Condo Media - March 2017 - 40

CHANGING
LANDSCAPE
The Landscape Committee was flooded
with all types of issues, both developer
based and maintenance based. We were
perplexed on how to manage the issues
while keeping the unit owners informed of
the status. The seven-member Landscape
Committee started researching different
products that would meet our problem
management requirement and settled on a
free internet app called Evernote.
VOLUNTEERS TURN
TO TECHNOLOGY
Evernote is organized in a notebook
concept where a collection of documents
and notes can be entered in a multitude
of digital notebooks. Each note can
contain photos, drawings, documents,
emails, etc. We set up notebooks to have
the unit owner's address as the title of the
note and the entire notebook could be
sorted by title to quickly find any entry.
The Evernote product also allowed tags,
which could further describe different
commonalities among the notes. Com-

mon tags were "trees," "turf," "shrubs,"
etc., so that the committee could quickly
look at all the turf issues simply by viewing all entries with the turf tag.
We had divided the 165-unit community
into seven zones roughly aligned with the
buildout cycle. Each Landscape Committee member was assigned as the captain
of a zone. Every entry was tagged with the
associated zone number, so it was also easy
to view common issues within each zone.
A really appealing feature of Evernote
was that it permitted no-cost database
access rights to an unlimited number
of users. The database public URL was
published as a link for all members of the
community via the community website.
Any unit owner could visit the association website and click on the link for the
Evernote database. All landscape-related
complaints and requests from all units
were immediately available for review.
That included all information collected
for each note, as in all emails sent back
and forth, committee member notes, any

OPEN DIALOGUE
From a communications perspective,
management is proposing a five-step
communications plan for Walden Woods:

Open board meetings on a standard
well-known cycle, such as 6:30 every
first Thursday at the clubhouse;

2
3

Use email to update the owners...
minutes, flyers proactively and
reactively;
Use automated phone blasts (the same
as what towns now use, also called
reverse 911);

4
5
40

CONDOMEDIA

Regular property inspections on a
standard, known, weekly cycle where
residents and contractors can meet onsite on a standard inspection cycle; and
Web portal for residents to have
access to complex-wide communications (e-library) AND access to their
individual information.

photos showing the issue, comments from
committee members, and any other documents relating to the issue.
We further enhanced the usability of
the database by including status tags for
each note. We added status tags like "research," "review," "recommendation," "at
board," and "approved," as well as "completed." This kept everyone apprised of
where the committee was in managing
each issue. Furthermore, we (or any unit
owner) could select all notes with the
recommendation tag and see how many
requests had outstanding recommendations by the committee and see the
content of those recommendations.
The committee then held seven individual zone meetings where each zone
captain hosted their unit owners in an
evening meeting to discuss the Landscape
Committee's mission and to demonstrate
the Evernote database as a documentation and communication tool. The unit
owners were given the URL link so that
they could have access to the entire database of landscape issues.
By late spring, the Landscape Committee had over 100 entries reported by
the unit owners in the Evernote database. These were a mixed bag of developer issues and association maintenance
issues as well as requests by unit owners
to install improvements to the common
area surrounding their unit. The database certainly allowed us to keep track
of what was going on, who was responsible, and the current status of each. The
transparency enjoyed by the unit owners
of being able to log onto the database at
any time and see everything landscapewise that was happening throughout the
association was very much appreciated.
ONGOING OWNER
COMMUNICATION
Sterling Services became the new managing agent for Walden Woods in January of
this year. Sterling's founder, David Levy,
stresses that in his 30-plus years of involvement in condo communities as both
an owner and a manager, the number one
complaint from unit owners has always
been the lack of communications.

Condo Media - March 2017

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Condo Media - March 2017