The fall 2016 semester of Access Property Management University (APMU) kicked off last week. More than 50 Board Members attended from New Jersey and Pennsylvania. The fall board member seminar was held at Maggiano’s Restaurant in Bridgewater, NJ. Our guests enjoyed a family style Italian meal and then prepared for “class.”
Wayde Scheffer, the CEO of Access, welcomed our guests. He noted that by sheer coincidence, our first client (of 27 years) was sitting at the table with our newest client of (6 months). Wayde then introduced the key-note speaker for the evening, Julie Adamen. Since 1997, Ms. Adamen has owned Adamen, Inc., a company that specializes in consulting work for the community association industry. She is a nationally recognized motivational speaker. Julie travels throughout the country speaking to community association boards, managers, and service providers in the community association industry. She began her career in 1987 as a portfolio community association manager and went onto become the manager of a large scale community in California for many years.
“Top Traits of Great and Effective Board Members”
The title of Ms. Adamen’s program was “Top Traits of Great and Effective Board Members.” After providing some eye opening statistics on the number of individuals living in community associations in the United States (68,000,000), Ms. Adamen went on to provide some sound advice on how board members should execute their responsibilities. Julie addressed staying focused on macro-issues, developing vision, and mission statements. She continued by touching upon the concept of policy governance. Julie urged board members to resist becoming involved in micromanaging. Effective board members develop good policies and plans and then select outstanding managers and professionals to carry them out. They review and refine their policies and plans periodically and stay focused on the big picture.
Budget Issues
The second part of the evening’s education was a timely presentation by Ed Wilkin, CPA and Carol Koransky, CPA from the firm of Wilkin & Guttenplan, P.C. on budget preparation. Ed and Carol provided insight and expertise on budgeting. They focused on some of the trickier and more complicated issues like reserve for bad debt, deferred maintenance, and contingency funding. In addition, they emphasized early preparation, and compiling of all necessary documents. Especially relevant are updated reserve studies and service agreements which help to ensure that budgets effectively provide for the community’s requirements.
Board members were impressed with the quality of the speakers. They were extremely pleased to have the opportunity to share issues and concerns with Access Property Management senior staff and board members from other communities.
Comments included, “It was a great pleasure to be among other board members from so many other properties to help put our own issues in perspective” and “We were pleased to have the opportunity to meet and speak with the APM senior team.”
Our program was well received by our board members and we would like to thank them for taking time out of their schedules to join us.
Please take the time to subscribe to our newsletter and stay tuned for our next session coming in the spring of 2017! We are happy to hear your thoughts and suggestions on our next topic. We can be reached at university@accesspm.com or 908-237-9900.