September Board Meeting for SWHOA- including Verizon 9/24 @ Broadlands CC

I was wondering out loud today how is it that there are SO many new homes around here that don't have to have a 2nd HOA to collect $$ for internet/cable/Phone bundle whereas we do?? How do these new residential areas get the package without having to resort to having the HOA do it for them....I don't understand how they can get the service within that neighborhood but not us unless we do a bulk billing arrangement.

Anyone shed light on this difference?

 

Sorry Cap... hard to convey a conversation on these threads sometimes. At the end of the day... the HOA fee is being looked at right now and may or may not have some of the same drivers we talked about months ago in a meeting I attended. Things have changed that could drive the fees even lower so when you used the $30 figure... I think there is no way that an amount that high will be needed. It was more of a knee jerk reaction. I think it will be $20 but that is nothing more than an educated guess...but we are in a better financial position now.

 

There is a specific physical boundary defined as "Southern Walk" and I remember being told years ago by Van Metre and the HOA that the area would not expand or add new homes. There are just over 1100 homes within this boundary (the HOA can confirm the exact number) so, many of these new homes that popped up over the last few years were not included with Openband and thus, did not have the additional HOA fee.

 

I get your question...

Why does Broadlands have two HOA's is the real question.

Other Loudoun County HOA's have telecommunications as part of their HOA fee, so having a contract for a provided service is nothing new. Lansdowne, Belmont, Brambleton are just some examples of larger communities that do this.

So, what makes Broadlands so special that two HOA's are needed. To the issues brought up by Flynnibus, those are the issues that must be addressed, but it will take many years (between 5 and 10) to fully address.

But in the meantime, one thing to point out- in Broadlands, what is being contracted by the SW is just internet- not TV or phone. You are aware of this?

 

I can provide answers to some of the historical questions.
Why two HOAs? I was on the HOA Board when the decision was made by the Developer to use Openband Services. As a resident member, I made my viewpoint clear that I did not want the Broadlands HOA to be a collection agency for telecom services only available to part of the community. The Developer said they had already made the decision to create a separate HOA to manage the Openband contract. They then granted exclusive easements to Openband that precluded Comcast or Verizon's ability to lay fiber in the ground while the rest of eastern Loudoun was being connected.
When new communities were being built, Comcast and Verizon would come through and lay down their infrastructure. They actually had to go around SouthernWalk to get to other areas because they could not use any easements in SouthernWalk area.

 

Great- thanks for the historical context, now we know why it happened and how it happened... Two more important questions-- can it be put back together? Should it be put back together?

 

So you are saying that all NEW residential areas that get Internet/Cable/Phone will have costs collected by their own single HOAs going forward? Or is it possible for the residential areas to deal with the telcom/internet/cable companies directly on their own without the HOAs getting involved? That's what Im really driving at.

 

I don't know. Maybe call around?

 

I may do that as I have a friend that moved to a new development WITHIN Broadlands South and does NOT have to use HOA to obtain the same stuff that we are trying to get. He tells me that he deals with them directly as opposed through the HOA. So if the development is relatively new and does NOT have bulk billing through the HOA, I don't see why we can't do the same thing. I just fail to see why we need to continue to use the HOA to collect the money.

Currently, I pay OB directly for all my needs and Im wondering why we can't do the same thing with the new vendor...that is, deal with them directly instead of going through the HOA. Why pay the extra 20 - 30 bucks to get the telcom services via the HOA when we can do it alone with the vendor directly?

 

Broadlands South and the Southern Walk at Broadlands are not 100% the same thing. If the develeloper set up your friends section and did not contract directly with Comcast or Verizon, then it is likely both companies got their own access agreements to that section of the community. Hence, no separate HOA required or the need for the HOA to collect the money for the services.

The Southern Walk at Broadlands is/was a unique section of 1112 homes in Broadlands. VaCliff and Flynnibus answered your question about how and why Southern Walk came to be.

 

I doubt the Broadlands HOA has any interest in getting involved in being a collection agency for Verizon or anyone else.

 

Cap- we're narrowing down the reasons here why there are two HOA's. I wrote in an earlier post about the Business Environment and the fact the SW Board stated they received proposals from companies who required contracts to come in and provide service to the SW. Any follow-up questions and concerns on the matters should probably be addressed directly to each board at their meetings in the homeowner forum.

 

Apparently some people just dont seem to grasp that no company, not Verizon, not Comcast, nor anyone else is going to come in here and spend the dollars necessary to build out the infrastructure to serve 1200 homes without some return or guarantee on their investment.

 

Finally talked to my friend and found out that the developer put in "conduits" in the back or sides of each home so as to allow either Comcast or Verizon to put in the cable wires which ever the homeowner picks...hence he deals with the telecom directly vice through an HOA.

Looks like Southern Walk does not have that option of having an empty conduit for the provider to feed the wires to th house. Now, that makes sense why the provider such as Verizon has to dig across the community to lay the cables since we do not have empty conduits plus OB's wires are old technology.

This now all makes sense why the SWHOA needs to do this in order to entice the provider to build into our neighborhood. Had we all had the empty conduits to begin with all along, I'm sure SWHOA was not needed to begin with.

 

I agree with you!

 

I have a general question on this. I understand that the original SW HOA was essentially organized to help with collection of fees for Openband in the closed provider arrangement. Why does it need to continue now that the easement rights have been procured from Openband?

It seems that the extra $20-30 tax on communications, given the excess that people have been paying for years in SW, is unreasonable. Isn't it better to have Verizon bill homeowners directly? They still are essentially the only game in town for wired telecom, so the advantage they have remains regardless of who manages the billing. It just doesn't seem right to essentially keep the same end deal in place, just with a new provider, after all the expense that homeowners have footed to this point.

 

Just to note, in three years if Verizon walks away from the wired infrastructure, I'd expect there to be robust fixed wireless 5G available from both AT&T and Verizon, and maybe others, and that point. Which means at least some competition, lower prices, and freedom from the mess some have endured for over 10 years.