t don’t use the computer, in which case we follow up with them with a written ballot written format. Everything goes through the mail, or maybe we will stop by and hand deliver as well. But we continue to ensure that everyone who is at the community
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Peter Westhaver: has an option to vote, and has an option to be present at meetings
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Peter Westhaver: and gets the same information as everyone else.
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Stephen Marcus: Okay, that’s the perfect and and good news that amending documents
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Stephen Marcus: anywhere in the country is always a chore and a task, and the more units the tougher. I do really like what I mentioned earlier about the legislation that you don’t have to go back, at least in Massachusetts, and amend your documents to have this take effect, that it’s.
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Peter Westhaver: And then.
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Stephen Marcus: It was effective on the.
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Peter Westhaver: That was the main point of us getting together was to put this together so that it would supersede all the individual condominium documents because trying to get anything passed or an amendment passed, for your association depends upon the type of association you have could be very tricky. You could need a super majority, 67% or 75% of the owners
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Peter Westhaver: and their mortgage companies to allow a change to happen. And you may not never get. That depends upon the makeup of your community, in which case you could never have this happen. So having this part of chapter 183, a section 24. Creating this new section
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Peter Westhaver: is phenomenal because it makes it easier for everyone to be able to follow this. This.
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Stephen Marcus: And then my final comment, and then I’m going to go back to what I promised earlier about not speaking is, I do want to thank you. You are co-chair of the Massachusetts Legislative Action Committee of Cai for many of the years that this was for a few years that this was initially as this was when it was filed, and we applaud the mass. Cai Lac for what it did. Now, Jake, I’ll give you back the microphone.
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Jake Marcus: We gotta put the mute button on you where you like. Get muted for a few minutes like pardon the interruption that old sports center show
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Jake Marcus: and we could have you or sit in the corner with like a muzzle.
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Jake Marcus: He actually.
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Peter Westhaver: Really encouraging him.
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Tiffany Marzouk: I’ll just.
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Jake Marcus: Yeah, that’ll get them to talk more. Yeah. And to that point I know. And and again, sorry to keep bringing up Florida. But a lot of things do start and end there. I did see one question. I I think, a large reason why they were ahead of the curve and did it in 2015 is probably because of snowbirds absent people being absentee. Probably just to encourage more
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Jake Marcus: voting. And and yeah, Peter’s tireless efforts to make sure that this got passed, encourage more voting. There’s a huge number of benefits in Florida. They have a opt in. So for the computer, illiterate or people who are averse to technology. For whatever reason you still have the at least best practice. I see where you could still have the right to submit a paper ballot
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Jake Marcus: to ensure that. You know everyone’s accommodated in the community, and that goes back to the hybrid approach.
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Jake Marcus: Have a meeting in person. If you have the the fancy owl software that’s always good
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Jake Marcus: and things like that can just make sure things run smoothly even from afar.
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Jake Marcus: So yeah, the the statute. This is a lot of wording on this page the 1st to cover the virtual meetings basically the satisfaction of quorum requirements as it pertains to attending virtually.
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Jake Marcus: and then subparagraph. C discusses the electronic means of voting and ability to be present, as Peter mentioned earlier in the presentation.
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Jake Marcus: So yeah, I mean, I think, as I touched on, this is just a huge
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Jake Marcus: development for Massachusetts, it is going to assist with
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Jake Marcus: a lot more engagement in communities. I think I think we can all agree
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Jake Marcus: whether you’re a board member, manager, attorney, a vendor, whatever it may be, it can be.
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Jake Marcus: I’m looking at this picture, and the faces look really weird. Sorry on the screen, I think. The
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Peter Westhaver: Not a Homeowners Association meeting Jake wherever smiling.
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Jake Marcus: Something’s going on there. Yeah, exactly happy. I don’t know what’s going on. The eyes look messed up. But yeah, either way,
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Jake Marcus: but the the ability to be able to vote
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Jake Marcus: virtually or vote electronically and attend virtually I know. So, for example, I was just speaking to a manager and a president of a board recently of a 700 unit association.
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Jake Marcus: they said at some meetings.
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Jake Marcus: 700 units. That’s 7 with 2 zeros. So that’s 700 units. They say they only get single digit
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Jake Marcus: participants for some meetings that would mean one through 9.
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Jake Marcus: That’s like point 1%.
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Jake Marcus: That’s ridiculous.
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Jake Marcus: And so yeah, I mean, it makes sense. And then but running for board, I mean, that’s a thankless position, too.
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Jake Marcus: it might help with getting more people to to run if they know the the community is more active. I think there are a lot of people who want to make sure that things run smoothly in their community. This is important asset.
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Jake Marcus: probably the sometimes the most important investment that people make
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Jake Marcus: Covid cause it to be a lot more. There can be a lot more strain on communities. But we want to get also to kind of best practices.
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Jake Marcus: or actually let me get to the top. 6 reasons. First, st it’s now legal per statute that’s an that’s a a good reason to be able to implement this. There’s clearly a shift, as we mentioned at the beginning, since Covid especially.
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Jake Marcus: to have more functionality as far as voting
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Jake Marcus: and just membership participation, it actually reduces fraud people do. There are a lot of people who are averse to technology, you know that they think things will get rigged through the system and all that. But it actually defers fraud. There’s less. There’s less chance for error. Typically
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Jake Marcus: and yeah, that’s a that’s a pretty important reason. Inclusive inclusivity.
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Jake Marcus: it will help as far as let’s say, someone’s in. Someone is a Snowbird, and they’re in California or Florida, and they want to attend their virtual meeting or the annual meeting in Massachusetts. They will now be able to do so. And with all this technology, it’s a good thing to be able to encourage participation and being able to get people even if they’re 3,000 miles away.
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Jake Marcus: or even further, if they’re all the way in Australia, they can still participate as long as they have.
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Peter Westhaver: Wi-fi, or whatever.
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Peter Westhaver: if I can just jump in. You know you’re about to get into convenience, but I can’t stress enough at how great it is that the inclusivity and the convenience factor is there for anybody in an association for most homeowners. This is their single, most important investment and expensive investment they want that they have, and it’s
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Peter Westhaver: you know.
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Peter Westhaver: it behooves them not to be a part of the community and to know what’s going on, and to understand how their community is being run. It is their asset, and they only want to see it mature and grow in value, and
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Peter Westhaver: allowing this to happen electronically, gives them an opportunity to be a part of that that voting process, or or the governing process for the community to ensure that their asset is going to improve in value.
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Jake Marcus: Absolutely. And and and yeah, that it’s
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Jake Marcus: yeah it it it can. It can behoove you to be by the fact that people don’t participate in something that’s
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Jake Marcus: valuable. I mean, this is something that you’re investing in. And it’s just the I get I get. There are uninvolved owners. They just wanna. All right, anything happens happens. But there are requirements to meet a quorum in a lot of governing documents, and
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Jake Marcus: if that’s not met, important decisions will not be made, and you have to adjourn meetings. You have to set up a, you know, basically go door to door almost to get people to vote. Or you know, email people, if you have the their emails hopefully, then again, that’s.
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Peter Westhaver: With the rise of. With the rise of investor owners, too, it becomes more of a challenge to go door to door. No longer are Mr. And Mrs. Smith living in every unit. It’s you know.
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Peter Westhaver: Mr. Investor, who, or Mrs. Investor, who is somewhere else somewhere other part of the country, or even other part of the world, who may not know what’s going on, and may not have a vested interest. All they care about is the rent from their renter.
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Peter Westhaver: But again, this allows that ability
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Peter Westhaver: to allow them to join in in the the major decisions that have to be made at the at each association.
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Jake Marcus: Yeah, no, absolutely looks like.
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Peter Westhaver: I apologize for hijacking that part of this meeting.
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Jake Marcus: No, that that’s that’s helpful. But we apparently we lost another panel. We lost a panelist. He’s
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Peter Westhaver: I’m just gonna have to fill the void. So I’ll just keep talking. Then.
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Jake Marcus: Yeah, that’s gonna.
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Tiffany Marzouk: Go into the corner. What did you expect.
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Jake Marcus: Yeah, I did tell him to do that. That’s true. Yeah, we’ll need like 10 voices to fill that void. But yeah, no, the convenience factor, and Peter mentioned a few different softwares that you can use feel free to reach out to myself as well. We’ve seen quite a few softwares being developed still being developed. That may be able to
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Jake Marcus: streamline this process for you and the the expenses can range but depending on your needs, we may. I may be able to. You know, a few vendors that I’ve been in touch with, or or figure out the best solution for your, for your specific needs.
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Peter Westhaver: Yeah, and Jake to just to to touch base on that as well, like our our property management software system is developing this and has developed this. And I think that you’re gonna see other major software
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Peter Westhaver: companies for property management software include this into their current and existing portfolio or offerings. It’s a source of revenue for that company. And why let it go out the door when you have all the information already there.
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Peter Westhaver: As I mentioned previously. The hardest part about setting this up is the setup. It’s getting out, gathering all that information, putting it into a format that this other company can then translate it into their software. But if your property management software system
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Peter Westhaver: can do the vote, you already have all the information there.
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Peter Westhaver: and it’s just a matter of pulling it right in and and creating the vote.
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Jake Marcus: Yeah, absolutely. And yeah, I think I think that is, yeah, that there’s there’s just easier ways to do this than than hand tabulating the votes.
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Jake Marcus: and yeah, that I mean, that goes to the next point costs
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Jake Marcus: it. It. It’ll be less costly in the long run, even if it may be, to to purchase one of these softwares. It could be
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Jake Marcus: fairly expensive at the At the in the initial outlay. But
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Jake Marcus: you got to keep in mind you’re saving all the tracking of ballots for, and just time power manpower to be able to tabulate and and continue voting in the way that we’ve always done. And yeah, there can be other ways. That kind of drive down costs as well, which which it may be depending on how big your association is how we can best set up the electronic software that you end up using.
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Peter Westhaver: Production value is definitely something to think about and consider. And if you think about stamps today, or what 77 cents, or somewhere in that ballpark plus the paper, plus the time to print it, plus the time to stamp it. Send it out.
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Peter Westhaver: you know the time for an individual to make the decision
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Peter Westhaver: return. Send all of that information, and then the time it takes to receive, count, recount, make sure everything’s squared away, tabulate, do all of that it seems easy, but when you’re doing it, you know, it depends on again how big your community is. If it’s a 4 unit community great, you can do that pretty easily. It’s not a big problem, but if it’s 400 units it becomes a little bit more time consuming.
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Stephen Marcus: When when did stamps go up from 5 cents.
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Peter Westhaver: Steven. It’s been a few years now.
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Stephen Marcus: How much they.
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Peter Westhaver: Next question.
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00:51:21.870 –> 00:51:23.019
Stephen Marcus: How much tags cost.
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Peter Westhaver: Eggs. Eggs are very expensive. If.
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Stephen Marcus: Go to Costco.
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Peter Westhaver: Although Costco, the cheaper Costco.
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Stephen Marcus: I’m good. I’m going on mute again.
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Jake Marcus: Yeah. So yeah. And and also as far as
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Jake Marcus: yeah. And then just the yeah attending the meetings it. It saves a lot of people time to drive to the meetings if they’re trying to rush back from work. Or what have you? All of that and less fraud. And and yes, it’s it’s it’s time for this to happen. And yeah, what we what we can discuss feel free to reach out on using an app versus a website, etc. Wow! Look at that.
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Jake Marcus: Just as you asked Stephen, for the, for the, for the few people, for the few people still.
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Jake Marcus: The the brave people who have stuck around through this!
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Jake Marcus: It’s now your time to shine, Tiffany.
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Tiffany Marzouk: Okay. So question is, gonna pop up on the screen. The 1st 2. No, no, turn it, Jake.
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Jake Marcus: -Oh. Sorry.
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Tiffany Marzouk: You ruined it.
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Tiffany Marzouk: Just I just wanna make sure when you’re writing in the chat. Just make sure that you’re writing to everybody so that everyone knows it’s fair who? Who had the the 1st response. So okay, now you can turn it, everybody ready.
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Jake Marcus: Ready. Set.
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Jake Marcus: Let’s go.
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Tiffany Marzouk: Okay, that was quick. Stefan Baptista is our winner very fast.
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Peter Westhaver: Congrats, Stephan.
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Tiffany Marzouk: Perfect.
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Jake Marcus: Steven. Oh, Stefan, yeah. Oh, people had it.
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Tiffany Marzouk: I know I that’s amazing. But that was quick, that was fast.
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Jake Marcus: Good.
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Tiffany Marzouk: All right, so.
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Jake Marcus: Congrats, Stefan. That’s.
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Tiffany Marzouk: Yes, I will. I have. I have your email. I I am amazing. So I will reach out to you. With the game and the ticket information. So don’t worry. Thanks everyone for playing. I’ll be back for patriots. Trivia question shortly
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Tiffany Marzouk: 6, Georgie.
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Jake Marcus: Oh, 6, yeah. Oh, there we go. Yeah.
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Jake Marcus: and then just a few more best practices and we I came across the 1st one I put here I came across recently. Actually, keep your owner roster updated as much as possible.
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Jake Marcus: I came across a roster recently, and it was from like 4 years ago.
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Jake Marcus: I I cause one of my buddies, I said, Oh, I didn’t know you live here, and I texted him and he goes.
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Jake Marcus: I haven’t lived there in 3 years.
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00:54:20.840 –> 00:54:27.819
Jake Marcus: And I look at the date. And I’m like, Oh, okay, keep that updated. So don’t make you don’t want to be sending out notices to
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00:54:27.840 –> 00:54:33.440
Jake Marcus: incorrect emails or addresses. So that’s that’s an important one to remember.
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Jake Marcus: Verify the voting certificates and proxies. Make sure that you know that the the proxy, let’s say someone.
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Jake Marcus: there could be a situation where someone submits a hand ballot or proxy vote, and then they also vote electronically. And if those differ, you have a problem you’re gonna have to figure out. Wait which one’s which one’s accurate. Usually it’ll be the last one you receive. Maybe the the way to do it. But pay attention to that. That’s something that might get a little murky election notices. Those are usually very procedurally
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Jake Marcus: detailed. And importantly, here, we’d recommend kind of, you know, making sure that you comply with what the notice says in the governing documents. And so it’s important to have a attorney review that prepare the staff for election day
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Jake Marcus: can be chaos.
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Jake Marcus: There might be protests. There might be people walking down I-ninety 3 hopefully not but we were going to talk about protesters, but I think we’re far enough past the election unless anyone
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Jake Marcus: strongly wants to discuss the recent election of the United States.
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Peter Westhaver: Jake. Let’s let’s move on.
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Jake Marcus: Fair enough. Yeah. 3 things. You avoid religion election, and we’ll see the 3rd one. There’s a 3rd one whatever. Anyways. Yeah, money. Yeah, exactly. That’ll always confuse things attorney and or security President, election that goes to the same idea. Just maintain order at these meetings. Hire an election. This is.
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Jake Marcus: but this goes to the question of like tabulating votes, and being able to make sure that fraud is kind of
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Jake Marcus: eliminated, eradicated, whatever it may be. Having a someone monitor the election adds assurance and make sure that everything’s legitimate.
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Jake Marcus: And then just ensure accessibility and transparency. This is. And there was a recent statutory change in Florida, related to board members and property managers. As to the the thrust of it is basically to add transparency for all
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Jake Marcus: for all you all board members there was a large embezzlement case of multi-millions in
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Jake Marcus: Florida. Everything bad seems to happen in Florida. Unfortunately. And that’s kind of why we end up with a huge body of law in the Condo Act down there. But they added certain parameters related to board member requirements, and a lot of it is just making sure that things are transparent as far as the financial record, keeping
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Jake Marcus: and everything in between.
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Jake Marcus: So those are some of the general best practices. What we’ve seen so far. This is very new. But
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Jake Marcus: I mean, Peter, what have you seen anything specific so far.
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Peter Westhaver: As far as just how it’s worked, and.
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Jake Marcus: Implement. Yeah. Implementation. How? How does it run more smoothly? Is it more efficient? I mean, I would guess.
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Peter Westhaver: It’s much more efficient. The answers are provided right away. As I mentioned, we use a product in another property that the votes would just come in. The system would provide the answers as to what the tabulations were.
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Peter Westhaver: No second guessing needed. It was all computer generated. It just made it so much easier to figure out and determine what the answers were. You know, similar to doing like a survey monkey, or whatever you know, you’re gonna get answers right away. And you’re gonna get data points that you can can provide to unit owners immediately. So it’s it’s pretty good to use a
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Peter Westhaver: voting platform and the electronic platform.
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Stephen Marcus: Are these virtual meetings also going to? We haven’t really talked about the sometimes grueling and difficult job that managers have, and you have to be experts at everything. Lawyers, accountants, engineers, and also in the old days travel to tons of meetings. Someone made the comment.
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Jake Marcus: And the ice.
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Jake Marcus: Yeah, maybe.
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Stephen Marcus: Old days, old days.
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Stephen Marcus: Maybe this will cut down on managers getting burnt out. If they
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Stephen Marcus: were attending 15 board meetings a month.
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Peter Westhaver: I can say unequivocally, even for myself. Personally, it is much easier to have a meeting start and end when I’m at home.
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Peter Westhaver: Than it is to go to a meeting that is an hour away. Have it start at 6 o’clock, and at 9 o’clock, and then drive home by 10 o’clock. So
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Peter Westhaver: having having virtual meetings
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Peter Westhaver: for the the manager’s perspective is phenomenal. It allows for a lot more flexibility. To be to to be at meetings. And to have certain start times that most owners would like to have.
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Peter Westhaver: You know, one of the biggest challenges we we receive as managers is
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Peter Westhaver: homeowners say that they they work a full time job, and then they have to come home and have to deal with this.
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Peter Westhaver: and while I completely agree with that and understand that the property managers are also working full time jobs and then are doing additional meetings on top of that, and the time commitment for a property manager is much greater than a 9 to 5 or a 40 HA week, and so, when you can take a meeting at home or in comfortable surroundings. It is much more beneficial for the health and well-being of the manager.
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Peter Westhaver: With that said it can be a double edged sword where? Boards, I think. Well, now we can. We can just zoom whenever we want to. We can just have meetings all the time.
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Peter Westhaver: yes and no. It’s a good thing to have have board meetings as frequently as you can. But again, keep in mind. Managers have a lot of different things going on a lot of different balls in the air. And this does make it easier. But it doesn’t mean that it should be happening every day.
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Stephen Marcus: And for board members.
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Stephen Marcus: They don’t have the commute, but they in most cases. But if you cut down meetings from 3 h to 1 h.
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01:00:58.310 –> 01:01:00.550
Stephen Marcus: It’s also saving on their valuable time.
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Peter Westhaver: The efficiency Stephen is, you’re hitting the nail on the head. The efficiency is fantastic. You know, when you get a group of individuals together, board members or not. Even
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Peter Westhaver: E, even us. If if we all get together, we end up talking various things and go on tangents and can make 1 10 min conversation last an hour.
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Peter Westhaver: The same thing can happen at a board meeting. However, when you’re electronic, and it’s one person speaking, and then you raise a hand or you you jump in and it it. It can
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Peter Westhaver: streamline that process and just make it that much more efficient, and you can be out in time for dinner, so to speak.
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Jake Marcus: Fantastic.
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Jake Marcus: So yeah, make sure there’s any questions. We have
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01:01:45.120 –> 01:01:50.730
Jake Marcus: one more question. So if you last the whole hour again, Tiffany, show them.
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Tiffany Marzouk: All right, patriots. Time. So getting your football headspace.
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Tiffany Marzouk: Same rules. Apply 1st one to answer in the chat again. Just make sure that.
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01:02:05.800 –> 01:02:09.720
Peter Westhaver: It’s either that’s Jake and and your buddy, Tom Brady.
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01:02:10.970 –> 01:02:15.319
Jake Marcus: We no longer have Tom Brady, unfortunately, so you won’t be able to see him. But.
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01:02:15.320 –> 01:02:17.659
Tiffany Marzouk: He’s not related to the question, so don’t worry.
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Tiffany Marzouk: Just make sure that you are you have your chat sent set to everybody.
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Tiffany Marzouk: And with that go ahead, Jake.
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Stephen Marcus: Wow!
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Tiffany Marzouk: Name the New England patriot coach of the 1986 Super Bowl team.
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01:02:41.490 –> 01:02:43.899
Peter Westhaver: And the hint is, it’s not Bill Belichick.
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01:02:45.020 –> 01:02:46.460
Jake Marcus: Or Gerard Mayo.
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01:02:46.660 –> 01:02:47.520
Tiffany Marzouk: Okay, let’s.
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01:02:47.990 –> 01:02:48.870
Stephen Marcus: Whoa!
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01:02:48.870 –> 01:02:50.030
Tiffany Marzouk: Sponse.
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01:02:50.670 –> 01:02:51.870
Jake Marcus: Lily.
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01:02:51.870 –> 01:02:53.239
Tiffany Marzouk: That’s our winner.
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01:02:54.280 –> 01:02:56.150
Jake Marcus: Lily, Valentino.
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01:02:56.660 –> 01:02:59.351
Tiffany Marzouk: Are you? Gonna yeah, they
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01:03:00.220 –> 01:03:07.005
Tiffany Marzouk: amazing. Okay, that was quick. She knew it. Lily, same as our winner with
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01:03:07.450 –> 01:03:16.429
Tiffany Marzouk: the Celtics tickets. I’ll be in touch with you. I have your email from the attendee list, so I’ll make sure that you get your tickets to the patriots. One of the games.
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01:03:16.430 –> 01:03:17.720
Peter Westhaver: Congratulations.
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01:03:17.720 –> 01:03:18.320
Tiffany Marzouk: Yeah.
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Tiffany Marzouk: so with that. Because it is 11 0, 3, and wanna make sure again, being respectful of everyone’s time. So we were pretty good about answering questions as they came in. We will go through all of them, and any ones that we missed or anyone can put in additional questions in the chat right now.
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Tiffany Marzouk: We will send out the webinar recording a copy of the slides and answers to all of those all the questions that we missed out to everybody next week. So be on the lookout for that.
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Tiffany Marzouk: I think there was also a question in here. Somebody had joined late. So everybody that signed up for for the webinar will for the podcast will, will get copy of all the information. So no worry about that.
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Tiffany Marzouk: And with that, thank you so much again to Peter for joining us.
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01:04:11.015 –> 01:04:19.265
Tiffany Marzouk: I hope this was informative. It was nice conversational hour, which is always great. So thank you again for everybody.
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01:04:19.740 –> 01:04:25.689
Tiffany Marzouk: for joining us. I hope everybody has a wonderful weekend, and again I’ll be in touch with our winners next week.
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01:04:26.250 –> 01:04:35.619
Peter Westhaver: And thank you again to all of you from Alcock. Marcus. It has been phenomenal being here in this panel and look forward to working with you guys all in the future.
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Peter Westhaver: and let’s go. Patriots.
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Jake Marcus: Okay.
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01:04:38.810 –> 01:04:40.580
Jake Marcus: Hats. Happy Thanksgiving.
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01:04:40.580 –> 01:04:41.019
Jake Marcus: Thank you, Peter.
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01:04:42.000 –> 01:04:42.510
Peter Westhaver: Hey! Everybody.
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01:04:43.620 –> 01:04:44.650
Jake Marcus: Appreciate it.
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