October President’s Report

President’s Report October 2022

Autumn in The Glen brings majestic scenery and a packed calendar of events and meetings. Our block captains are busy encouraging members to vote on the CCR amendments. Our finance committee is working alongside your board to fine-tune the budget for 2023. We have multiple fitness and wellness opportunities for our residents to engage in free of charge, including the use of the ping pong table and yoga classes. Our events committee has fantastic opportunities for residents of every age to join together for fun as a community, including our annual Halloween Costume Party and Fall Family Funfest. We are always interested in hearing your ideas and thoughts on improving life in our beautiful community and encourage you to reach out to our Community Manager Scott with any suggestions.

Scott sent out both the draft 2023 budget and a survey recently with items we wanted our members to consider and provide feedback on. The board has been working on the budget for well over two months now and all I can say is the unprecedented rate of inflation is absolutely impacting our operating costs here in a devastating way. We started by getting prices for current operations from all our business partners and suppliers for the upcoming year. As the numbers rolled in, we quickly realized we were looking at a 25 percent-plus increase. We then tasked our FirstService team with renegotiating that pricing and simultaneously looking at all areas for possible savings. After countless meetings and even more hours, working on this draft budget, we felt it only right to get our members involved by communicating the issues we are facing early and often.

Traditionally we present the budget around the end of October and offer our members a thirty-day comment period before the budget is set in stone. This year, because inflation is so high, we presented the draft budget early and ask for your help and comments over the next 30 days to see if there are any feasible solutions to reduce the increase we all will face next year. The final operating and reserve budget will be presented and adopted at the meeting on October 29th. I can’t stress this enough; we strongly encourage your participation in this process.

One way to increase revenue that we are currently investigating is the potential sale of the four undeveloped lots that are in the association’s name. These lots were owned by members in the past and transferred into the association’s name between 2010 and 2015. If there is a legal avenue to convert these lots back into “dues generating” properties, we want to explore it. Another idea we are gathering information on is the development of a 501c3 foundation that would benefit our community. This foundation would be funded and operated independently with the potential to reduce assessments here in the community by providing funds for specific purposes. We encourage any member interested in either of these ideas to reach out to our community manager so we can set up discussions.

Lastly, we want to remind everyone to register their pets with our office and follow all applicable rules and laws concerning them. We have experienced an increase in dogs getting loose recently, resulting in one child being injured. Please be mindful of your furry companions, we thank you for your cooperation.