The PRRHOA Annual meeting announcement has been sent out, along with the ballot and 2022 Budget. We are following the vote-by-mail provisions of our Bylaws. We just completed the open nomination period for Directors. Voting by mail creates difficulties for the “secret ballot” provision of the Bylaws. This year, we are asking that you mark and fold your ballot and DO NOT make any identifying marks on the folded ballot. Then send the folded ballot in the envelope provided. Please mark the outside of the envelope with your address or lot number. When the envelopes are received and opened, the envelopes and the ballots will be separated and shuffled so that we don’t know which ballot went with which envelope. The envelopes will be counted for quorum purposes and ballots will be counted separately. This isn’t much different from how the State does vote-by-mail.
The Budget format for 2022 is slightly different from past formats. There are separate Operating and Reserve Budgets. The two are connected by the annual transfer of the planned Reserves contribution from the Operating Budget to the Reserve Budget. Planned expenditures from Reserves are shown under Reserves Budget. In the new format, you can clearly see what was spent from each pool of money. Things that are supposed to be spent from Reserves will show up under that Budget.
The detailed Reserve Study for 2021 and the annual summary are posted under Financial Records on this website. Our Reserves are based on repairing the road as needed to avoid having to do a major repaving job. This means that our dues plan and Reserves contributions support repairs, but not repaving. We are continuing to watch the road conditions and may need to adjust this premise in the future based on what we are seeing.
We compared our HOA dues with many other communities in the Gig Harbor area to see if we were reasonable. We are in the middle of the pack. The main differentiator in annual dues is who maintains the roads. Communities with private roads, like ours, had the highest dues in general. Communities where the county or city maintained the roads had much lower dues. A few areas with private roads had lower dues than us; but usually the roads were smaller or they just weren’t being maintained.
Polly Brantner resigned her Director’s position in the HOA in August. She has been replaced by Patty Lee through the end of the year. Patty is continuing the work Polly started on landscaping maintenance projects and ACC activities. Thanks to Patty for being willing to step into these important roles and thanks to Polly for her help over the past several months.
On maintenance items, the road repairs and sealing have been completed. The final cost was slightly under the projected cost. We had planned to refresh the bark and gravel around the playground this year, but it looks like that may have to be deferred to 2022. We have had difficulty getting bids for work this year.
Have you ever wondered where the storm water drainage goes from our roads? Hint: it does not drain into the Sound. We have as-built drawings for our storm drainage system. The storm sewers discharge into underground “infiltration fields”, similar to septic leach fields. The fields are made from 12-inch perforated pipes embedded in crushed rock. They are located within the 15-foot easements along the sides of the roads. Most of the fields are next to the lowest catch basins. These fields can become clogged with dirt and leaves, so avoid putting anything down the drains that can clog the perforated pipes. Also, it is important not to put any hazardous materials or oils into the storm drains as these will accumulate or leach into the ground water. Some catch basins at the bottoms of hills have felt filters inside them. These are there to catch the bigger dirt and oil and to keep materials out of the infiltration field. We are looking at cleaning out the storm drains on a more regular basis in the future.
REMINDER: The open areas and parks are not for dumping. We have had at least 2 instances of oil being disposed of in the past year in one park area. In addition to being a violation of our Covenants and Bylaws, disposal of oil like that is illegal under State law. If we need to clean up oil in the park and can identify who dumped it, the cost of cleanup plus any State fines will become an immediate assessment against that Owner. If we can’t identify the culprit, the cost is on all of us. If you see anyone dumping oil in the parks, notify the Board immediately.
As we enter winter, now that we have enough money available in the Budget for some snow removal, if required. We will monitor any snow events this next year and will arrange for snow removal if we get a lot of snow that does not melt off in a few days.