Dear editor:
If you own a one- to four-family home or condo unit in Hot Springs Village ("Village") you will be asked to vote on an increase in your assessment. Discussion is on $65 per month.
If our Board of Directors and the management of the Village really understood the nature of the problem, they would realize the situation is direr than presented. Because they don't know and have no plan other than to raise revenue, you should reject this Band-Aid and demand appropriate measures be adopted ASAP!
That is not to say that some revenue increase, such as a special assessment or more, would not be justified were we to be presented with an appropriate plan. A more permanent commitment in the form of monthly assessment increases is not justified until a plan exists.
Imagine a 100-acre subdivision with completed roads and utilities up to the sites. Amenities include a club house, pool and tennis courts. In the first three years, 100 homes were built on the 400 lots available, but seven years later, no further activity. The lots are now overgrown; the amenities and streets in decline due to underuse/delayed maintenance, and the cost of upkeep continues to increase. Potential buyers drive by and do not stop -- seeing that nothing new is going on and the project feels as dead as it looks. The small homeowners' association is asking for a doubling of the monthly assessment.
The Village has 34,000-plus lots of which an approximate 8,000 have been improved. That is less than 25 percent. And the large majority of construction occurred prior to 2003 when Cooper exited. Our infrastructure is massive compared to the example above, plus on average, it is nearer 30 years old. The cost of replacement today is far greater than what it was when built, and the same goes for maintenance. We have no reserves for replacement, so repair and replacement must come from us, the owners. Like the example above, and I'm being generous, we are utilizing less than 25 percent of our capacity. If we were a factory running at 25 percent utilization, we would have been closed a long time ago.
Lot take-backs are nothing new. That is why there was that failure of a sale of some 5,000-plus lots to NRPI early this century. And today there are greater than that number not paying monthly assessments. No doubt we would be better off were they paying. The stage for the decline in annual housing starts occurred as Cooper wound done and then exited. But, fact of the matter is that Cooper alone could not build enough houses at a pace required by the size of the Village. More improved lots equate to more people, more cost sharing in infrastructure, and amenity utilization. Not a complicated formula.
Since neither our board nor management has recognized the primary issue, then we must also question their ability to deal with it. Future installments will address management and organizational structure as it impacts on the issues, and suggestions for resolution of what clearly is a crisis.
Clark Vernon
Hot Springs Village
Editorial on 07/23/2014