2023 Communications
2023 Communications
To: Summit HOA members
From: HOA Board
Subject: December HOA Update
Date: 12/10/23
Hello neighbors.
It is once again time for a year-end update from your neighborhood association board. There are quite a few updates to report on.
NEW NEIGHBORS:
First of all, we are pleased to welcome two new families to our neighborhood in 2023.
Ted & Ellie Jorgenson (former Pavelko house), and
Cortney & Patrick Napurski (former Corey's house)
BOARD MEMBERS:
We are also pleased to announce new members to our HOA Board of Directors. As you may know, after Kim Corey stepped down from her many years of service, we decided to make the Board more of a couple’s thing to spread the work around more. Diana Davis & I have been serving as the formal members on our Board for most of the past year or more, and now we have the help of our spouses.
In addition, Mike & Jill Ramsey and James & Sarah Ebeling have agreed to join our Board. They each bring a lot of experience, knowledge, and commitment to the neighborhood, as well as fresh energy to our team. Please join us in THANKING them so much for helping out!
PROJECTS COMPLETED:
A couple updates on projects that have been going on before getting into plans for the next steps:
BOULDER WALL SAFETY:
As we all are aware, the association is responsible for maintaining all common areas, including the boulder walls that are built adjacent to a public street. We are not responsible for any driveway or lawn retaining walls (meaning a retaining wall that is not immediately adjacent to a public street), as these are the individual homeowner's responsibility to maintain.
Our boulder walls were originally built approximately 30 years ago when our neighborhood was first started. Frankly, compared to similar neighborhoods built in that time frame with the lax building codes that existed, we are fortunate that our boulders have survived so well.
However, in the past year, two areas needed pretty significant attention and were expensive enough to put a big dent in our reserves. They were both completed this summer:
· the boulder wall below the Smith’s house (6408 Oxbow Bend), and
· the boulder wall across the street from 6377-6383 has been reinforced and repaired.
COMPLIANCE PROJECT:
The invasive-spreading wild prairie grass (across from 6385 through 6393 Oxbow Bend) has been successfully resolved with the previous owners, and after many years of delay, the property is in the process of coming back into compliance with our covenants and bylaws. The new owners have done a great job of removing and remediating the invasive species and will be completing the project early next spring.
PROJECTS IN PROGRESS:
COMMON AREA IMPROVEMENT PROJECT:
Our common landscaping is also over 30 years old and our common-area sod & trees have been showing quite a bit of aging. As so many of you have commented to us individually, the neighborhood has not been improved, nor kept up to the standard that it started at, for a great many years.
In the case of the area that we call Boulevard Section 2, we have basically had mud and dirt all along that stretch of the boulevard for 30+ years. This was because the builder didn’t install irrigation in that section, and the many attempts to sod or seed that area were futile without the addition of irrigation.
It was a busy summer trying to finish “phase 1” of our common area improvement project that we laid out in last year's letter.
· 2023 Boulevard Rehab Project 1 (driving up the hill): Part of this project was installing new sod in the worst areas, while overseeding the less damaged areas coming up the hill into our neighborhood. It has been completed and looked great for most of the summer. However, at the end of the season, the lawn crew that we have had for 30 years made a mess of the new sod with their heavy equipment on the wet sod. We are working with them to hold them responsible for the damage and expect them to repair their mistake in the Spring.
· 2023 Boulevard Rehab Project 2 (the area across from 6371-6383 Oxbow Bend going north to across from 6383). After 30 years of this area looking like a dirt garden, we are getting this back into proper shape with irrigation and new sod. We had a contractor install the water piping and most of the sprinkler heads this past summer, and are now waiting to obtain easements for us to pull irrigation pipe to connect the new sprinklers to our water system & controller behind the monument. The finishes to the irrigation, as well as the new sod will be installed next Spring.
· 2024 Boulevard Rehab Project 3 (the area across from 6385 Oxbow Bend and continuing around to the entrance of the Summit Circle). The final phase of the Boulevard Rehab Project will be to continue the irrigation lines from the current ending point down to the corner of Oxbow Bend and Summit Circle. We hope to be able to do this next summer. Once irrigated, then the entire common area sod will be able to be managed better to have much stronger curb-appeal than we have had in at least 20 years.
COVENANTS & BYLAWS:
Our association's covenants and bylaws are outdated and not particularly useful. They were originally written by the developer of the neighborhood before being handed off to the HOA after the neighborhood construction was completed. Much of the content was designed for their specific protections and not really written to be user-friendly for the HOA members. As a result, we will be looking at updating both of these guiding documents this winter. Our objective is to make sure that we continue to have a beautiful neighborhood for years to come, and to prevent ever finding ourselves in a situation like our neighbors in Trapper's Pass have to deal with. In the meantime, (as a gentle reminder), if you are considering any improvements or landscaping projects, please look at our existing covenants and bylaws and/or consult one of the board members to make sure we keep open the communication channels and stay in compliance.
FUTURE COMMUNICATIONS:
We also have been working on updates to our HOA website. (Thank you to Breck Storts for her help with this.) We will be posting all correspondence in the future to our website, and it has the contact directory of all 42 homes that make up the Summit Neighborhood. Please add to or update your information on the directory if needed. (Just click the tab to complete the directory form). If you have any questions on how to do this please reach out to Breck Storts at breckstorts20@gmail.com. Our website is sites.google.com/view/thesummitchan/home
2023 FINANCIAL REPORT OF EXPENSES:
Sometime this winter, we will send out a summary of the financial activity for the past few years. We think it would be helpful for all the members to have a report of the history of both our ongoing (routine) expenses, as well as a break out of the few extraordinary expenses for big-ticket repair projects we have had to deal with.
2024 BUDGET:
With the financial reports, we will also be sending out a budget for 2024. We are still waiting on quotes from vendors, and we don't expect many of them until we near Spring. We expect our service providers to raise their rates, and we will update you once we have the details.
ASSOCIATION DUES:
Like our landscaping, for the first 30 years, our dues hadn't changed or been updated. They were set at $250 per year in 1993, and remained so until the beginning of 2023, when we raised them 5% to $262.50. To put that into context, according to the calculator on the Federal Reserve's website, our $250 dues in 1993 would be approximately $532 per year in 2023 if it followed the official, historical rate of inflation.
For a long time, we as a neighborhood probably thought that was a good thing to have low HOA dues, as for most of those 30 years, we were building up a large surplus in advance of the inevitable repairs we would need to make to the common area boulder walls.
However, now that we have had some of those large repair expenses, we no longer have much of a surplus.
While our dues cover the annual operating expenses, there is not much surplus available for the completion of the common area improvements, nor anything left over to help rebuild the rainy-day fund for further boulder wall repairs as they become needed.
With the out-of-control inflation we are all dealing with, our routine expenses have all gotten way more expensive, and we will need to raise our dues to at least keep up.
As such, we have decided to raise our dues (modestly) for 2024, with a plan to come back in a month or two with our budgets in hand and make any other recommendations that we feel should be considered.
Our current Covenants and By-laws allow the board to raise dues 5% each year without a membership vote, which would take our dues up another $12.50 per year, from $262.50 to $275.00.
PAYMENT OF ASSOCIATION DUES:
The 2024 annual dues will be due by January 15th.
Please make your check out to Summit HOA and mail it to Diana Davis 6387 Oxbow Bend, Chanhassen, MN. If it is easier, you may also pay your dues via our Venmo account: @summit_hoa_near_mountain. This information can also be found on our website under the "Dues" tab.
In conclusion, as we wind down 2023, we want to wish you all a joyous upcoming Holiday Season!
Please feel free to reach out to us if you have any questions or concerns.
Thanks,
Brad Billings, President
billingsbrad74@gmail.com