Imagine your association’s roof has reached its useful life.
The reserve study says replacement is imminent. The engineer agrees. Other than a couple of intermittent leaks that only happen during certain types of storms, the roof isn’t failing, and there is no immediate life-safety issue. But the work is necessary, whether this year, next year, or a few years from now.
The estimated cost is $1.2 million.
The association doesn’t have $1.2 million sitting in reserves.
Now a structural problem has become a governance problem.
One board member may be thinking about the owner on a fixed income who can’t absorb a large special assessment.
Another may be thinking about what happens if a $1.2 million roof costs $1.5 million next year.
Someone may want to investigate financing. Someone else may believe the association should wait another year and accumulate more reserves.
These aren’t necessarily signs of a dysfunctional board. They’re legitimate concerns raised by people who have agreed to make consequential decisions with other people’s money.
And every available choice is going to hurt.
Yet the roof still needs to be replaced. The money still has to come from somewhere. There may be ways to reduce the burden, spread it over time, or choose a better moment to incur it.
But another six months of discussion isn’t going to make a $1.2 million project free.
So when a board wants to wait, there’s a useful question to ask:
If you wait, what does waiting buy you?
Maybe another year gives the association time to accumulate reserves.
Maybe it provides time to investigate financing that could spread a large owner obligation over several years.
Maybe the engineer believes another year of service is reasonable with appropriate monitoring.
Maybe delaying the roof replacement allows it to be coordinated with another project.
Those may be legitimate reasons.
The board can weigh the benefit of waiting against the cost and risk of waiting and make a judgment.
It might conclude:
We have decided not to replace the roof this year. We believe a 12-month deferral is reasonable based on the information available to us, and we will use that time to investigate financing, update project costs and continue monitoring the roof.
That’s a decision.
It’s very different from:
Let’s table this and discuss it again later.
The distinction matters because a responsible deferral should answer another question:
What happens between now and then?
If the board decides to wait 12 months, perhaps the engineer reinspects the roof in February. Updated project estimates are due in March. Financing alternatives come back in April. Reserve projections are updated in May. Owners receive preliminary information in June. And the project returns to the board for consideration no later than July.
The actual dates and tasks will vary based on the project, its condition, the season, and where your community calls home.
A decision to defer still requires a plan of action.
The plan for a formal deferral should establish what the board expects to accomplish by waiting, what information needs to be developed, who is responsible for obtaining it, and when the issue returns to the board.
It should return for a decision, not another round of discussion that leads to another deferral.
There may also be conditions that bring it back sooner. If the roof deteriorates materially or the engineer changes the recommendation, for example, the board may need to reconsider its decision before the 12 months are up.
The project has been deferred.
The board’s responsibility for it hasn’t.
Too many boards, including ones I’ve served on, fall into another common trap: we start discussing how to operationalize a decision before we’ve actually made it.
That’s not necessarily a bad idea. Unless it’s indecision disguised as decisiveness.
There’s no point seriously considering an option that isn’t technically or economically feasible. If the board’s preferred approach depends on financing, it should have reasonable confidence that financing is available.
But there’s a difference between establishing feasibility and working out implementation, between being realistic and unintentionally avoiding difficult decisions.
The board may need to know that financing is realistically available and that spreading the owner obligation over several years is a viable option.
Does it need three competing loan proposals, final interest rates and a complete repayment schedule before deciding that the roof needs to be replaced?
Maybe not.
The same thing can happen with bids. Sometimes bids are necessary to establish a realistic project cost. But a board can also spend months refining specifications, soliciting proposals and comparing contractors before it has answered the underlying governance question.
Are we doing this project?
The distinction I find useful is:
What do we need to know to decide?
What do we need to know to execute?
Not every execution question has to be answered before the board can exercise judgment.
So, the board might approve the roof replacement with instructions that management, the treasurer, and a committee research and recommend financing options that could spread the burden over several years.
The resolution doesn’t necessarily need to approve a specific cost, vendor, start date, and expected completion date.
The decision to do the project is strategic; many of the details required to carry it out are operational and can be developed once the board has authorized the work to proceed.
Board members aren’t expected to predict the future or find an option that makes everybody happy.
They are expected to make decisions.
This Board Member Responsibilities guide describes the duty of care as making informed decisions using available information and professional guidance. It also makes an important distinction between oversight and execution: the board sets direction, policy and priorities; management handles day-to-day operations. Directors remain responsible for judgment and follow-through even when execution is delegated.
That means a board can make a responsible decision that later proves imperfect.
A project might cost more than expected. Financing conditions might change. Waiting a year might turn out to have been unnecessarily cautious. Moving immediately might look overly aggressive in hindsight.
Perfection isn’t the standard.
A responsible process is.
Did we gather the information we reasonably needed?
Did we ask the appropriate questions?
Did we use the professionals around us?
Did we consider the consequences of the alternatives?
Did we make a decision?
And can we explain why?
Those questions matter whether the answer is yes, no, or not yet.
The objective doesn’t have to be unanimous agreement.
A board member can vote no and still recognize that the board followed a responsible process. A director can struggle with a special assessment, vote yes because the work needs to be done, and insist that the board put particular care into owner communication.
The concerns that make a decision difficult don’t have to disappear.
They can help define what happens next.
Concern about affordability can become a requirement to investigate financing.
Concern about owner reaction can become a communication plan.
Concern about timing can become defined project milestones.
And if the board decides to wait, the reasons for waiting can become a concrete plan for the deferral period.
The breakthrough isn’t getting everyone to yes. It’s getting the board to a decision it can own and a defined path forward.
Most people who join a condo or HOA board don’t fully understand what they’ve agreed to — until something goes wrong. This video breaks down fiduciary duty, Directors & Officers insurance, and the business judgment rule in plain language, including a personal story from 12 years of board service that’s still playing out in litigation today.
Reserve funding is one part of a larger governance challenge. Structural integrity, mortgage eligibility, and the systems boards use to turn professional advice into decisions are increasingly connected.
Reserve studies provide evidence. Boards still have to decide what to do with it. This deep dive examines reserve funding, structural integrity, mortgage eligibility and the governance decisions that increasingly connect them.
What does a volunteer director actually agree to when joining a condo or HOA board? This two-page guide covers fiduciary obligations, decision-making, oversight versus execution, financial responsibilities and what effective board service requires.
If consequential decisions repeatedly become difficult processes, the immediate project may not be the board’s only challenge. Boards That Thrive looks at the systems behind how a board governs, operates, plans, works with people and communicates.
I’m interested in what managers, attorneys, reserve specialists and board members are seeing when consequential decisions get stuck.
What decisions are boards having the hardest time making?
Are they getting stuck on cost, timing, financing, owner impact, disagreement among directors, or something else?
What are you seeing? Send me a message.
The Well-Run Building is a free 12-week communications program for condo and co-op boards navigating structural integrity, reserve funding, mortgage eligibility, and 2027 budget planning.
It does not replace legal counsel, engineering advice, reserve analysis, property-management expertise, insurance advice, or financial planning.
It helps boards turn that advice into communication owners can understand — before uncertainty becomes distrust.
The program provides a practical structure for explaining what has changed, why it matters, what the board is reviewing, what owners should expect next, what is known, what is not yet known, and when the next update will come.
Hard decisions are not made easier by pretending they are not hard.
They are made more manageable when no one has to learn about them from a rumor, a lender, or a failed sale.
