Budget Considerations

Pool Staffing: We currently budget $20,000 for the pool staff payroll for the season.

By reducing staff hours or eliminating staffing, we can reduce that cost for next year. By increasing staff hours, we will increase payroll costs for next year. A payroll budget of $20,000 equals approximately 100 staff hours a week. Reducing staff to 60 total hours only on weekends would save approximately $8,000. It would be “swim at your own risk” during the week and require management to find another way to vacuum the pool daily and test the water quality daily, likely an additional expense. The same requirements for vacuuming and testing would hold if all pool staff are eliminated. We would like to know our members’ thoughts on this.

Compliance Officer Staffing: Several members have requested that we provide 24-hour coverage by compliance officers. We are happy to plan for this starting in 2023 if the majority are in agreement and want the membership to know the costs involved. Our compliance staff currently works 12 hours a day, 7 days a week. To increase this coverage to 24 hours a day, the payroll costs for the year would increase by approximately $78,000. There would also be an increase in fuel and maintenance costs for the vehicle as well as uniforms and supplies. If the majority of the community wants to do this, the approximate added cost to each member would be $205 per year. We would like to know our members’ thoughts on this.

Buck A Door Legislative Action Contribution: Community Associations Institute (CAI for short) Keystone Chapter engages lobbyists on behalf of all Pennsylvania association members to help craft legislation that enhances association life. Whether it is to refine the Planned Community Act or argue against legislation that would hurt members of a planned community, their work is paid for by donations. They ask each association to adopt a line item in the budget that contributes $1.00 per home to the Legislative Action Committee for a total of $401 in our case. We would like to know our members’ thoughts on this. A key initiative the committee is working on is support for PA House Bill 1924 which provides tax parity for association members in good standing who also pay municipal taxes, in certain cases resulting in “double taxation.”

Garbage Disposal: Waste Management has increased its fees dramatically and just alerted us that they are passing on additional increases in October, November, and December of this year. All told, we are estimating a thirty percent increase over our January 2022 costs. One possible savings measure we could implement is to reduce the frequency of the compactor pickup from weekly to every 10 days and/or set specific hours for garbage disposal. We would like to know our members’ thoughts on this.