Homeowners: What changes do you want to see in our new administration?

I suggest abolishing the old way of assessing the homeowner association dues by property value. It is much better to charge every home a same, flat fee. It is simple and fair. Mostly, it can reduce the cost of the billing and eliminate the opportunity of committing fraud.

Lisa Sun
6709 Edwardson Cove, Circle C North

One House One Vote

I don't have any problem with assesssments based on value, but we should have one house one vote. People who pay lots of property taxes don't get more votes because of it.

Good idea but hard to do

Lisa,
Not a bad idea at all. However, the assessment process, as well as the currently weird voting structure, are both the product of our neighborhood's declarations. The declarations require at least 75% of the total votes to be amended. That's a pretty tough task.
I think charging every home the same amount of dues and allowing each home one vote is the way we should go. But to do so would be difficult in light of the declarations.
Accomplishing both tasks ought to be one of the first orders of business for the new board. In fact, that should be an item specifically sought at next month's meeting. We should all push for one home = one vote, and all dues should be the same. I don't think it right that my house should give me twice the votes as someone with a home that is valued half of mine. We both have equal access to Circle C amenities and should have equal voting rights for equal dues, too.
You are absolutely correct that the time and expense in administering a new system would be substantially decreased. That in turn would allow us to save even more money in bookkeeping and management fees. What a concept.

What do the rest of you think??

Chris Bourgeacq

Bookkeeping fees are very high

As a CPA I was stunned to see that the bookkeeping fees are $70K per year. This is at most a part time position. I'm sure that Teri Giles (sp?) does a decent job, but the fees being charged are ridiculous. We have a $1.4 million dollar budget and a good chunk of it goes to the landscaping company (not going there in this email). I cannot figure out why it would cost anywhere near this much money to have this done. I certainly do not want to hear it is the assessments. Its done twice a year and I thik most people probably pay up fairly quickly.

This should be bid out - I'm sure the association can do better than this.