Our OC has on occasions had people worried about what money was being spent on etc. As treasurer, I started writing a Treasurer’s Report for the AGM that translated key points of the financial papers in plain English. One person criticised because it didn’t look like the financial report that you might get from BHP. Many others were grateful to be told in plain english that ‘electrical’ meant fixing the lights if changing the bulb did not fix the problem, whereas ‘lighting’ meant buying a stock of light bulbs so an EC member could change a light. The electricity cost was in parentheses because parentheses means a negative cost, i.e. we were getting slightly more for the electricity exported from our communal PV system than we were paying for electricity imported to run the lights. My ‘report’ pointed out that three items: the managing agent’s fee, insurance and the ground’s maintenance contractor’s fee accounted for a large part of the budget. Everything else was relatively small beer. I pointed out that we have enough in a contingency reserve in our sinking fund to cover almost everything, even if the costs turned out to be double the expectation on any major item. And so on. After a few years of such explanations, people seem a lot less worried about our financial state, which really is very good. I also point out that our levies are relatively low, mainly because we have the good fortune to not be responsible for certain typical big ticket items that other OCs normally have to put away lots of money for.
So, a bit of communication goes a long way. Don’t worry about repeating things. Most people don’t read or absorb everything that comes their way. You will be accused of not communicating if you have only said something twice.