The general meeting of the Fennel Ridge Homeowner’s Association, held October 7, 2024, was adjourned to a future date as there were not sufficient members present.
This post announces this meeting and provides details.
Cliff Notes: The General Meeting of October 7th. will be reconvened on Monday, November 18th at 7:00 pm. It will be a virtual meeting. Information on how to join the meeting will be emailed to you closer to the date. If you can’t attend, please read the section below about Proxies below.
Meeting Purpose
Your HOA has some bills to pay. Regardless of how you feel about these bills, they must be paid in full, and on time. To do this, the Board of Directors must put forward an operating budget for the coming year. Your annual assessment, your homeowner’s dues are calculated from this budget.
Lowest Assessment in the Neighborhood
After taking it for granted for many years, we now know that our current assessment of $188 annually is way low. HOAs smaller than ours are charging more.
We, your Board of Directors, don’t really want to pay more either, but we did, like you, sign the contract that is our CC&Rs. This document lays out some very specific requirements for us, as an association, and you, as an individual.
Operating Budget Discussion
The HOA is constrained to an automatic increase in the membership dues of no more than five percent of the current amount. Our proposed budget (attached below) proposes an increase to $200 from the current $188. If you won’t give us your approval, we will exercise the five percent rule and raise the rate to $197.40.
Comments made at the October 7th meeting went along with the line that our budget is pollyannish. We will have trouble staying within the constraints of this proposed budget.
So, we need to have a discussion about the annual assessment and what you, the membership believe it should really be. A change to the annual assessment requires 51% of our members (26 lots) to vote yes.
Special Assessment
Having already said that our annual assessment if very low compared to other similar HOAs, we would like to keep it that way. We have, however, some major maintenance projects that need attention. In addition, we have no reserve funds as we are encouraged to have according to RCW 64.38.065: Reserve account and study.
So, to address these projects, which should be capital projects as they will increase the life of our assets, your Board of Directors is asking you to approve a special assessment of $250 in 2025. Our plan is laid out in the 2025 Project Budget document (below).
This Special Assessment is necessary to get these projects done and help rebuild our reserves.
A special assessment requires 66% of our members (33 lots) to agree to vote yes for this one-time assessment.
Meeting Details
This meeting will be held online as a virtual meeting. The URL (web address) for the meeting will be sent out by email at least three days prior to the meeting.
The meeting will be using Microsoft Teams. We have a licence to teams through our Microsoft365 account. With MS Teams, we have no restrictions on meeting time.
So… Date: Monday, November 18th at 7:00
Proxies
If you cannot attend in person, please appoint a person to act as a proxy in your place. There is a proxy form below, which you can download and fill out. Photograph the completed form and return it to our fennelridgehoa account on outlook.com.
This proxy form does not provide for you to vote on any issues. This proxy form provides you with these choices:
- Appoint a friend or other person to exercise your vote at the meeting
- Declare yourself present to enable a quorum at the meeting
- Appoint your Board of Directors as your proxy.
Please note… Non-attendance at the meeting without a properly completed proxy form implies that you are appointing the Board of Directors as your proxy.