We are releasing all the information that was shared at the Bridge Pointe Board of Director’s Meeting this past Tuesday, April 19th. The exclusive focus of this meeting was the 5-Year Plan and Reserve Study for our neighborhood. Please understand that this information has been presented to the board and not accepted or approved by the board. The board has yet to discuss it in depth and consider how to convert this information into actions for our community. Please visit our new website at BridgePointeKCMO.com (home page) for more detail, supporting documents, and related research.
We encourage your reaction—positive or negative—as well as your ideas as you consider this information. You can talk or write to Pat Rainey at 816-507-8244 (patj.rainey@gmail.com) for question/comments regarding the 5-Year Plan. You can talk or write to Jason White at 816-896-9041 (Jason.white@pioneer.com) for all other questions.
Based on experience discussing this information with board members and neighbors, we feel compelled to offer opening remarks to provide context and because these comments were also part of the presentation on Tuesday:
1) As a community of neighbors, Bridge Pointe has built and sustained a great neighborhood for almost 30 years. Homeownership duration, relationships, and social activities and connections, all speak to the strength of our community.
2) However, a close look at the finances of The Bridge Pointe Home’s Association (BPHA) reveals an alarming vulnerability: For years the dues structure which supports all community activity and property has not kept pace with inflation. Therefore, the consistent trend has been that revenue from dues has been used exclusively to cover BPHA operating costs and maintenance that seemed imperative. In other words, there were and are no cash reserves. The situation is urgent and not a crisis only because we are not yet facing an event or “catastrophe” which would demand cash.
3) Previous BPHA boards have showed significant discipline in dealing with this situation. In addition to leaning on suppliers to keep costs down, board members and other volunteers dealt with tight budgets by doing much of the work of repair and maintenance themselves. This has led to some passivity (everything is fine), including this writer, within the rest of the community.
4) There are tens of thousands of homeowners associations across our country. Our Bridge Pointe cash situation is very common because it sneaks up on neighborhoods as assets (our community property) deteriorate. The condition of our pool and the property around the pool are outward and visible manifestations of our current plight. There is a large cash event in our future connected to the pool (see presentation document details).
5) While all of this sounds negative, there are solutions to our challenge of catching up on maintenance/replacement decisions and building future reserves (savings). In fact, this moment should be a turning point of opportunity for our neighborhood: We can shore up our finances by steady and predictable dues increases, we can support board members who understand their fiduciary financial responsibilities to our future, and we can improve communication from the board to the rest of us.
6) It is our experience that readers of these documents will immediately take note of and be understandably distracted by our recommendation of annual dues of $563 by year 2020. We ask you to consider the entire breadth of our work before reacting to some of the realities of the solutions that must be examined.
Please visit our new website at BridgePointeKCMO.com (home page) for much more detail and all the supporting documents and research.
Patrick J Rainey
5-YP Committee Chair
816-507-8244
patj.rainey@gmail.com