🏘️ Our colony committee election turned into a mess this year

Our colony committee election in Malakpet used to be quiet. 3 or 4 names, everybody agreed in a week. This year 2 groups formed. One backs the treasurer who has held the job for 6 years. The other wants a whole new committee. Then came WhatsApp broadcasts, pamphlets slid under doors and a loudspeaker announcement. That one evening, with the loudspeaker, was too much for half the colony. I could hear it from my balcony. Once you remove the noise, the argument is about how the maintenance fund was spent in the last 2 years. Some residents want an account statement shown at a general meeting. Others feel the request itself is an insult. My building's secretary got dragged in because our lane sits between the two groups. Now he gets calls from both sides asking him to just say something at the meeting. Last Sunday's meeting ran almost 3 hours. Mostly people repeating the same points, a little louder each time. Nothing was decided. We agreed to meet again next weekend, and I'm already tired thinking about it. People who never come to any colony event suddenly had loads of energy for this one. I've lived here all my life and never seen it get this heated over an unpaid volunteer post. I keep wondering if every colony reaches this point once enough money passes through a shared account. Has anyone's residents' association gone through something like this? Did it calm down on its own? Or does it come back every election now that the first fight is out of the way? I'll go to next Sunday's meeting with a cushion and a bottle of water, since it'll be long.

If I were in your colony I'd ask for the accounts in a simple written note, not at a meeting.

I hope the next meeting goes differently or you'll all be back in the same loop again. People shouting louder at each other rarely helps. Someone has to run it like a proper meeting. In my family's society, the one who ran meetings best was a retired schoolteacher nobody wanted to annoy. Is there someone like that in your colony? Somebody calm, who says one at a time?

In our building the treasurer changes every single year.

A term limit would help. 6 years in the same post, with nobody else even trying, invites doubts. That says nothing about whether this treasurer was good or bad. The setup itself makes people suspicious. Our old society changed the president every 3 years and it avoided a lot of arguments. Maybe your colony can agree on a rule like that once things settle down.

What gets me is that nobody wanted this job in the first place. Our colony spent 2 years begging someone to be the secretary, and then suddenly 5 people wanted it.

Once shared money is involved this seems to happen sooner or later, even in calm colonies. I've seen it in my uncle's apartment block and at a mosque committee I helped at once. The amount hardly matters. Somebody feels disrespected and then the whole thing is about pride. I'd take your treasurer aside, privately, before the next meeting. People soften when there's no audience.

3 hours with nothing decided sounds exhausting even to read about. I'd have left after 1.

Have you thought about asking someone outside the colony to look at just the last 2 years? Even a retired accountant who lives elsewhere, doing it cheaply, would settle this faster than more meetings. A written one page answer is harder to argue with than 3 hours of shouting. I'd raise it at the next meeting as a suggestion, not as an accusation against the treasurer.

Your building secretary stuck between the 2 lanes sounds like the worst seat in this whole fight. Our secretary once got so many calls he started switching his phone off after 8 at night. Maybe he could tell both sides he'll only speak at the meeting, in front of everyone. That way nobody can say he whispered something to the other group. Hope he gets some peace.

We had something similar about 3 years back. It ended when a neutral resident offered to look at the books. He didn't belong to either side. He sat with the register for a weekend and read it out. Nothing dramatic was found, a few missing receipts mostly. But hearing it from him calmed everybody. Do you have someone in your colony who both groups would trust to do that?

The part that would worry me is people taking offence at a request for accounts. In my building we show the monthly statement on the notice board and nobody has ever minded.

A loudspeaker for a colony committee fight is where I'd have stepped in if I lived there. In our colony someone tried that once and the neighbours sleeping after night shift were furious. It made people dislike the side that used it, whatever their point was. Maybe the 2 groups can agree to no pamphlets and no speakers before the next meeting.