It can be hard to know what the right thing to do is when people’s feelings and livelihoods are involved. For example, if you knew that you could save money by switching to a different company for a service, would you do it even if it meant the person who was currently providing that service would be out of a job, or would you keep paying what you’re paying so the current employee doesn’t lose his job?

In this story, an accountant gets elected to the HOA board, and he quickly sees an easy way to save the HOA a lot of money on their gardening services; however, it would mean firing their long-time gardener. A lot of board members are completely against this idea, and he’s conflicted about what really is the right thing to do.

Let’s read the whole story to decide.

AITAH for firing someone who has worked for us 20 years after joining the HOA Board

I recently joined my HOA board to make a positive improvement in my community.

After weeks of canvassing and talking to each neighbor, I won my spot by an insane margin.

I’m an accountant and had been asking for a reserve study for 2 years (before being on the board) and we finally got one last month. This is legally required every 3 years in my state, but my HOA had neglected to do it since 2017.

The long story short is we are about 10% funded and the suggested outcome by the reserve study professionals was a special assessment of about $450k for the next two years ($900k total) to be in a moderate state, not fully funded.

They spend a lot of money on gardening.

Here is where I may have been a jerk.

We have had a gardener who does an ok job for 20 years. However he is not here legally so we have to hire him through a gardening contractor who charges us extra to hire him. He is on the property for about 40 hours/week.

We also have another man come 3 times a week for 16 hours/week to do the cleaning of the common areas.

Our complex does not require 56 hours/week to maintain our greenspaces.

We currently pay $8,500/month ($102k/year) for our greenspace maintenance. This includes no other services or extras for our community.

He knows an easy way they could save money.

Our HOA has been given proposals for $2.5-3k max/month by a few other companies in the past. These other companies have arborists, stream maintenance repairmen, gardeners, etc. which are included in the price if required each month.

Changing to a different company would save us roughly $65k/year.

There have been board members who fight tooth and nail to keep the gardener we have had for 20 years on someone’s payroll so he can stay at our property.

However, decisions those board members have made (on the board 15+ years) are part of the reason we are in this issue. We have 75k in repairs coming up to pay for people’s roofs in addition to hundreds of thousands in other repairs.

He feels conflicted.

I have proposed to the board that we get bids to get a new landscaping company which unfortunately means that our gardener would be out of a job.

I would usually think this decision is wrong and we should keep our gardener. However, I have a duty of care to the residents in our community, not to him.

I am actively hurting my neighbors by not addressing this.

AITA for putting the financial needs of my neighbors and the HOA first but that would mean someone who has worked here for 20+ years would be out of a job?

His loyalty should be to the HOA and the neighbors, but it really would be sad for the gardener.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about neighbors who can’t get along because of a totally legal gate.

Let’s see how Reddit responded to this story.

One person shares an important factor to consider.

The numbers make the answer obvious.

Maybe there’s another option.

Another person explains that it’s not really even a choice.

Unfortunately, firing the long-time gardener would save the HOA a lot of money, so much that it’s pretty hard to argue that the gardener should stay. It would be really sad to fire him, though. He clearly counts on this job. If there’s any way they can find a way to make it work without firing him or help him find another place to work, that would be wonderful.

Making decisions like this one aren’t always easy, but right now they’re wasting HOA money.