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- 2025 Dues notices and annual meeting invitation mailed
This weekend, we mailed out the annual dues invoices and invitations to the Annual Meeting in January. Everyone for whom we had an email address on file should have received it in email within the last 2 days. Everyone who did not opt in to electronic-only communication will be receiving a printed copy in the US Mail in the next few days.
The important part everyone wants to know:
- 2025 Dues are $175 and are due January 8, 2025. Note that your individual amount may be more or less depending on account credits from last year or unpaid fines, so check your actual invoice in the mailing.
- The General Meeting at which we will elect the next board of directors will be held on January 10, 2025 at 6:30pm at Searchlight Ministries, located at 4020 22nd Ave, Hudsonville, MI 49426.
Thank you to those of you who opted in to electronic-only communication! There is a form in the packet you can send us if you want to join them. This mailing cost us $180.32 once all the costs were added up. $47.00 worth of toner, paper, and envelopes, and $133.32 in postage stamps. And a few hours of board members folding, stuffing, stamping, and sealing.
Here are the documents that were mailed out, in case you lost your copy or weren’t the household member who received it and are curious:
Our original proposed budget in November had suggested $140 for dues. A recent review of our physical assets determined that our reserve fund now requires $30,000 to be considered fully funded, and not having it there is why we had to charge an assessment with the 2024 dues to cover 2/3 of the sign replacement project. Here’s a good article on how HOA reserve funds are supposed to work. After discussion at our public hearing on November 1st, we decided to raise the 2025 dues to $175 in order to put an additional $5000 into the reserve (about $33 per house), bringing the reserve up to $20,000, with the plan of putting another $5000 in each year until getting it fully funded at $30,000 by 2027.
- Proposed 2025 Budget and Dues Amount
Attached below, please find the proposed budget for 2025. This budget will be discussed (and possibly changed, based on feedback) at the open board meeting this Friday, November 1, 2024.
The budget as proposed will have the dues for 2025 set at $140 (but is subject to change until final approval, as stated above). There are explanations for various things in the budget on the second page. Bring your questions and comments to the November 1 board meeting, or email them to Dave Miller (address is at the bottom of the second page of the budget document).
- Open Board Meeting November 1 at 7pm
The Rolling Meadows HOA will be hosting an open board meeting November 1, 2024 at 7:00 p.m., at Searchlight Ministries, located at 4020 22nd Ave, Hudsonville, MI 49426.
The purpose of this meeting is to discuss:
- The proposed 2025 Budget
- Proposed 2025 Dues
- Current status of the Association
- Any other business that may come before the board
If you are interested in participating in the financial process of the neighborhood and would like to know more about what is coming in 2025, please plan to attend this meeting.
Attached to this notice is a Board Member Nomination Form and a Consent to Electronic Notice – Please return these forms to us by email, text, in person, or at the meeting! We have openings for volunteers on the board for homeowners willing to assist with the upkeep of the association! Duties and responsibilities range from financial, clerical, communications, organizational, and other aspects of the association’s management. Failure to solicit enough active volunteers may result in the board contracting with a management company and being forced to raise dues. So please volunteer! The Board asks the Consent to Electronic Notice be returned in order to reduce costs associated with mailings.
A proposed budget will be posted on our website and Facebook later this week.
Please contact us with any questions!
Attachments:
- Our website has moved!
If you are reading this, you are already on the new site! Welcome!
While wordpress.com has been a great free (with ads) host for us, we have moved the website to a self-hosted WordPress site, which not only gives you an ad-free experience, but allows us to eventually add integration with our accounting system so we can have a homeowner portal again, which wordpress.com would not have allowed us to do (at least not with it built into our website).
If you had an email subscription to the old website, your subscription was automatically moved here. If you think you were subscribed but didn’t get a confirmation of re-subscribing, head over to the News page and sign up again!
Don’t forget to update your bookmarks! The new site address is
rmjhoa.org
- 2024 Dues and Annual Meeting Announcement
The mailing with the 2024 dues bill and announcement of the 2024 Annual Homeowners Meeting was mailed on November 30th and should be arriving in mailboxes any day now, if you haven’t already gotten it.
The executive summary:
- Dues will be $236 and are due on January 1, 2024. See further down this page for a FAQ about how the dues amount was determined this year.
- Trash service is still required to be handled by Republic, in order to get our cheap group rate, but each homeowner will now pay Republic directly instead of it being paid through their dues.
- The Annual Homeowners Meeting where we will elect the next board will be held Tuesday, January 16, 2024 at 6:30pm at Searchlight Ministries Church on the corner of 22nd Ave and Quincy St.
In order to save printing and mailing costs, a number of things which were not required by our bylaws to be included in the physical mailing were uploaded here instead of included in the envelope, and the cover letter in the envelope asks you to come here to get them.
- Copy of the cover letter (PDF) – this includes the information about how to pay your dues and when and where the meeting will be.
- Letter second page (PDF) – communication from the HOA to go with the mailing
- 2024 Final approved budget (PDF)
- (coming soon) Draft Agenda for January 16, 2024 Homeowners Meeting (PDF) – Contact Claire if you would like something added to the agenda.
- Proxy Form (PDF) – if you can’t attend in person
- If you would like to be put on the ballot to run for the Board of Directors, please fill out this online form. See also an overview of the duties of board members (coming soon).
2024 Dues Overview
We’re making three major changes that affect how you pay dues this year.
- We are continuing to mandate everyone use Republic for trash pickup service so that we can get a much cheaper group rate, however, we are shifting from paying it through your HOA dues to each homeowner paying Republic directly. This eliminates billing issues with bulk pickups and bin deliveries, and vastly reduces the number of mistakes Republic’s customer service is likely to make when dealing with you. It also spreads your trash payment out across the year with quarterly payments instead of paying it all at once.
- We are discontinuing the use of Waveland Property Management effective April 30, 2024. We are returning to being self-managed. This will result in a significant decrease in collected dues (in the long run), however it depends on us continuing to have active board members and other volunteers in the future. We are investigating the possibility of retaining access to AppFolio for the member portal and accounting services, as they will sell directly to HOAs as well, and suggested we could retain our existing data.
- We will be replacing the signs at the Quincy Street and 22nd Avenue entrances, as the existing ones are rotting and will soon disintegrate. The assessment for this is being split over two years, with a significant portion of the cost coming out of our reserves in 2024, and an assessment to replenish the reserves will be collected in 2025. For 2024, this will unfortunately counteract the savings we get from dropping Waveland. Of note: if we had opted to keep Waveland, your 2024 dues would have been $292 for a total out-of-pocket of $401 once you include trash.
So how much is this actually going to cost me?
The trash payments will be paid quarterly, so you won’t have to pay it at the same time as dues. Your first payment for 2024 trash should be in December. If you haven’t been contacted by Republic by mid-December, please contact them to make sure you are set up correctly.
The below chart shows how the dues and trash fees will combine for a more accurate year-to-year comparison. Yes, your out-of-pocket cost actually goes up by $30 in 2024, but as mentioned above, it doesn’t have to all be paid at once. The bulk of the additional cost is the assessment for the sign project. Starting in 2025, your total cost gets significantly cheaper.
The total cost of the sign project is estimated to be roughly $159 per lot. An assessment of $95 per lot is included in your 2024 dues, with the remaining $64 per lot ($9805) of the cost being taken out of our reserves. The 2025 dues will likely contain a $58 per lot assessment to replenish the reserve account.
Note that the amounts listed here for 2025 and beyond are estimates based on the existing budget, and are subject to change (and probably will) based on vendor pricing changes and other unforeseen community needs. But this will still give you a good idea of where it it trending.
Year HOA Dues Amount HOA-mandated out-of-pocket (includes dues + trash) Notes 2023 Actual $315 $315 Trash was included in dues 2024 Actual $236 $345 1st sign project assessment, last 4 months of Waveland 2025 Estimated $170 $279 2nd sign project assessment 2026 Estimated $113 $222 Normal dues going forward