Posted: November 23rd 2023
Hello Members,
Happy Thanksgiving and all the best for the coming holidays and New Year.
Here are a few dates to remember:
- Dec 6th 2023 Meeting of the Board – This meeting will occur on Zoom. This Budget Meeting is required in the JLV Documents to occur every year. All members are invited to attend. The sole purpose of this meeting and the only item on the agenda is for the Board to vote and to pass the “balanced budget.” There will be no open discussion or other topics on the agenda. Since the meeting will only last a few minutes, we decided to use Zoom for a virtual meet. Everyone will get a link to the Zoom meeting in advance of the date. We have already voted to accept the new balanced budget – this is just to enter the budget into the official records.
- January 21st 2024– “Meet Your Neighbors” Cocktail Party – Sunday 3 to 5 PM. We are planning another gathering where everyone can come and get to know each other. It will be a Pot Luck / BYOB with tables set up in the parking area off the lake between units 2122 and 2123. You can have your fill of all the cocktails you bring yourself! Last year when we did this, we had a raffle and people won some cool stuff. We have a music set up and will play some tunes. Special thanks to Lori for helping us to organize everything.
- March 21st 2024 – Member’s Meeting and Annual Election of the Board – This meeting will include the election of officers to the board.
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The Boards job is to Protect, Maintain and Enhance the Community. Run it like a business.
The Board just finished the Budget process for 2024. We hired a Reserve Study company to come in and evaluate the community and give us the long-term (3 to 30 years) numbers to be able to sustain the streets, sidewalks, landscaping, roofs, and well, everything that the COA is responsible for. This type of reserve study is done about once every three years. Once we got their numbers, the long term plans for Fully Funding the Reserves were known to us. We were able to start crunching the numbers. Our Treasurer Daniel Haskins has a lot of experience with community budgets as he used to work for a firm that handled 150 of them. We are so happy to have someone with such a great background volunteer to be on the Board. Thank you, Dan.
As you probably know the Board decided last year, at budget time, to go ahead and begin fully funding the reserves and not wait until the Florida law went into effect January of 2025. Because of this we are well ahead on our reserves. The new law says basically that all HOA and COA must fully fund their reserves – in the past Boards could vote to delay the funding and kick the collection of funds down the road. This often lead to special assessments and surprises for those living in the community. Our goal is to never have a special assessment ever again. No surprises.
We are happy to announce that we have a new insurance agent. Don Brady of “Johnson Brady.” Johnson-Brady handles insurance for more than 200 communities. Our previous agent was a Home and Auto agent from Delray Beach. The first thing Don did for us was to shop our Hurricane insurance around. As I am sure you recall our insurance was (and is) the biggest line item in our budget. The increases over the past two years have been horrible. From $150,000 in 2022 to $265,000 in 2023 and the estimate by our (old) insurance agent put us at a 35% increase – so we were looking at $350,000 for 2024. Our insurance was with American Coastal. Don shopped the rates with the three biggest players in the State and was able to get us into Citizens Insurance at $175,000! Due to this, we are happy to announce that we are probably one of the only HOA/COAs in the state who will be able to LOWER our maintenance fees for the coming year!
New quarterly fees will be reduced to $1111.00 – which is $370 a month. It is our hope that we can continue to balance the budget, fully fund the reserves and reduce the rate even more going forward.
We are happy to announce that we have a new Management Company: “Triton Property Management.” Triton is a local Jupiter company with lots of experience. The best part of their program is that most everything is done online. You will have access to a Member’s Portal on their website where you can see your maintenance balance, arrange ACH or even pay online. We gave Realtime Property Management their 30 day notice which will be the month of December and Triton will begin January 1st of the new year. During the next month Triton will migrate all our records and files over and set up their portal for us. They are doing the month of December transfer and everything at no cost to us so we don’t have to pay two management companies during the overlap.
We are happy to announce that we have begun a relationship with Get Quorum. Get Quorum is a third-party company that handles voting for organizations. They average about 70% of Members to sign up for their electronic services on behalf of the COA. As of today, we are at 63% of Members enrolled. By now you probably have received your request to sign up for e-Voting and e-Delivery of all official paperwork from JLV COA. If you have not already, please complete the quick two minute form and sign up. The board had agreed to allow e-Voting for all matters that require a vote by Members. So the upcoming 2024 elections and a few amendments to the Rules and Regulations will be the first time we have online voting. Get Quorum also allows us to get permission to send the traditional mailed documents electronically therein reducing the costs and waste involved with printing out and mailing the large packets of documents to Members.
Year in Review – Here are a few of the things your Board has been working on since the election last February. Please note you can follow most of these items and join in the conversation in your Member’s Open Forum on our JLV website. Please if anyone tells you this board (of volunteers) hasn’t been doing anything – kindly show them this list.
The Board has made a commitment to total transparency. It is our intention to have everything open to all Members at all times. To this end we have created the JLV website at JupiterLakesVillas.org and within it an open “Member’s Only” forum when everyone can express opinions and discuss topics of concern within our community. We welcome everyone’s input and participation.
All Rules, Documents and Forms are available online at the website. All previous Board Meeting minutes since this Board was elected are also available. All topics of concern within the COA are listed and available for discussion in the open Forum.
We had investigated and reviewed our costs to upkeep the existing lighting system within the community. The previous reserves that were put aside by previous Boards for the repair and upkeep was not enough to keep up with the failing system. The Board had signed a deal with FPL to replace all our streetlights. However once we had made the down payment to FPL we found out there were hidden costs that were not mentioned by them. Specifically, an Easements Report that could cost about $6000. In addition, with the recent rate increase by FPL the Board realized that there really wasn’t anyway to budget what we would pay for the ongoing maintenance (which was to be a monthly fee). So we decided to cancel the $12,000 project. We will get a full refund. Once we have the funds back, we will put them into our lighting budget to be used to continue to upgrade the existing lamps and add some other lighting to the community over time.
We had our landscaper “When Nature Calls” take over the sprinkler system so as to only have the one company control both. They also took over the Rust proofing control at a lower rate than what we were paying before. We had our own rust proofing liquid tanks installed into the three sprinkler areas – along with rain sensors so we are not watering in the rain any more.
We had the landscaper remove several tree stumps that were left behind from previous tree removals. They have special equipment to grind the stumps down to the ground level. Our plan for this coming year is to have all invasive trees that are on the property removed. These trees do not belong in Florida and many of them have roots that go under the foundations of our buildings when they are left to grow or are planted too close to the units.
We have had the sidewalks and curbstones pressure cleaned and had rust removal on sidewalks that were stained. We have created a line item in our budget so in future they will be cleaned once a year, pretty much around the same time of the year, before the holiday season.
Part of the pressure-cleaning project was to clean off the parking curbs stones so they could be cleaned before they were painted and the numbers put back on. For some reason when the parking lots were paved some years back they did not include in the contract the painting of the assigned numbers back onto them. Several were broken and a few were moved but those were all replaced or moved back into position before the painters started. That project as you probably know is ongoing at this time.
Not having the parking spaces numbered has been a major source of wasted time spent by Board and Property Management dealing with others parking in the unmarked spaces. The spaces will now be labeled as “RESERVED – XXX” where XXX is the unit assigned number. We are hopeful this will reduce the occurrences of others parking in assigned spots.
The Town of Jupiter replaced most of the water main valves on the property. The water pressure seems to be better and they finished the project a bit earlier than they predicted. They did however cut the main wires to a string of the lollipop lamps that run along the north and west sides of the property. They sent out an electrician to repair the lines a few weeks later.
The COA also had a French Drain installed at unit 2126 due to ponding water that was going into one of the units back patio and nearly into the kitchen at the sliding door. We are hopeful that this will result in the water being drawn away from the pooling area. We will know better after the next big rain event.
We were able to replace the signage in the community. The old “freeway sized” speed limit signs were replaced with smaller, newer ones. The old signs were bent and rusty so the new ones look better and are not so huge. The “Please don’t park on the grass” signs were replaced with “No Parking on the Grass or you will be towed” signs. These are smaller and in a nice green color.
The Board voted to allow people who are replacing their windows with new ones to no longer require the cross bar be added to them. The old windows had two panes on the bottom and two panes on the top. New hurricane windows come as one pane on the top and one at the bottom. In order to be uniform it was required that those who replaced the windows have the cross bar inserted to give the appearance of the four panes. It was approved that anyone getting new windows no longer has to have them altered. This is for replacing all windows. If an Owner replaces one window for any reason it must match the others on the same unit.
We are reviewing our options for the Pond/Lake. It is part of the water run off system and it connects to the other lakes in the area to allow the water to stay level. The banks of our pond were stabilized some years ago by placing sand bags along the sides. The idea is to stabilize the banks with trees and plants to revert it to look like a natural pond in the everglades. Rather than use expensive man-made bulkheads we are looking to use nature’s own tools to hold things together. These bulkheads are unattractive and would require a lot of large equipment to disrupt the entire area to access the pond. We are discussing with our Water Management Company “Aquagenix” the use of Littoral Planting & Aquascaping. The possible installation of a Fountain and Aeration System to help keep the water free of weeds and provide Midge & Mosquito Control. We will ask the Town of Jupiter to help us with a possible grant for water improvement to help offset our costs. The end result will be like a park around the lake.
We have been reviewing with lawyers the process to replace our outdated 1970’s Documents (Rules and Regulations) and bring them up to date. Newer versions are normally more concise as they just refer to existing Florida Law in most cases. This will most likely be scheduled for some time in 2025. Prior to that we will create some Amendments to the Docs that will require the Members to vote on them. Any amendments that are (or have been) passed will become part of the new Docs.
The COA is investigating the options to install the Third Nail on all units. It is possible that the money saved on our insurance by having the entire community fitted with the hurricane strap upgrade (called third nail) may well cover the cost of the installations. We will know before the new year.
We are also investigating the installation of Rain Gutters to help protect the foundations and plants along the sides of the buildings.
The board is looking into the possibility of taking over the responsibility of the wooden fences. Currently it is written in the COA Docs that owners are responsible for the fences. Since they all have been replaced at different times through the years and many are in need of repair /replacement they look shabby. We want to investigate the option of adding a reserve item for their replacement every X number of years. This will allow the community to have one cohesive fence design and move away from the old wooden fences and into something more modern.
The new year will also include:
- Our oak tree trimming prior to hurricane season.
- The streets are to be Asphalt Sealcoated with blacktop and the lines repainted.
- The lollipop lamp tops will be replaced over time with new lamptops.
- A new entrance sign will be created facing the street (there was one there years ago, but it was never replaced when it came down).
- The repair of the chain link fence along the hospital sides of the community will occur. The entire fence is not scheduled in the reserves for replacement for another 3 years.
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Our new Garbage Carts provided by Waste Management are all in place and almost everyone has been placing them in the street along the curb. You have to put them where the robot arm can reach them and keep them three feet away from other carts. Also please put your unit number in small letters somewhere on the cart. This does not need to be seen from a mile away just something that can identify the cart as your own.
The COA strongly suggests all Owners have their own Content and Flood insurance. Protect your contents, as the COA is not responsible for anything from behind the paint in.
Please do not park any part of your tires on the grass – we have sprinklers in the grass areas and we have to pay when cars and trucks driving over them break them off. Even the very edges of the grass by the streets have some sprinklers along the curbs.
With all the stickers and flyers placed on cars and trucks over the past year the majority of the issues of people parking on the grass and in other’s parking spots have been reduced. We are happy to report that not one car has been towed. Please keep your visitors from parking in other’s parking spots and on the grass areas. Thanks.
As you know: Cars that are in need of repair are not allowed to be on the community property. Commercial vehicles are not allowed to be on the property unless they are doing a service at one of the units – certainly not overnight. We will begin to alert the owners of these cars and trucks very soon. Unfortunately, these may end up being the first vehicles that we are forced to tow. Letters will begin gong out right after the new year. Boats are not allowed to be parked overnight and never on the grass areas.
We have renewed our contract with the towing company and they are ready, willing and able to tow when we call them. This contract costs the COA nothing out of pocket. The towing company charges the person who owns the towed vehicle directly.
We created a JLV Neighborhood Watch program. We hope to have all the Owners take part in helping by keeping their eyes open and reporting any problems. It is our goal to not put up signs to alert people of the program. Too many signs and people stop reading them. That said – we are calling on all residents to report things that they see in real time. Phone calls, emails or texts to the Management Company with photos are perfect way to alert us when people are breaking the rules. You can also submit the information and upload photos direct to the management company in the contact form on the website. The rules apply to everyone: Owners, Renters and Guests. All fines collected go into our COA funds. Those who do not pay are sent to the lawyer for collection and then they have to pay for the lawyer’s time.
Addressing the nuisance Muscovy Duck problem – We are still looking into ways to limit the population of these non-Florida ducks without having to pay a service to have them removed. Please DO NOT FEED these ducks or any of the wildlife on community property. Please feel free to look over the article that I posted in the forum all about the health issues and the community solution to get them under control. “The Rules for Nuisance Muscovy Ducks.”
A special thanks to Lori (Vice President of the Board) and David for purchasing and planting the flowers at the entrance. They look great.
Also, thanks go out to Kimberly Sullivan for her time on the Board as President. She has stepped down and the Board has moved me from Secretary to President a few weeks ago.
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All Board Members have completed COA/HOA Leadership Development and Certification Seminars and have their certificates.
We are not only your volunteer Board but we are also Owners and Members in the JLV community. We all want what is best for all of us.
Kind regards,
James Squires
President of the JLV COA Board