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Posted By KevinK7 on 11/13/2013 11:08 PM
Interesting. Personally I agree with the two being separate. While I understand the need to operate and conduct business, I can also see the potential for abuse. My neighborhood had many aspirations despite lacking any legal authority (as ruled by a court). Had this been the case they would have inflicted a lot of harm on the neighborhood. They wanted to build multimillion dollar walls, increase landscaping, purchase land and build a clubhouse, and take over county properties, such as a little "lake.". All this in a decidedly middle-class neighborhood during an economic depression (they believed this would return our property values to boom levels).
They were able to accomplish some of their goals by getting the county to create MSBUs and add improvement costs into our taxes using a minority of approval (the measures failed our internal votes) but with our neighborhood so large (close to 1000 homes), combining budgets and assessments would have allowed the board to accomplish their goals and solidify power before a proper legal challenge could be made (they were very aggressive litigiously).
I think you are in a tough spot being you have all this pre-existing stuff and a membership that is very apathetic and/or ignorant and I could see how such a law could help atleast maintain things.
I know the potential of abuse is very real. However I can also see why the legislature did this and other things (like mandate reserve studies) as many HOAs across the state that were built in the 1970s and 1980s are facing severe problems due to not properly funding reserves on assets that require infrequent maintenance (like roads). In the above HOA's case, it left dues artificially low for decades and according to one attorney, only funded its reserves at 7%. This particular HOA is on the side of a small mountain and now has a failing culvert system and many members against dues increases are wanting the County government to basically bail them out by taking over its culvert system and 50+ miles of private roads. Not gonna happen.
They better pray their area doesn't get hit with huge snow storms before they can raise enough revenue to save their culvert system. This happened a few years ago in another area of the county that did not have any culvert system and it resulted in major mudslides. The county petitioned the federal govt for disaster relief. Luckily it happened in a sparsely populated area. This particular HOA is densely populated and should mudslides happen there, people could literally die from their lack of sensibility. They want to save a buck by keeping dues low with no sense of possible consequences.
We face the same thing in our HOA. People voted down dues increases for decades, we have lost virtually all recreational amenities and are down to just management costs overhead, insurance, couple of green belts, street lights, roads, and an empty leaking clubhouse. Same thing. People begging us to petition the County to take over our roads so they don't have to pay for them. Not gonna happen, the County has no obligation to take over our private roads.
And the icing on the cake, 3 weeks ago, one of the major pushers to keep the dues low is now threatening to sue the HOA for failure to maintain the common areas including the roads. He even submitted a motion 3 years ago at the annual meeting to LOWER the dues. Then after making his legal threats he then went on a tirade that the Board was wasting money on re-roofing the Clubhouse to stop the water leaks. So essentially he wants to starve the HOA of revenue, turn around and sue the HOA for failing to maintain the common areas, and even object when we do spend money on maintaining remaining common areas like the Clubhouse. This guy is something to behold. Also he is one of the ring leaders that wants to disband the HOA.