Board of Directors meeting

richfam4-
Given the amount of trash out twice weekly, I wouldn't consider reducing it to once a week.
dutchml-
The Developer was still paying for that, not the HOA.

 

Now it's part of the HOA budget, no?

 

It's most certainly a contract anyhow. They water on set days regardless of rain for a certain $. I highly doubt you will find a contractor willing to water 'only when it needs it' for an entire community for a set price. Course - who knows. You might. Anyone can obtain an chair position in our HOA and vote to change things.

John

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Got Broadband?

 

Dutchml-
Once we take over those areas, that is something we can look at. I also noticed that those water trucks were out an awful not when they were not needed.
As I mentioned there are a few things in the common area landscaping contract that I don't think we need. For example, if we mulched once a year instead of twice and replaced the annual flowers with perennials, it would cut about $60,000 off the costs. This was something Van Metre did not want to give up (after all, it helps them sell houses with the fresh mulch twice a year and the colorful flowers). I told them that these would go if they were going to dump all the common area landscaping on the HOA. As a compromise, they put $50,000 in our budget for next year if I agreed to keep these items in the contract. It was a fair compromise, but there are areas in the landscape budget that we can trim expenses in the future.

 

On the trash front - as a former member of two other community HOA board that was discussed at length. One thing we found out is that reducing service to 1x/week only reduced costs by a very small fraction as they have to buy the trucks,etc... either way.

B

 

Anyone planning on attending tommorrows HOA board meeting it has been postponed due to illness. As soon as I know when it will be rescheduled I will let you know

Staci Kapinos

 

re: trash....

They don't have to buy trucks just to do one neighborhood... maybe that's what they tell you but that doesn't make much sense. It should cost at least 40% less. They can do a whole other neighborhood in the day that was cut off from here... so why would it only be a fraction less?

I wonder how well the HOA actually negotiates for us... it seems like a savvy buyer/contact agent could save us alot of $$$

Another thing they should get rid of is the envelopes and paper payments of fees... Online banking or direct debit is the way to go. I wonder how much we pay to have the payment company open checks every month...

 

boomertsfx-
We negotiated the trash contract quite aggressively, thank you very much.
As far as direct debit for HOA fees, we've had that available for years. I personally prefer to mail in the checks.

 

I hate to mail in the payments. Every other bill I pay is online or AFT. It is a royal pain to have to remember to get stamps for that one bill. I wish we could change that.

lyo

 

There is info on the last page of the coupon booklet for the HOA payments concerning the Direct Debit Program.

 

I pay all my bills online...through my bank, including this one. I'm not sure what the issue is.

 

Yeah, when I tried to set up online payment via bank of America, I had to send the payments to the office in fairfax because it got lost when sent to the clearinghouse.

I prefer not to do direct debit and rather have my bank send the payment out... that way i can postpone it if I want, etc. It's still paid automatically though..

Is there a place on the web for the HOA budgets and what it breaks down to per-household?

 

I've set mine up through Bank of America, and haven't had any problems. (It does go the "Clearinghouse").

 

I also use automated payment through Quicken...I just had to remember to up it for the new fees ;>

 

boomertsfx-
Give Wes a call at the HOA office. He can give you all the detail you would ever want (and then some)!