There are two main financial issues that your HOA must consider each year when it comes to allocating funds and determining whether to increase annual HOA dues or impose a special assessment. The first issue is that your HOA must pay a number of regular expenses each year. This is a basic list of what your HOA has been paying on average each year and regularly includes in its budget:

1. SUB bill: We pay about $300 a year for the light and water for watering the area by the sign at the entrance to our neighborhood near the pond.
2. Landscaping: We pay about $3,000 a year for cutting the grass in the EWEB greenspace along the walking path, maintaining the area around the Oak tree and the sign along V Street, maintaining sidewalks and the walking path area, cutting blackberries, cleaning up blown down branches, mowing and maintaining the area around the pond by the entrance to our neighborhood, and many other projects that come up each year such as maintaining the settling ponds.
3. Postage, envelopes, etc: We pay about $300 a year to sent out the annual dues letter, violation letters, correspondence with Title companies, lawyers, the City of Springfield, and other organizations.
4. Insurance: We pay about $1,950 each year to renew our insurance policy for the HOA through State Farm.
5. State and local taxes: We pay $50 a year to the Corporation Division and about $50 a year for taxes on our settling ponds and the area by the neighborhood sign.
6. Repairs and maintenance: We occasionally have large repair bills such as the cost we will have to pay in 2017 to repair the fence around one of the settling ponds. In some years we have paid approximately $1,500 to repair our sprinklers, fences, light by the neighborhood sign, etc.
7. Bank fees: We pay about $100 or less each year in bank fees for new checks, the occasional bounced annual dues check from a homeowner, and other expenses.
8. Website: On average we pay about $100 a year to maintain our website. This is not paid each year. Our web hosting service bills us $475 every four years, for example. But our domain name registration is $15.99 per year and we had been paying annually for an email hosting service.
9. Other expenses: We pay about $250 each year in other expenses such as the fee to have our irrigation backflow device tested and neighborhood events. In past years we paid $90 to reserve the auditorium at Briggs Middle School and $100 to $200 on events such as our Christmas lights contest.

In addition to these regular expenses, we are required to maintain the two settling ponds and the area around the neighborhood sign at the entrance to our neighborhood. While we may not have to pay much in some years, we have to be ready to pay large amounts to have trees removed, brush cleared, the water channels dredged, the banks and fences repaired, damage or vandalism cleaned up, or other expenses mandated by the City, the County, and the State. We receive regular letters and postcards from the City of Springfield regarding wastewater discharge and our duties to maintain our settling ponds, and the City’s public works department regularly inspects both areas.

For a couple of recent examples of the expenses we have to pay to maintain the settling ponds, a large tree that was growing in one of them broke in half and fell across the back fence in early 2017. Your HOA is obtaining bids to have the brush cleared and that tree removed so we can restore the fence. We are also getting bids to repair the chain link fence along the walking path. It is estimated that the total cost to remove the tree, clean the brush, repair the fence and put in a proper fence on the northern side of the settling pond will be approximately $8,000.

-Jason

Jason Castanza, President of Ambleside Meadows Home Owners Association