Please keep in mind I am not an accountant or a tax specialist. That is why your Association hires a professional. We have retained as our new auditor the firm of Brabo and Carlsen. Wayne Carlsen, who is a skilled professional, will be working with us. The tax deadline for HOAs is March 15 instead of what we as residents are used to with our personal income tax deadline of April 15 in the United States.
Will we file an extension? Yes, we will. Is that uncommon? No, it is not. With a new auditor it only makes sense to give our new firm more time to do a complete and thorough audit. Do we pay our taxes on time? Yes, we do, every year. Will we be filing the same way we have done in the past? No, we will not. We file based on the recommendations of the professionals we retain. If we retain a different professional, that person may feel we are better off filing another way. That is the case this year.
We have a lot of talented members in our community. I know of one situation where I retained the services of several of our resident attorneys to rewrite a contract. I took their input, but I still sent the draft to your Association’s attorney for final say. They are our hired professionals.
We are strong again this year and will carry over approximately $450,000. It is the Board’s intent to roll that into our reserve account. We are not quite at 100%. I would like to see our Association’s reserves fully funded this year so we will not be tagged with assessment increases in the near future. In addition there are new technologies available to us now that may cost more than what our current reserve funds allocate. These technologies could save us hundreds of thousands of dollars in the future. One such item we are looking at is a new form of coating for our streets. It’s not an oil-based product like most cities use now but a synthetic coating. One of the two major issues with slurry coating is its life and its loss of color, turning grey. We re-coat Sun City Blvd every four years. After about two, it starts to go from black to grey. The new product stays black for its life, and it carries a five-year guarantee. In order for it to have a five-year guarantee, it must have a life span of 10 years. You can see the savings and the esthetic advantage.
Another item we may look at is the cost of maintaining the ponds with the reeds. We spend tens of thousands of dollars annually to keep them in check. The ponds with cement rims require no labor costs to maintain. It’s the old adage that sometimes you have to spend some money now to save money in the future. I doubt that we will have any excess funds next year, but it is my goal to make sure we are still as financially strong as we are today