September 9, 2026
Dear neighbors,
At the end of their September 3 meeting, the Board of Directors voted to instruct its attorney to prepare and send a 90-day notice of contract termination to Columbia Hospitality.
If this is the first you are hearing of it, that's the first problem. This was not a noticed agenda item for the meeting, and as of the date of this letter, no communication has gone to owners. If you have heard about it at all, you either attended the meeting yourself or found out through unofficial channels.
Owners never had the chance to be heard
The notice for the September 3 meeting included an agenda, but terminating the management contract was not included on it. The Board discussed the matter in executive session, returned to open session, and voted.
Owners are entitled to speak at the meeting about the items on that meeting's agenda, before the Board votes. [1] This is the one point in the process where the community can weigh in on a decision while it can still be influenced. Because this never appeared on an agenda, owners who might have wanted to speak about this matter had no reason to attend, and even those who did attend had no chance to speak to it.
Our right to be heard means nothing if we are not told what is actually being considered.
This is not an ordinary vendor contract
Every person who works in our building is an employee of Columbia, which means that in addition to the management fee itself, the Columbia contract also accounts for our payroll expenses.
In the 2026 Board-approved budget:
Base management fees: $246,382
On-site payroll (administration, concierge, housekeeping, maintenance): $1,252,042
Combined: $1,498,424, or about 38% of our $3.98 million in operating expenses
The incoming management company typically hires an association's frontline employees, so provided the Board approves a replacement contract in a timely manner, we will likely keep most of the people we see every day. Our leadership is another matter: the Columbia agreement bars the Association, and any firm the Association hires, from recruiting Columbia's key personnel for two years after termination, and key personnel is defined to include our general manager, Bill Weise. [2]
These payrolls are dollars the management contract controls. Deciding who controls nearly $1.5 million in fees and payroll is a decision that deserves a deliberate process, not shortcuts.
The stated reason was cost
The rationale offered during the vote was cost, not performance.
First, no competing proposal has been presented to owners, and no selection process has been shared either. If the Board evaluated alternatives before voting, it did so without telling the membership who funds the contract, and without asking the same membership what we do and do not value in our management.
Second, nobody can currently say what we will actually save, including the Board. Management pricing is not a single fee. Companies structure things differently across ancillary and fee-for-service charges, and a proposal that looks cheaper on the base fee can cost considerably more in aggregate when ordinary owner interactions are billed separately. This Association has been through exactly this before; my understanding is that the last management change was itself made on the promise of savings on separately billed owner interactions. Until we have an alternative contract in hand to analyze, any claim of savings is just a guess.
This is why it is customary and prudent to run a competitive Request for Proposal when an association seeks new management. An RFP defines a single scope of services and puts that same scope to multiple companies, so the proposals that come back can be compared line for line: base fee, what is included, what is billed separately, and at what rate. It is the only way to know what a contract is actually worth, because it is the only way to see what else was available.
An open process protects the Board as much as it protects the rest of us. When members can see the field, the criteria, and the comparison, the decision stands on its own merits, and questions about why one company was chosen over another answer themselves. When the selection happens out of view, the Board has no way to show the choice was made on the merits, and owners are left to draw their own conclusions.
At that same meeting, owners were told by Board President Kingson Momah that dues would go down as a result of this change. No proposal has been solicited. No replacement has been identified, at least not to us. A statement that our dues will fall is either a guess, or it rests on something the rest of us have not been shown. It also is at odds with the other business of that evening, which included a discussion of raising our reserve contribution from 10% to 15% in order to meet the requirements for government-backed lending (which is currently unavailable to our building due to the construction defect case).
Only two meetings
Here's the timeline the Board has given itself.
The 90-day period will run from delivery of the attorney's notice. As of this writing, nearly a week after the vote, that notice has not been delivered, so the clock has not started and the end date is not yet fixed. What is fixed is the number of meetings. A management contract can only be approved at a meeting; every meeting requires 14 days' notice with a published agenda; and the Board has elected not to hold a September meeting at all. That leaves October and November.
That is two meetings to define what we need, solicit proposals, interview companies, check references, select one, negotiate a contract, and hand over the operations and books of a $4 million association. None of that groundwork has been presented at any Board meeting (I have attended all of them), and it does not appear in the minutes either.
There is a provision for shorter notice when something could not reasonably have been foreseen. [3] A deadline the Board set for itself is hardly unforeseen.
What this looks like when done carefully
I have been through this before. On a prior condo board, when we replaced our management company, we discussed the problems at an open meeting first. We scheduled open, special meetings for the interviews. We let homeowners ask questions of the prospects directly. The board still made the final decision, as it must, but owners saw the options, heard the answers, and understood why and how we made our decision.
Deliberate, open action takes time, but those members didn't spend the following year wondering what had happened, or whether it had been done for the right reasons.
What you can do
Add your name. I am collecting the names of owners who want one thing:
Before signing any new management agreement, the Board should run a competitive selection process and give owners the opportunity to observe the candidate presentations, receive the proposal materials, and ask questions.
That's the ask. It takes no position on Columbia, and no position on whether terminating the contract was right or wrong. If you think the Board made the correct call and simply want the replacement chosen carefully, I hope you would also support this request.
Reply to whichever post you found this letter on with "add my name" and your unit number or email me. Nothing else is required, and I will not share your contact information with anyone else. Please respond by Monday, September 28, so the list can go to the Board before the October agenda is set. I will report the number back so everyone can see how many of us there are.
Come to the October meeting. It is expected on Thursday, October 15, but the notice is not due until around October 1 and the date could change. Tell me you want to come and I will follow up with you once the date is confirmed and the Zoom link and meeting notice have been shared. No need to speak unless you choose to, just being counted on the zoom is enough.
If you would rather write the Board yourself, the address is NexusBOD@nexusseattle.onmicrosoft.com. Some questions you might consider asking are listed at the end of this letter. If you learn anything, consider sharing with the broader owner community.
The Board acts on our behalf, with our money. Attention is the only real way owners hold a board accountable, and this is a good moment to pay some.
Sincerely,
Chris Cowart | Unit 1905 | ccowart@timesinks.net
Questions worth asking the Board
What specific cost concerns led to this decision, and what were they compared against?
Why was the contract terminated before any competing proposal was obtained?
Will there be a competitive RFP? How many companies will be solicited, and by when?
Will owners be able to observe candidate presentations, receive the proposal materials, and ask questions before a contract is signed?
What are the expected costs of the transition itself, and where are they budgeted?
What is the specific basis for telling owners that dues will go down?
Our management agreement sets out specific measures of performance, including twice-yearly satisfaction surveys. Have those measurements been taken, and what did they show? Why have these not been presented to homeowners in the past?
What happens to on-site staff, and who is responsible for the operating fund during the handover?
Who prepares and administers the 2027 budget if the transition is not complete?
What is the plan if no successor is in place when the notice period expires?
Notes
[1] RCW 64.90.445(2)(e) requires the Board to provide at least 15 minutes at the beginning of each meeting for owners to comment on agenda items before the Board votes. Subsection (2)(f) requires at least 14 days' notice of a meeting, stating the time, date, place, and agenda.
[2] Columbia Hospitality Community Association Management Agreement, para. 51. The Association's contracts are records available to any owner: RCW 64.90.495(1)(i) requires the Association to retain copies of contracts to which it is or was a party within the last seven years, and RCW 64.90.495(2)(a) makes association records available for examination on ten days' written notice.
[3] RCW 64.90.445(2)(f) permits 7 days' notice for a meeting addressing "an event or condition that could not have been reasonably foreseen."