IMO, and obviously this is just my opinion...A HOA/POA/BOD should have the experience and know how to keep the management company in line...i may have misspoke with my ideal HOA/POA/BOD, i think the Ideal would be no HOA/POA/BOD 100% transparency to 100% of owners, everything should be voted on by every owner...Sure, 85% will never respond to the letter for a vote...But those 15% that do will be a larger number then the 6-15 members of an HOA/POA/BOD and have a more diverse education/training/experience level...With all the owners weighing in on each topic, the amount of experience/training/education is nearly endless
Democracies aren't perfect, but they're the best we've got right now, you guys can see what the happens with a Republic, does your state representative REALLY represent you? Its the same thing with an HOA/POA/BOD
Ride I must say your vision for how a volunteer board of directors with an employed management company could not be further from the best practices of how governance and operations should be handled.
Boards are elected by the members so that more nimble and higher level decisions can be made in a timely manner. Yes, members should vote on such things as budget but most of the day-to-day should not be necessarily decided by membership.
When you speak of having a board to keep the management company in line, that sounds a lot like micromanagement to me. The board has the responsibility (legal/fiduciary) to hire and provide general oversight on the management company but not be meddlesome in the day-to-day of the laundry list of activities you listed in another response.
The exception to this would be if the organization is too small (financially) to afford a management company and it is a volunteer operated association. Then yes, you need to have a lot of technical experience in the board so that key operational areas are performed at a high level.
I agree with you on transparency, which is something many volunteer boards struggle with. I've had to education board chairs/presidents about some of the legal and regulatory responsibilities in this area, only to have them say "Sorry I don't agree. We will not release our tax returns to anyone." (Such is an example of a volunteer out over his skies!!! And a complaint filing with the IRS and significant fines to follow.)
The most important thing is that one size does not fit all so how one POA/HOA operates may or may not work for another group. But to throw them all into the "they're evil" bucket is just not correct.
p.s. Somewhere in this thread it was mentioned that the POA/HOA should be responsible for improving the value of the timeshare. I don't see how that is remotely possible, when it isn't possible to retain the "value" given the prices paid and ultimately the amount of "value" you might see in resale.