by Sheldon Atovsky –

Here’s the scene. We’re in the Party Room waiting for the board meeting to start. We’ve got our agendas and our questions ready for the open forums that begin and end each meeting. Board members walk in, sit down .. and seem already to know chapter and verse about every single item on the agenda. How do they do that?

How can they be conversant with the budget, with contracts, with minutiae regarding pipe repairs and when and how we should repair the roof? How can they have so much information on a particular issue that when it comes to vote, there’s hardly any need for discussion?

The answer is in the meeting’s Management Report provided by our office team!

For every meeting, board members receive an extremely detailed Report – a booklet really – averaging 70 to 80 pages. Unless, of course, it’s nearing budget time, in which case that booklet expands to include myriad financial detail. Or when the building begins a new construction project and those items are added. It’s easy to see how the booklet can get so long.

Property manager Tim Patricio, assisted by our staff, prepares a new Report or booklet for each Board meeting. What goes into a given report is determined by Tim’s ‘to-do’ list – a spreadsheet containing a massive amount of information on building operations.

Input comes from engineers Steve Bisping and Matt Brown and plumber Louie Mezzano, who interact with Tim constantly and meet with him formally every two or three weeks. Assistant managers Amir Cobalovic and Marlon Dacres provide updates on administrative items (Amir) and remodeling projects, security, the Health Club, and garage activity (Marlon). Yvonne Sanchez reports on tasks she has been assigned.

All this and more goes into an ever-expanding manila folder on Tim’s desk, and from there onto that ‘to-do’ list/spreadsheet that underlies Tim’s Management Reports. Added to it is the financial data from our management company, Draper and Kramer, that supports Tim’s detailed monthly financial analyses.

Booklets are assembled and made available to Board members the week prior, both in digital and paper format. Enclosed in each is a cover letter that summarizes its contents and forms the basis of the Agenda, also published the week prior on www.ptcondo.com and available to owners who attend the meetings.

Tim estimates that it takes 12 to 16 hours to produce a finished Management Report. (Manually tabbing the paper copies, though helpful to Board members, is a particularly laborious chore.)

So it’s a lot of work, but when Board meetings flow smoothly, with members knowing what’s going on, then Tim feels the effort has been worthwhile. And as an owner who frequently attends, I most certainly agree.

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Sheldon is a member of the Newsletter Committee and wrote this story after interviewing Tim Patricio, our property manager.