Castlegate Community

Well I guess I will not be getting your vote. 

1. I totally agree before any money is spent on any improvements, it needs to be looked at several times.  If it can wait it should without hesitation. Now if we need to spend money on a item that in the next 2 years will actually reduce our regular monthly costs, I think that is a good idea.  We do need to lower our overhead so that our bank accounts can actually have money to spare in them.

This next answer is why I will not get your vote I guess:

2.  I really think this is unreasonable.  Please give me the name of ONE community that has reduced there HOA dues once in the past 5 years.  Look at how many homeowners in Castlegate that are not paying there HOA dues, the bills are still there every month.  Again this is the reason why I say we need to reduce our Overhead so that the money we do have coming into the Community can be used to pay our bills for regular upkeep of Castlegate.  I do not see our HOA dues being reduced.  Right now we do not have any real amount of money in reserves.  I believe we hit a point a couple of years ago in which we should have not been spending money on prevenitive maintence but only spending money on fixing what actually broke.  I do see some areas in which we could invest so that our over head can be reduced.

Would you agree to spend some money now to reduce a regular monthly cost in which at some point in the future would not only pay for itself but possibly reduce the regular monthly bill by 60% ?  I think we all would answer that question with YES.  I would certainly not spend all the money in the bank for decisions likes this though. 

This would be the areas I would like to be looking into for our Community.  Spend a little, save a lot in the future. 

Well put BG.

I'm already looking at drafting a budget for 2010 and looking at areas where we are able to reduce spending.  I can say with almost certainty that rates will not go down; it will be tight if rates actually don't go up.  Like BG, I would much rather find places to cut so that we are able to better utilize the money we have coming in.  The only problem is keeping to a budget.  For the most part, we have done well this year with sticking to the budget, except that we have overspent in legal, by quite a bit, and over in landscaping.  Both of these categories were over because we (the board) were not informed that we owed back bills to both when we drafted and passed the budget. Had we known that, it would have been different.  And before anyone goes and blames Oasis for this downfall, remember, they had just taken over the month before and were not even close to finishing the auditing of our accounts, so they (likely) didn't know this when the budget was passed.

Anyhow, from an inside perspective, I don't think the likelyhood of reducing rates is very likely.  I am hoping to that we will be able to NOT raise dues...if at all possible, but I would not rule that out either.  We honestly needed a larger raise last year, but legally we were unable to do so.

We'll have to see how we look financially closer to the end of the year before the board can make any definitive decisions on budget issues.

A lot of people are struggling to stay in their homes right now. The last thing they need is higher dues for community niceties.

If you can't at least try to reduce them or not raise them you are right you won't get my vote.

Just remember, the folks on the HOA board are NOT exempt from paying the EXACT same dues as everyone else, they also own their homes so pay on those (or paid at som point if they now own them free and clear), they also must be up to date on paying their HOA dues.  So my point is, they aren't some company that doesn't care if they raise or lower dues, their decisions to keep them the same, raise them, or lower them affects each one of them also and takes more money out of their own pockets and their family's pocket.  So I would venture to say that if dues need to be raised or cannot be lowered then it is the absolute truth as I'm sure they themselves don't want to have to pay anymore money than they need to either.  Unfortuantely with folks losing homes comes a loss in dues and as much as it stinks, it's up to the people who are honest joe's who pay their bills, to pick up that slack.

And seriously, in what area anywhere are prices being LOWERED?  Or even the same, most things have gone up quite a bit in price over the past 1-2 years.  I don't think expecting HOA dues to be lowered is reasonable at all.  Obviously the board isn't going to raise them unless they truly need to be raised as that raise affects each of them as well.