Budget Observations for the Board

A New Budget should be accompanied by a narrative, explaining the rationale. Don’t you think we deserve an explanation on how you are planning on spending our money?

1. You can’t assume everyone will pay on time to receive the discount. You need to consider our history, if you can find it.

2. Fines and ARC Fees are like overtime, you should never count on that revenue.

3. Does the majority think mosquito abatement is a prudent expenditure?

4. How does tree care differ from the other common area expenses?

5. Who are we paying for bookkeeping and why?

6. With 5 board members,why are we paying for board assistance? Did we vote for incapable people?

7. Who is doing what on the reserve study?

8. What are the legal fees for?

9. What is reserve other for?

10. What happened to our money market account?

11. Where are The deposits for the real estate transfer fees?

Enforcement Resolution?

Enforcement Resolution to what? Once again the lack of professionalism astounds me! An incomplete title and file name. Is it rule enforcement Resolution, ARC Enforcement Resolution,,,

Email to Our Brain Trust

1.) Were there members besides the board that developed this? Seems like a one way street to me. You will never gain support with a top down approach. Please try to remember that this is a Homeowners Association not a Despotism.

2.) Who patrols the neighborhood for rule compliance, or is it up to the members to file a complaint? Most well run HOAs have a compliance officer in order to prevent neighbors from going after neighbors. Our ARC used to take care of compliance issues. With 5 Directors it seems that one of them could step up?

3.) When members file complaints, what happens to them? Is there follow up provided to the member filing the complaint on actions taken? Seems like the right thing to do, rather than to leave them guessing. Definitely should be a part of any well thought out procedure?

4.) The right to be heard should include a third party mediator, as the ability for the board to interpret our rules in an unbiased way is suspect. Just look around.

You are spending a lot of time and money on rules when our assets continue to be neglected.

What could have been.

🇺🇸 🇺🇸 🇺🇸

Budget Analysis – WE ARE BROKE!

We haven’t had a balanced budget in over 10 years and once again we are planning on spending more than we are taking in.

The Road Fund is no longer a part of our expenditures and is expected to fund itself.

We are spending more money than what’s in our budget on attorneys. rather than common area maintenance.

Another dues increase heading your way, without explanation, again!

It is vital that we conduct a reserve study. Here is the reason why. Click Here

Neglected Maintenance

1 Remove boulders blocking north emergency exit on the west side of the river before fire season.

2. Forest – With decreasing rainfall, we must begin taking measures to thin our 40 acres of forest to deal with this weather phenomenon. This includes the removal of vegetation along our roadsides which is also preventing snowplows from maintaining maximum road width during the winter months.

3. Roadways – We need to take monies from our Road Fund to take care of shoulder gravel replacement and repairs to the severe bumps and dips in our roadway. Once the necessary repairs have been completed we then need to reassess our entire roadway so we can better understand the “how much and when?“ We need to survey our members on how much they would be willing to spend on an assessment. The last was $600 in 2006 for a $300,000 repave.

4. Fire Hydrants -Inspect, flush and certify our fire hydrants annually.

5. Perimeter Fence – Our perimeter fence is 10 years past its expiration date. Start at those various Nat’l Forest access points.

6. Mail Stations – What a cluster! For less than $200 per key, we can start over. Install different Kelvin rated lights set on motion detectors.

7. Invasive Weeds – Identify and eradicate invasive & noxious weeds in our common areas in the spring, before going to seed.

8. Log Jam -Remove log jam preventing full flow to our rivulets.

9. Road Markers – Remove road markers preventing the snowplows from maintaining the full road width during the winter months. Remove the road markers at our mail stations and replace with markers that can be removed during the summer months and replaced just before winter.

10. Pump Houses – Conduct a full assessment of the condition of our pumphouse buildings by gaining access through Avion. Replace 50 year old asphalt shingles with corrugated steel, similar to mail stations.

11. Signage – Remove all unnecessary signage beginning with the two large and obnoxious “Dog Park Rules” billboards in the pristine river delta habitat! This is a private development, not a public park. In the past the membership would drive any changes or additions to our signage. When WROA went with Becky’s sign recommendations in 2008, we reused the metal blanks rather than buying new ones. Some people do not have any regard for how other people’s monies are spent.

12. Conduct a thorough Reserve Study and Annual Maintenance Plan. Click Here

Don’t Buy Here, especially from Lori Koerner

Have time for a survey?

Take the survey here.

Why are so many houses for sale? My guess is, people see the amount of ignored maintenance, a budget that hasn’t balanced in 10 years, the board using their position to attack their neighbors, unequal application of the rules to hit the top few.

This map doesn’t include 5 additional listings which are removed during the slow winter months. Some think they can actually get seven figures!

The board won’t authorize a reserve study since they know the outcome will not bode favorably on their managerial skills.

DEMAND A RESERVE STUDY!

It’s the law Oregon Law

It’s the law we ignore for being old!

“Why?” should be the first question

So why the sudden push for updating our 50 year old rules? Before making any amendments to our bill of rights, one should always ask why? What’s the need? It will take the process for change a lot less time if you adequately explain the reason why.

Many of the new rule additions don’t even have names? Who was the unselected committee that put this together? They should have sent it out for comment to all WROA members without Olive Oil or the WROA Henchman’s involvement and filtering. Not everyone can or wants to attend meetings run by individuals pushing an agenda that isn’t community friendly.

How about we focus on enforcing the rules that already exist?

VOTE NO!

Fix Our Budget!

Ray can’t even manage a simple budget and he condones bad behavior by our Secretary and Ethics Advisor, Olive Oil.

We should have 4 separate buckets for our expenditures:

  • The Operating Fund
  • The General Reserve Fund for the unexpected, e.g. border fencing replacement, mailboxes refresh, etc.
  • The Road Fund @ $30k a year.
  • Forest maintenance @ $10k a year.

We burned through our General Reserve Fund and now we will be burning through our Road Fund like if it was a General Reserve Account. Ray has not put together a balanced budget or properly maintained our Common Area since joining the WROA Board of Directors! As the ARC Chair he is approving construction that has the potential of burning down our development!

Ray’s 2023 – 2024 Budget Proposal

Once again Ray is proposing spending $17k more than what we are taking in! That money is taken from the “Road Fund”, meaning we will be only adding $13k to our reserve!

___——-______——______

Before the Ray

Here is the way we used to put together our budget forecast. It’s simple while providing a great history of expenditures.

________———-________———-

A Better Layout with Similar Results

Here is a proposed outline for our 2023 – 2024 Budgeting Forecast, based on Ray’s desire to spend WROA Money!

Once again, Ray is proposing that we spend $15k more than we are planning on taking in?

Continue reading