Our neighborhood association has always been about maintaining a place we’re proud to live in—clean, welcoming, and thriving in community. Over the years, we’ve been able to do that thanks to a combination of annual dues and a small group of dedicated volunteers who have stepped in to fill the gaps.

In recent years, we’ve reached a point where our dues collection is no longer sufficient to cover the rising costs of all that we have historically done as an association. Some quick facts to get everyone up to speed:

• We have 332 homes in our neighborhood and we have averaged 45% participation (148 homes) over the past 10 years.

• Our annual dues were historically $30, but were raised to $35 per home in 2023.

• Yard maintenance and upkeep are our largest outgoing expenses (70% of our budget)

For the financial history that we have record of, our lawn maintenance budget was stable and tracked well with our dues collection until around 2020. Since that time, the price of our lawn care contract has almost doubled as we have gotten new quotes from countless local businesses. 

As the price hike became apparent in 2021 along with the inability of our association to keep up, our neighbor and Treasurer, Ben Doerr took on our lawn maintenance as a volunteer along 43rd Street in the heat of the summer- mowing, edging, and blowing twice a month. Ben managed to bring our empty bank account to a healthy state with a nice cushion over the course of a couple of years until he was met with personal health challenges and had to focus on other things. 

It was clear at that time that we needed to make some changes to get to a balanced budget. Luckily, Ben had left us in the financial position that we had time to figure it out. As a board, we decided to start with a SMALL dues increase from $30 annually to $35 annually in 2023 and make a huge push for increased participation. We were optimistic as a board that the combination of these two could get us where we needed to be!

We were able to bring our participation rate up to 60% that year with an all-time high and ALMOST had a balanced budget! Unfortunately, it was not sustained and we have resettled in the years since then at our historical average of around 45%. 

Over the past 3 years we have slowly eaten away at the financial cushion Ben afforded us when he did all of our maintenance free of charge for several years. We are losing over $3,000 per year currently and at the close of 2026 will not have the funds to sustain the same pattern in 2027. Additionally, lawn maintenance has continued to increase annually and as of today, in order to break even, we would need 76% of our neighborhood participating to cover the current operating costs, which is a far cry from our current participation rate of 44% this year.

I hope that sets the ground work for the decision ahead that rests on all of us. In general terms, the board has discussed a few options that we would like to present and have all of our neighbors vote on. Here is each of them with a brief description of what it MIGHT look like:

• Reduced Lawn Maintenance- Currently, our grounds are serviced once per month in the dormant months and twice per month during the growing season for a total of 19 services per year. We could reduce this to the extent necessary that it becomes affordable. This would likely mean no off-season maintenance and once per month during growing season.

• Increased Dues- At our current participation rate, a dues increase to approximately $50 per year would balance our budget. This option would likely also need to come with annual dues increases moving forward to account for rising costs as-needed. Really, this is where we went wrong in the past. Our dues increase did not keep pace with inflation.

• A Combination of the Two- We could also figure out, as a board, how we will merge the two ideas of decreasing our maintenance frequency and increasing our dues, but with each being less drastic than if we did only one.