By Linda Anderson, October 12, 2021
Within the next two weeks, the Hot Springs Village Property Owners will receive proxies in the mail regarding a proposed assessment increase. The Board has chosen to put to the community for a vote Option 1 from the Future Revenue Analysis Task Force’s (FRATF) recommendations.
The Board/POA never stated what Option 1 means as far as the bottom line on new revenue for the POA.
Using POA data of the total number of ballots sent out in the most recent election, I have a very conservative estimate on anticipated additional revenues. Assessment increases will total approximately $13.5 million over the next three years. When you also include utility increases, amenity increases, and buy-in fees the POA is looking at an increase of more than $17 million in the three-year period. An accountant has verified these numbers.
Property Owners need to pay close attention to the year 2024. That’s a whopping 57% assessment increase in only three years’ time for improved Property Owners.
The worst part is that the Board does not want an unchangeable legal and binding Special Assessment. Without a Special Assessment, there is no guarantee to Property Owners how the funds will be spent. While this Board may have every intention of upholding its promise, future Boards may not. We have heard this before, “I didn’t promise that.” The Budget Priorizitation Policy is supposed to be the guarantee that the Board’s promise will be kept. But we know, this policy can be changed with a Board vote. The Board is telling us it will need a supermajority board vote to make a change. When in recent history has the Board not had a supermajority on all of its votes? The Board Members vote in lockstep with each other.
Boards come and go; Policies come and go.
CLEARLY AN UNACCEPTABLE CHOICE
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Note: Hot Springs Village People did not receive any compensation from Linda Anderson or other Property Owners who made the above advertisement in the Village Voice possible. Our services are free.
Thank you for reading. If you like, please comment below. We love to hear your opinion, but civil discourse is important. Comments must be made using your first and last real name, or they will not be accepted. Be sure to bookmark this website.
Mark Oliver
10/12/2021 — 11:47 am
Salaries aren’t infrastructure. Voting no.
Lorri Street
10/12/2021 — 1:27 pm
Linda…you have very accurately put forth important information, although, we both know it’s only a matter a time before FOTV cronies begin to wag their collective tongues to dispute what you’ve produced.
It’s a solid Vote NO for me. To be clear all of you who are typing expeditiously to slam other- minded HSV Property Owners, I am in favor of an assessment increase (as most I’ve talked to are too) just not in the manner Option #1 is proposed. I don’t know about others, but the arrogant and very much divisive ‘call’ for Property Owners to move if they don’t like it…goes against the very grain of our melting pot of folks who make up the HSV Property Owners.
Tom Blakeman
10/12/2021 — 2:06 pm
Golf needs to become a profit center BEFORE any assessment increases, special or otherwise. This could be done by:
1. Ramping up outside play.
2. Equalizing costs to play between property owner ‘annual’ players and property owner ‘daily fee’ players.
3. Simplifying the overall golf fee structure and elimination of special case ‘deals’.
VOTE NO!
Robert Busse
10/12/2021 — 3:07 pm
Wages and salaries may not be classified as infrastructure, but presently that cost takes ALL the revenue brought in by our annual dues payment plus a little bit more. We know that there is likely to be an increase to the state minimum wage coming. Many folks believe that the reason for the lack of available employees is that our POA pay scale is lagging behind many employers in the area. There is an effort by some residents to get the POA to raise our employees pay.
It doesn’t matter if an expense is infrastructure or not, they all require money to be paid out, therefore leaving us with less. And you “NO” folks want to do nothing to the dues rate knowing good and well that costs go up each year, wages and salaries go up regularly, and we are in a long-term period of inflation that the Feds say will be with us for a while. If revenue is not increased, the BOD will be forced to cut expenses (services) and raise fees more than it wants to. Additionally, the POA will have to put off some needed maintenance due to lack of funds. Then next year a new BOD will have to come back with a request for bigger increases than are asked for now!
Mark Oliver
10/12/2021 — 7:56 pm
Robert, I’m not a Bernie supporter thus I don’t support the “living wage” movement. The assessment increase initiative was supposed to be about deferred maintenance and suddenly salaries became a focus. That solidified my status as a “NO” person. Guess if I was only expecting to be around a handful of years it wouldn’t matter much to me, but that isn’t the case. I’m not sold on the panic.
Tom Blakeman
10/12/2021 — 6:22 pm
The part that needs fixing is the broken governance model. Fix that first and the rest will take care of itself.
Demanding exponentially more “funding” in a time of rising inflation and national uncertainty is only a recipe for disaster and more of the same down the road.
Let the automatic COLA due Jan 1 work as per the Declarations and address the chronic waste and bad management. That is the solution.
Lorri Street
10/13/2021 — 9:14 am
Robert…you are over generalizing when you say the “No” folks want to do nothing to the dues rate.” That is categorially FALSE. As I said before…the majority of Property Owners I have spoken to are NOT opposed to an assessment increase, but rather, the Option #1 plan that has been ‘chosen’ by our current BOD’s. You, as one of the Property Owner who was on the steering committee of the (successful) We The People campaign might want to consider not wagging your finger at the majority of Property Owners who are not in favor of Option #1.
Robert Busse
10/13/2021 — 7:53 pm
Lorri Street, I am not wagging my finger at anyone. I am being open-minded, and I am using common sense. As you state, almost everyone knows HSV needs money. It needs money NOW. Not 2, 3, 4 years from now when people can find the right BOD that will come up with the option they like. In the meantime, the Village deteriorates more, it gets further in the hole, Boards cut services, sell assets and greatly increase fees (which we residents pay because we use the assets/amenities). all so as to keep the Village running. It’s a “pay me now, pay me MORE later” situation. Things are not going to remain the same cost if we wait. They always get much more expensive. Plus, each vote we take on an option you don’t like costs the POA $40-50 thousand dollars. So when you vote NO and the vote fails and things happen that no one wants and next year another increase is requested for even more money, remember you voted it down because you didn’t like the option. What happens if you don’t like the option next year??
Sam Taylor
10/15/2021 — 9:32 pm
Well said Bob!
Lloyd Sherman
10/13/2021 — 10:44 am
While like many, and maybe even most, I know we need an assessment increase for our infrastructure. ANY business operation must keep their salary expense in line with what they can actually afford. And it doesn’t just include salaries. It also includes benefits and our benefit program is extensive. This whole salary discussion could be put to rest with simple communication. Have we actually ensured our job descriptions match the job functions being performed on a daily basis? Have we benchmarked each of those jobs? If so, why is this information not released? Arkansas has a minimum wage of $11 an hour (16th best in the US). Now, does that keep up with the local competition? Does it really matter? Again, wages should be established on acceptable levels for functions that are being perform IN ARKANSAS. That is where our job market is. The discussion of a livable wage is quite different from what a job should pay. Government dictating that all jobs should be a livable wage is the beginning of the end for private enterprise. What I can tell you is that paying out 130% of collected assessment revenue is not an acceptable statistic without the appropriate due diligence. Also, the turnover rate we experience is not an acceptable benchmark, so this whole issue of paying properly based on Arkansas salary levels needs to be put to rest.
So this discussion about salaries is an important one, but until it gets addressed properly and communicated to the property owners, it is going to continue to be an open wound. The real problem is that when the people who fund the activities start asking questions, we are essentially told we don’t have a right to the information. We are told that it is employee sensitive, which is just another excuse for not providing the information. Or we are told we are interfering or questioning someone’s ability to perform their job, which is also just another lame excuse. This is not about competency of staff; this is about communication with the property owners. Given the track record, it is going to take a concentrated effort of total transparency to gain back the trust. Is that fair to the current staff? Probably not, but it is reality.
As has been noted previously, this is just one symptom of a culture program that leads to distrust by property owners. And instead of fixing the issue and communicating this information to the people who fund this corporation, we are told to move, or shut up. Keep in mind that trust must be earned. It is not just given.
Robert Busse
10/13/2021 — 8:09 pm
LLoyd Sherman, I can not argue with what you are saying. But what you want and what Tom Blake man wants are things that don’t happen in a couple of weeks or even months. They take a long time to do right. Yes they probably need to be done to make things better. But if we wait for everything you want to be done and what Tom wants to be done and what others want to be done, before we raise our revenue, the Village will be a municipality, with no gates and paying taxes just like every other town or city in our country. We need to face facts and reality. We need money now to start catching up on the multitude of things that need caring for, while we are working toward all the solutions you folks have. If we finally get to where you guys want to be, we may be in good shape financially and not need a revenue increase for a while. But that ain’t going to happen in the next 3-5 years.
Lloyd Sherman
10/13/2021 — 9:56 pm
Well, I will have to respectfully disagree. That approach has not worked. You can’t just keep throwing good money after bad and expecting things will magically get better. It actually takes work and continuing down the same path we have been on for the last 10-12 years has not worked. We need change. And based on what I see at this time and moment, we are standing still at best. I pray I am wrong, but experience tells me that is not the case. I guess time will tell. I am only one voice. And while I know Tom Blakeman, we are two totally separate voices, with similar views. Overriding amongst them is that what we have been doing is not working and right now I am not seeing a whole lot different than what happened with the last assessment increase and we may very well be destined to repeat history. I am but one voice but I was taught that if you going to do something, do it right the first time so you don’t have to do it over again. I would love for nothing but to have my comments turn out to be wrong; but based on what I see right now, I don’t see that happening.
You can’t just keep throwing money at a problem and expect that will change things. They are trying that on a national level right now and that isn’t working either.
Bob Busse
10/14/2021 — 9:23 am
Lloyd Sherman, you still don’t want to face reality. I think there is a decent size group of folks that agree with you that we need some major changes and adjustments to what is being done in HSV. I do agree with you. But to establish the committees/groups, study what is available or needs to be done, and then implement what ever changes (vote?) are decided, is not a quick fix solution. And I know from your previous writing/complaints, that you have many areas that need to change. Then throw in Tom’s ideas and changes needed before a rate increase, and we are well down the road. And our financial situation is greatly expanded and increased. I do not know why we can not have an increase WHILE we are working on solving or changing the things that many knows should be changes. What ever changes are needed or made by you and Tom, are not going to reduce or eliminate the hugh cost/expense of correcting and modernizing the millions of dollars of deferred maintenance we know exists. I think we can do more than one thing at a time.
Lloyd Sherman
10/14/2021 — 10:37 am
Bob,
I’m not sure who is not facing reality, but I’m pretty sure it is not me. Conclusion to your comments are: Let’s just keep doing what we have done all along and expect a different outcome.
Jama Lopez
10/13/2021 — 10:25 pm
I do know last year in September HR was setting procedures in motion to conduct a wage and salary survey. Staff were asked to update their job descriptions, which I believe most, if not all, did. The information was to be reviewed and all was going to be evaluated by a professional firm to determine salary ranges and categories. It’s my understanding King killed the project. Perhaps if it had been carried out, and adjustments made, we would all feel confident wages and salaries are in line with the industry and geographic location.
allen curtis
10/14/2021 — 8:57 am
Not meaning to hijack this discussion, but has anybody really studied and compared (or had easy access to) the two budgets. One is the “austerity budget” to be implemented if the NOs prevail and the other is the budget for spending the increased funds from a yes vote on infrastructure? Now ask yourself after you have done this homework, are these increases really Village infrastructure needs or POA management wish lists? I hope our Board and fellow Villagers remember where the FRAT data and budget numbers originated from, and fear that many decisions on how to vote will be greatly misinformed.
Jama Lopez
10/14/2021 — 10:33 am
Once again, Allen, well said!
Lloyd Sherman
10/14/2021 — 10:39 am
Allen,
Let’s hope we get a look at them before the ballots are due back. I couldn’t help but notice that they were encouraging return of the ballots within 10 days of receipt. Wanna make a bet when we will get a look at those projected budgets?
Robert Busse
10/14/2021 — 3:37 pm
Allen Curtis, Where else would you expect the information to come from?? Or is there some other entity that also keeps the books and manages what is going on (behind the scenes) that you or others can obtain better or different facts and information?? You also are throwing the supervisors and managers at the POA under the bus by intimating that they have different wishes and wants than what the BOD/FRATF and we owners want for HSV. And remember, it is our elected representatives that have final formulation and approval of the budget. If the budget does not reflect what the Directors and owners want (should be what is best for the Village) it is the Directors to blame, not the POA employees and staff.
Mark Oliver
10/14/2021 — 11:43 am
Allen, it’s doubtful the two budgets will be easily accessible anytime soon and voting has already begun. I made my decision to vote no as soon as the “living wage” argument was included for salaries. Many are citing area pay based solely upon hearsay, rather than taking a little time to research actual jobs and compensation. Many also ignore benefits and amenity access that POA employees are provided. Money certainly isn’t the only reason people decide to leave, stay or altogether avoid jobs. I volunteer in the village, but ongoing POA political battles certainly make me question that choice.
Karen Bump
10/15/2021 — 5:21 pm
Ms. Lopez,
I vividly recall the HR Manager discussing, at a public meeting, the comp and benefits and salary survey she conducted over many months. I recall she said it was a long and difficult process. You can probably go through youtube videos and see the discussion. She said it was complete or near completion, but did not reveal the conclusions at that meeting. I would think you can get that info with a request form at the POA. I would be interested in what you find out.