Supervising the Personnel - MVF Style

Supervising Personnel-MVF Style

The role of the Board of Directors is to establish policy. The board has a fiduciary duty to preserve, protect and enhance the assets of the Association. As a starting point the board needs to establish clear policy direction for effective facility maintenance, reporting and monitoring. Management implements board approved policy.

Committees advise the Board of Directors on policy, assists the board in developing, monitoring programs and activities to preserve and protect the property values within the community in accordance with each committee’s Charter. MVF has three classifications of committees, Committees of the board, such as the Personnel Cte. Committees of the membership, Nominating, ARB, Recreation, Audit & Election standing committees, and the Executive Committee which is a committee of board members and Officers.

Article XII Section 1 (b) power of the board to appoint and remove at pleasure all officers, agents and employees. Section 2(b) duties of the board to prescribe their duties and fix their compensation.

Article XII section 8 The Personnel Committee shall advise the Board of Directors on policies related to employees of the Foundation, including job classifications and salary increase guidelines for budget preparation. The committee consists of three members, the board president, vice president and immediate past president. If the immediate past president is no longer a member of the board, the president shall select another director as the third member. The EVP shall be a full-time officer-employee of the Foundation in charge of the day-to-day operations under the specific direction of the president of the board.

Over the past five years, senior staff leadership tandem of EVP Dave Humpton and CFO Greg Snellings have made a concerted and deliberate effort to change the roles of the Board of Directors, Management and Committees in which the EVP, CFO and senior staff exercise more control, vis-à-vis the board of directors, and standing committees and function similar to a municipal or county government. 

The Committee on the Environment’s influence and role has been marginalized, an Investment Committee had been established composed of the EVP, CFO, President of the Board and the Treasurer, which make all investment decisions and the Audit Committee’s Charter has been changed to exclude “Investments” as a component of “financial affairs”.

The Personnel Committee, is the only board membership committee and exercises in behalf of entire board the power of the board to appoint and remove at pleasure all officers, agents and employees and duties of the board to prescribe employees their and fix their compensation.

The 2012 audited personnel expense of $4,161,000 equaled 63.7% of the total annual $6,530,000 operating expenses. According to the MVF 2012-2013 Residents Guide MVF employs 48 full time, part-time permanent employees and up to 225 seasonal and temporary recreation, pool, MV News carriers, summer attendances at Lake Whetstone, Summer Youth Corps, and Farmers Market personnel. The MVF 2013 personnel budgeted expenses, increased by 8% to $4,496,000, 65.2% of $6,901,000 total operating budget.

Despite the critical important duties and responsibilities of the members of Personnel Committee or the Board of Directors does schedule periodic routine meetings or and rarely calls a special of the board to discuss policies related to employees of the Foundation, including job classifications and salary increase guidelines for budget preparation. There are no Personnel or Employment related policies on the MVF website under MVF Policies. The website list only six  policies of the Foundation, Activity Card Distribution, Beaver, Collection, Privacy, Village News Letter-to-Editor Submission and Transportation.

It appears that the Personnel Committee only meets once a year, in conjunction with an Executive Committee meeting, to approve the annual salary increase guidelines for budget preparation. Speculation is that only the salary increase guidelines are discussed and approved except the salary and compensation package for Dave Humpton and Greg Snellings.

Dave became EVP in November of 2007. He quickly determined that the current CFO Bill Blum, hired earlier in the year wasn’t a good fit. Bill had previously held senior finance and budget positions with the City of Hagerstown and Prince George County but had no familiarity with not-for-profit or community association accounting, budget or financing. Greg was hired in the spring of 2008 prior to the 2008 annual election. Newly elected board members on the Personnel Committee raised questions concerns his application, resume and prior background and requested copies his application, resume, reference and background reports. Humpton refused. Board president Humpton evidently concurred.

From 2009 to now the EVP, Dave Humpton, has been in charge of the MVF day-to-day operations, under the specific direction of the president of the board, Bob Hydorn. Consequently members the Personnel Cte and the board at large have not exercised their fiduciary responsibility and duty to hire, terminate, supervise, set duties and fix staff compensation for over 270 permanent, seasonal and temporary employees representing an annual payroll cost of four and half million dollars.

 According to the Foundations 2009 IRS Form 990-T Exempt Organization Income Tax Return Humpton’s compensation was $145,000 and Snelling’s $122,200. At the 2012 annual meeting of the Personnel Cte Dave Humpton’s compensation package of $182,800 including $159,300 base salary, $15,000 incentive bonus and $8,400 retirement contributions and Greg Snellings package of $178,200, with $145,700 base, $18,000 bonus incentives and $8,500 retirement were approved, a 44.1 % increase over four years.  Bob Hydorn has expressed on many occasions his philosophy is hire the best, support their efforts and let them run the organization. That may be true if the risk and reward at stake is your own money, reputation and career, but not when you have a fiduciary duty and obligation to preserve, protect and enhance the assets of the 19,000 Montgomery Village Property owners.

There are no details available about what happened this Spring at 2013 annual meeting of the Personnel Cte, except that Dave Humpton was given a five-year extension on his contract to 2018 based on his performance evaluation influenced by improvement in Village conditions as determined by the Montgomery Village 2009 and 2013 Resident Survey results.