A landscape committee has been formed, led by Brad, with the purpose of helping to beautify our neighborhood, organize landscaping-related events and help the Board with controlling costs of our community’s landscaping.

Landscaping Budgeting –

From a budget perspective, landscaping is the single greatest cost we have as a community – more than half of your HOA dues go towards landscaping.  The Board of Directors and the Landscape Committee Members want to ensure that these funds are going to their best use and uphold the beatification standards that we all want as a community.

Some History –

In 2018, the Board of Directors changed landscape contractors.  This process included obtaining 3 separate bids from different vendors in the area, surveying the areas within the community that need to be maintained, then signed a contract.  During this process, we found that the landscape contractor we inherited from the developer was missing about half of our community spaces.  With the expanded scope and a one-time clean-up to take care of the areas that were missed, our annual dues were increased to cover the added cost.

Community Clean-up Event –

As part of the 2019 budgeting process, additional landscape areas were brought to our attention for cleanup – our detention ponds.  We’re required to be good stewards of our detention ponds, as they’re considered HOA property.   As a community, we’re responsible for maintaining the overall health of the ponds, including the plant life around the ponds and the accumulation of debris within the ponds.

To save money in the 2019 budget, we’ve elected to do this cleanup as a community event, led by the Committee Chair, rather than pay an external company to clean up these areas.  Funds have been allocated in the 2019 budget for this community-led cleanup of the detention ponds for things like equipment rentals, dump fees and any other relevant expenses.  Any funds leftover from this cleanup can be used for other landscape work (including new plants, repairs or maintenance) or returned to the general fund.

We’ll be discussing this proposed event at the upcoming budget meeting, including what is involved and the kind of help that we need.

Final words –

If you’d like to volunteer to help with the landscape committee, please reach out to the BOD and we’ll put you in touch with Brad.