A Board Member is Pushing for Guard Gate Entrance

One Board member now wants to establish a guarded entrance to the Condo area. The HOA fees had been established long ago and there was no mention at the time of purchase that such an expense would be forth coming.. that is, no mention was ever made about having a guard at the entrance(s) to the condo area. If this were to be established, the HOA fees would be significantly increased to pay for at least three shifts of guards, health benefits, Social Security, etc. Do owners(who bought their unit(s) have any recourse if the Board headed by one disgusting person pushes thru the guard concept? Some individuals who purchased the unit(their respective unit) would not have purchased the condo if they would have known that the HOA fees would be significantly HIGHER.

LOL Someone had that idea at White Birch Lakes Recreation Association then 6 years ago they spent Forty thousand on a key pad and gate to save money from paying the guards. We just dropped another 50 thousand on new key pads and a fancy wrought iron gate they got tired of repairing the old one all the time.

What was the benifit of becoming a gated community? Everybodys got codes to get in, all the friends of friends contractors ect so it might as well not be there. And the city we live in has decided GATED protected communities get to pay 1 1/2 the taxes people out side that gate pay because it makes us more desirable.

Oh yeah once you put up the barrier they don't have to do your roads or police patrols cause your PRIVATE! Take that to your Board.

Norman, Sounds like one person's pipe dream to me. Unless the HOA has been saving up a lot of money for the project, they'll be shocked at the construction costs, not just the operating costs.

Putting gates and a guard house in the middle of an entrance street is quite the undertaking. The street may not even be wide enough for all the new stuff. The costs of all the studies, reports, permits and construction will probably put any desires for a a guarded entrance to rest.

Norman, even if all board members wanted this, they cannot implement it without the approval of the required percent of your owners. Because this would have to be a special assessment to build it, plus increasing your monthly assessment for the additional monthly expenses to staff it if it would be an in-person guard, both of which would be required to be put to a vote of the members.
We have key-pad gated communities all around us, and when driving by most of the gates are standing open. I wonder what those members think they are getting for the additional money they paid to buy there. Harold

Hi Norman:

Do your documents mention anything about the condo association providing security, gates, etc.? If not, you may need to make changes to your documents. Most condos I've been around (in Oregon) have private streets, so the gates in that case wouldn't make a difference as far as street maintenance, but if by chance your streets are public, you would probably need to change to private (with the assn paying maintenance) in order to gate the entrance.

The post above, about doing a special assessment, is correct - even if you were changing from automated gates to a guard gate, you'd probably have to build a guardhouse, provide utilities to it, etc.

For everybody else with automatic gates: consider going to a system where people have either a proximity card or an identified opener in their car to open automatic gates, rather than a keypad system; build in a system for guests to call the house, and the homeowner then keys in a code from the house. Elite makes a systesm like this that worked fairly well at one of my former communities. The programming can be done from a computer, and you can download from the controller a log of entry/exit information.

J. Patrick Moore, CMCA

Another thing to think about is the negative impact on security. If you put a gate around a community, there must be something of value that is being protected. Thus, why wouldn't that mean you might increase theft attempts since more bad guys will want a piece of the action.

We have the Elite system and it works as advertised. However, with all the inherent limitations of keeping gate codes secure, vendors knowing the codes and tailgating by non-residents, I doubt that we have any measurable improvement in security. I just think it helps the cut through traffic.