Our annual homeowners meeting was held recently in the central common area and four new board members were voted in. We would like to welcome Tyrnee Bevell, Jason Blohm, Brad Rigby, and Liudmila to the board and thank each for their willingness to serve our community! We appreciate all those who attended and participated in the meeting.
A 5-year plan to move our HOA closer to being fully funded was proposed and passed. This will involve a $5.00 increase in dues each year for the next five years and will help ensure financial health for our HOA. The reserve study, which helps guide the board in these decisions and includes a comprehensive list of projected expenditures and a yearly summary, may be viewed in its entirety here. The increase in dues will become effective on January 1, 2020 and is scheduled as follows:
2020 – $155/month
2021 – $160/month
2022 – $165/month
2023 – $170/month
2024 – $175/month
This plan will result in an additional $65,700 assessment income for the HOA over the course of its life and move us closer to our goal of financial sustainability.
In addition to the 5-year plan, the 2020 budget was proposed and passed, with the understanding that the errors noted be corrected.
At the meeting, concerns were raised about the net loss we experienced in 2018. Further examination of the 2018 budget and expenditures revealed that the bulk of that amount was due to the following factors:
- Installation of Utopia increased our Internet costs from $26/unit/month to $37/unit/month, totaling approximately $4,800 more than our budgeted amount
- Decreasing the dues by $10 in July 2018 in order to honor promises made by a previous board, which resulted in approximately $4,300 less in our assessment income
- An expensive broken router that caused community-wide Internet service outages and needed to be replaced just weeks before the Utopia installation was complete, and a Internet cable replacement the month prior to that
- A month of dual internet service charges to prevent a lapse in Internet service for our residents while we transitioned from the old service to Utopia
While these and other unforeseen issues, such as the nearly weekly Internet service call and repair costs, resulted in an overall net loss of $10,000 for the 2018 year, the board felt that the switch to Utopia was worth the cost and would ultimately be a good investment and a beneficial service to offer our residents.