and thinking to myself, “Snow removal is a real thing because Spokane is the second largest city in Washington state, it is nothing like the “west side.” Of course, we all uphold the same state statutes, but the makeup and personalities of the communities we’ve had the privilege of speaking with have different experiences, priorities, and expectations.
Spokane communities have different experiences, priorities, and expectations.
I have had to reevaluate everything I knew about Association Management in Western Washington, humble myself to relearn lessons I thought I had mastered, and essentially “rehire” myself. Good morning, Ms. Guyott; in Spokane, WA.
Private Roads & Gated Communities
It had been my experience in Western Washington that private, gated associations were the exception and not the norm. “I’m sorry Betty, but your roads are county roads, so the county will have to remove the snow and tow the cars.” I was an elected city council member for a small city in King County. Our city code stipulated that gated projects had to have a secondary access point for emergency services. As a result, my overlay projects were condominium parking lots and I almost never had to coordinate snow removal. I once had an attorney tell me to budget snow removal to
“road maintenance.” The rationale was that snow and ice mitigation was so infrequent that they didn’t want to allocate revenue toward a service that was unlikely to be used.
Some communities begin obtaining bids for snow removal in August.
In Spokane, if there are private roads in an HOA, you can count on that association’s largest expenses being related to that one common element. Some communities begin obtaining bids for snow removal in August. If the
for snow plowing, then all chaos breaks out at the budget meeting that year. Since moving here, we’ve had snow fall as early as October 1 and as late as Easter Sunday. It is not only the largest expense, but one of the most challenging to predict. As a best practice, we’ve begun advising our associations to create a snow removal contingency fund into which any unused budgeted snow removal costs are transferred into a restricted account from which only snow removal and de-icing overages are paid in future periods.
We manage a beautiful little HOA with only 31 homes. All 31 homes are located on a private road. In 2022, this association spent over $14,000 on snow removal alone. Close to 25% of each homeowner’s monthly assessment is allocated to this one service.
Close to 25% of the monthly assessment is snow removal.
Seven-Month Landscaping Contracts
“But where is November thru March?” I asked myself when Western Washington, most landscape service contracts are for a calendar year. To keep budgeted numbers predictable for associations, the total value of ALL landscaping services is divided evenly across all twelve months, even though your landscape partner does way more in the spring and summer than they do in the winter. In Spokane, they just stop showing practice to go out to bid every single year for new landscaping service providers.
In Spokane, landscaping services just stop in winter.
But landscaping is my favorite, and I spent a few years in the industry. The ongoing relationship an HOA manager Continued On Page 16
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