When I moved into my first home in 2005 I only judged it by a few things:  its price, its location, and its community.  America is somewhat unique with its concept of homeowner associations, commonly called HOAs.  When I explained the concept to my wife, who is from Belgium, she didn’t understand why it was necessary.  It seemed to her like an unnecessary cost.   HOAs can charge dues which can range from affordable to appalling.  My neighborhood dues for 2009 are currently $207 paid annually, which is exceptionally low for anywhere in the state of Florida.  While living here and working with the community as a HOA board member, I could see things from a new perspective.  Just knowing the number of homes in my community formed the first point.

Let’s briefly explore what defines a community.  What are the boundaries?  Boundaries can be economic, geographic, political, or a number of other possibilities.  Associations are usually formed by home builders who purchased land in large plots and then divided it into smaller plots for homes.  These homes are usually surrounded by  individual fences and/or a wall is built at the perimeter of the community, thus forming the geographic bounds.  The legal bounds are unclear to the passerby so visual cues provide the first impression.  My community has 144 single-family homes.  That by itself is no revelation but it has a new context when considering Dunbar’s number. Research by the anthropologist Robin Dunbar has suggested that people form social circles which typically reach a maximum, stable limit of 148 people.  That’s the cognitive limit whereby a person can recall all the interpersonal politics.  That was the second point and I made the connection.

Perhaps my community was built with this in mind or perhaps it was constrained by geographic limits.  There’s a body of water to the east, a school to the north, and two roads bounding the other directions.  Maybe taxation or zoning restrictions dictated the limits.  The reasons are moot.  The number of homes is conveniently close to the Dunbar number.  However, the developers did not plan for 144 islands within the community.

While serving as a board member for my HOA I observed a striking lack of community solidarity.  The HOA collects dues to maintain one community but residents mostly act as islands unto themselves.  One criminal incident raised concern for the community’s safety.  Calls were made to form a community watch, whereby residents would patrol and report crime to “block captains” and so on.  It would all be coordinated with the local sheriff’s office.  The board raised funding to begin the watch, while a call was made to gather volunteers.  No one showed.

Another theory was cited in The Economist’s article which referred to a social “core”.  This group of individuals socializes the most among each other.  If the homeowner’s association (a not-for-profit business entity) can be considered a person, then its core group consists of the board of directors, and everyone else could fall within the Dunbar number.  Not a single person interacts with all others in my community; the one exception is the HOA.  Some board members who served for the HOA still live here and I asked them how community interaction has changed.  Surprisingly little has changed.  Board members from five and even 10 years ago reported problems with community cohesion.  They also observed that the core of support for the HOA usually revolves around three to five motivated people.  These anthropological theories hold up surprisingly well even when the organism is not a single person but a homeowner association created to manage 144 homes.

Let me briefly go back to the island metaphor.  The long term lack of cohesion seems to imply that a homeowner’s organization creates only an ad-hoc community whereby individual homes are grouped and assessed dues, but which lacks the bonds that might be stronger in self-forming communities.  Indeed, the only way to transcend such a heterogeneous group is to create an artificial construct: the HOA.

The HOA concept seems dated and its slow death inevitable.  Society is not organized around the community as it was in the previous millennium, when nomadic tribes wandered together.  People are much more independent, mobile, and free to settle into a home of their choice.  Like a collection of Facebook friends, my HOA keeps 144 in its circle, and those 144 people are not obliged to know or even care about each other.  They might even be neighbors.

I developed this plug-in out of necessity while managing my neighborhood homeowner association (HOA). In past meetings of our HOA, achieving quorums were a wait-and-see ordeal.  Will enough people show to the meeting?  Will they bother to mail us their proxy vote?  I had enough so I started to code a solution.

The result is a system that provides immediate feedback, a decent measure of security, and simple integration with Wordpress blogs.  The first version I fielded worked great with our HOA website.  Everyone in the community was given a customized paper explaining the process.  That paper also provided a customized key, much like a business provides to its shareholders.  The process is very simple: the voter goes to the website, enters his key, his name, the proxy’s name, then submits the information.  That’s all there is to it!

The first version I tried had limited capabilities.  I think the concept was solid but the feature list needed improving.  After a few months of development I made the feature list grow, worked out the bugs, and polished the user interface.  The result is a compelling product worthy of commercial distribution.

Features and Anti-Features

You usually buy a product based upon its feature list. Naturally, I’ve listed those but I’ve also listed anti-features. An anti-feature is a capability a product should probably have but doesn’t. You might think that works against the “sell more” ethos of business but I disagree. When I buy something I want to know what I’m getting but also what I’m not getting. An anti-feature might deter some potential buyers but I feel it removes ambiguity and instills confidence in the committed buyers.

Features

• Proxy Vote can manage multiple, simultaneous events.
• Proxy Vote 1.1 is verified to work with Wordpress versions 2.5/2.6. Version 1.0 is verified to work with Wordpress version 2.3. The administrative interface is unique to each version but features and capabilities are the same.
• Each proxy event description can contain HTML, images, URL links, and more.
• Event descriptions are formatted to print on individual pages.
• Results of the event are optimized for printing.
• Cleanly remove the plug-in once you’re done. You have the option to completely remove all traces of Proxy Vote, including its tables.
• Customize the form text then insert it with an entry like [proxy123].
• It works on posts and pages.
• Information and error messages can be localized to another language very easily.
• All submitted proxies record the IP address of the sender.
• Events can be exported to an XML file. Use Microsoft Excel or any XML-friendly application for viewing the raw data. Format it however you please. It’s your data.

Anti-Features

• Events cannot be re-imported to the database from the XML file. Arguably, what’s the point when the event has expired?
• The number of voters cannot be changed once an event is created. However, expiration, title, and description can be changed at any time.
• There is no event start time, only an expiration time. In other words, do not post your event until you are ready to use it. If this anti-feature is added, it would make the second anti-feature much easier to implement.
• Formatting and compatibility is unknown on earlier 6.x versions of Internet Explorer. If this applies to you, I highly recommend you upgrade IE.

Adding an Event

Adding an event is very easy. Provide the title, description, expiration time, and the number of voters. Proxy Vote manages multiple, simultaneous events.

Managing Your Event

Once you’ve created your event, you can monitor its progress, print data, modify its properties, or export the data to XML. Submitted proxies are displayed as they are received. Back on the main management page, you’ll have a real-time look at how many proxies are submitted for each event.

Spreading the Word

Your proxy is only useful if people are given a brief, informative paper with instructions to submit the proxy. In my opinion, keeping the message brief and informative is the best means to getting proxies and achieving a quorum. In this example, I included multiple HTML elements to illustrate the flexibility of the proxy messages. This event had 250 voters, therefore, 250 unique keys and pages were generated – just print and distribute!

Go ‘Live’ with Your Event

Ready to post your proxy event form? It’s easy. You can add any text before or after the form itself. Give your voters a simple reminder of what’s required. Publish your post or page and you’re one step closer to a quorum.

It’s Your Data

Once your proxy event is complete, you might want to organize the data differently. Proxy Vote wasn’t designed to analyze, process, or format data in fancy ways. Export your event to an XML file and open the results in Microsoft Excel or some other program. You can format, sort, and arrange the data however you prefer.

Activate

1. Open the downloaded zip file
2. If you’re using Wordpress 2.3, extract the contents of the Version1.0 folder to your Wordpress plugins folder; if you’re using Wordpress 2.5 or 2.6, extract the contents of the Version1.1 folder
3. Activate the Proxy Vote plugin
4. Go to the Settings page (Options in WP 2.3); select the Create Tables button.
5. Activation is complete, so create a proxy event.

The Events Management View

The Events Management View shows a list of all proxy events and the form for creating a new event. Events with the nearest expiration time are shown on the top. The number of proxies generated and submitted are displayed.

Each event has two selections: Edit and Delete. Selecting Delete will open a dialog box which allows you to proceed or cancel the action. Selecting Edit brings you to the next screen which displays proxy details.

The Proxy Details View

This view shows actions relevant to the current event. All actions are display in the top section called “Activities”. Let’s briefly review each one.

• The first bullet shows the activation string necessary to insert the proxy form into a post or page. You can type or copy the text displayed. It will always follow the pattern [proxyID] where ID is the id number of the proxy event. If you insert this text with an invalid id number, the plugin will ignore the text.
• The second bullet provides a link to the Proxy Message View.
• The third bullet links to the Proxy Results View.
• The fourth bullet links to the bottom of the page where you can update properties of the event, such as title, description, and expiration time.
• Finally, the last bullet links to the Proxy XML View.

The Proxy Message View

The proxy message is the keystone of the Proxy Vote plugin. You can use the proxy message for a variety of purposes, but its main intent is to provide a custom message to each voter with a unique proxy key. In the Proxy Message View, you can preview what these messages will look like. At the top of the screen you will see a message box which provides some tips on printing the proxy message. If you have 300 voters, you should have 300 proxy messages. For almost all web browsers, you will proceed to File -> Print Preview menu item. Verify your description has been formatted the way you intended.

The Proxy Results View

Proxy results include all the submitted proxies for the event. Much like the Proxy Message, the print preview feature of your web browser will format the page. In most circumstances, the landscape page format is superior for tabular data. This view is display only.

In the table you will find these columns:

• Key is the 10-character random code distributed to this voter.
• Voter is the person submitting the proxy.
• Proxy is the person who will vote on behalf of the voter.
• IP is the internet protocol address of the computer which submitted the proxy.
• Submit Time is when the proxy information was submitted to your site.

The Proxy XML View

This view displays all event data in XML format. The proxy event can be exported to a file using the Export to XML File button. The auto-generated name will be exportID.xml where ID is the id number of the proxy event. Although the data is displayed in a text editable field, you cannot change the data here.

Create an Event

1. Go to the Manage tab, then select Proxy Votes.
2. Enter your event information under the section “Add Proxy Event”
• Title can be anything meaningful to identify this event. You can update the Title at any time.
• Description can contain actual HTML code; line breaks, headings, images, tables, or anything you need to summarize the event. However, it should always contain the [key] and [expires] tag. The Description section forms the text of your proxy message, which is a custom set of instructions to your voter. It should also provide the URL of the proxy form. It’s a good idea to create a draft of the post so you can finalize your proxy message. You can update the Description at any time.
• Expiration is the local end time for the proxy event. The plugin will not accept proxies submitted after the expiration. The expiration time uses the properties setup in your blog, such as the UTC offset. You can update the Expiration at any time.
• Number of Voters is the maximum number of people who can submit a voter proxy. This value cannot be changed once the event is created.
3. Select Add Event and you will see a message which confirms the event was created and the random keys generated.

Sample Proxy Message

The following snippet of HTML code is a good starting point for your proxy message. It doesn’t contain any image links. However, it makes use of embedded styles, unordered lists, and those two important tags: [key] and [expires].

<h1>The Proxy Event</h1> <p>This is the proxy event you've waited for all year. To achieve a quorum at our annual meeting, we only ask for a few moments of your time. This year we've made the process of submitting a proxy easier than ever. Please follow these directions carefully.</p> <ol> <li>Go to our website: www.unsaturated.com/proxyvote</li> <li>Look for entry titled "Proxy Event of the Year"</li> <li>In the first space you will notice the expiration date, which is currently [expires]. You must submit your proxy before that time.</li> <li>In the next space enter your unique code: <b>[key]</b></li> <li>Enter your name (last name, first name)</li> <li>Enter your proxy's name (last name, first name)</li> </ol> <p>Again, we thank you for your support. This will help our meeting proceed smoothly and ensure business continues without any further delays.</p> <p>Sincerely,<br/> Matthew Crumley<br/> Board President</p>

Purchasing

Proxy Vote version 1.1 is the newest version and is compatible with Wordpress version 2.6 and 2.5. Styles are updated for consistency with the new administrative interface introduced with Wordpress 2.5. The plugin features are exactly the same as Proxy Vote version 1.0.
Click here to buy version 1.1 for $1 USD.

The Proxy Vote Bundle includes version 1.1 and 1.0. This provides compatibility with Wordpress 2.3. If you’re updating your Wordpress in the near future, this is the best option.
Click here to buy the 1.1/1.0 bundle for $2 USD.

Thank you for writing to voice your concerns. That you replied to the “New Board” posting makes it evident that we, the five volunteer Board members and property manager are failing in some ways. I would estimate the five volunteers, Bill, Andrea, Roger, Gerald, and me, have given in excess of 120 hours of their time back to the community at no charge and the year is not over. The majority of us also work in excess of 40 hours per week at our normal, full-time jobs. We try to lead by example and save the community money, which brings me to your first point.

“Don’t even think about raising the dues this year”
Wildewood just received notice that our landscape maintenance costs would be increasing by 2.5% effective immediately. I expect many of our costs to increase as a result of the economy. Our Covenants stipulate that we can raise dues by no more than 5% per annum over the previous year. We’ll have to raise dues without question, if simply to maintain our level of maintenance and keep pace with monetary inflation. If you find a similar HOA in the Tampa/St. Pete/Clearwater area, with the same number of homes, for such a low price (currently less than $200 a year), please let us know. I’m told our community is an exceptional case.

“It seems the board now is in the mood to be NICE…POLITICALLY CORRECT”
I agree that we are in the mood to be nice. Is the only alternative being cruel and politically incorrect, ruling this small community like a fiefdom? Wildewood isn’t a homeowner association you hear about on the news – fining for small brown patches on lawns, an extra satellite dish, or other petty reasons. It’s my belief (to paraphrase Thomas Jefferson) that the HOA that governs least, governs best. The lawyers who drafted our original documents seemed to agree. The documents do not stipulate how we can enforce covenant issues. This issue can be lumped into one about “pigpen” homes you mentioned. Members of the Board do not enjoy this sight any more than you. Other, more ruthless, legally-entitled HOAs are setup to explicitly empower their association to levy fees, or take other action against these issues. Ours was established without such empowerments. You suggest “[the Association] lawyer sends them a letter with the intent to foreclose” yet you do not want our dues raised. These are simply incompatible actions. It also exposes our Association to costly legal retaliation.

“…now we have homes that are again having unregistered vehicles…”
Please report these to Hillsborough County Code Enforcement. It’s free, anonymous, online, and it works. We even provide a link on our website (right side, towards the bottom). Help us be the eyes and ears of the community. Members of the Board do this independently and encourage residents to do the same.

“I will start a petition drive to kill this association…”
Why? Your frustration is apparent but this is counter productive. Without an Association, who would pay for the repair of vandalized walls? Who would maintain a lighted entrance or promote a website to enable a better connected neighborhood?

Mr. X, I spent almost one hour of my time considering this letter and what it means for Wildewood. In short, it means someone cares. And yet, seven months into a new Board of Directors, what has been accomplished? I consider the gains amazing (lots of paint, sod, new plants) and a sign of future improvements to come. I’ll be staying an hour late at work today or tomorrow to compensate. Change takes time and free labor is hard to find.

Sincerely,

Matthew Crumley
Wildewood President, 2008

I immediately went to work when I heard the Association had no online presence. I used WordPress for its flexible plug-in support and the modified the default template to use a custom header. As Secretary/Treasurer I thought creating a website wasn’t enough to fulfill my role on the Board. With my wife’s help we converted approximately 30 pages of Association documents to digital format. The grainy 20^th generation photocopies made my OCR software choke, so with time and effort it was all manually transcribed. Residents can open any document and easily search for keywords.