Oxford Place   

Fort Mill, SC          

2001 Autumn Newsletter

Meeting Oct 18, 2001

Thanks to everyone who attended and participated in the second OPHA meeting on October 18, 2001.  During this meeting, and with the addition of proxy votes, we achieved our goals in setting up our bylaws and budgets and ratified procedures for enforcing the OPHA Covenants and Restrictions.

Budget

To help all residents to understand the costs involved with the neighborhood, we provide the following:

Street Lights - On both the East and West side of the neighborhood, we will eventually have approximately on streetlight for every 5 lots.  The streetlights on the East side are in place.  Three streets in West do not yet have streetlights.  The county will provide the lights for the remaining streets at no charge per a plan they have developed.  The electric company charges $19.50 per month per streetlight to keep them powered and maintained.  Since we have 1 streetlight per every 5 properties, the calculated cost per property is $4 per month.  Electricity for the spotlights on the entrance signs will bring the cost per lot to slightly over $4 per month.

Lawn Maintenance - We recently received a bid of $450 per month for lawn maintenance and beautification for the common areas.  The service includes mowing, watering, and seeding the front sign areas, the park/playground area, and the right of way next to the streets.  Since the neighborhood has 109 lots, the approximate cost per lot is a little over $4 per month.

Insurance - Insurance for the common areas is about $400 per year.  So for each lot the cost is less than 50 cents per month.

Paper, printing, postage, and administrative fees - After we get through this initial process, we anticipate that 2 neighborhood wide meetings will be held per year.  The assessment will be collected semi-annually rather than monthly.  This will require some printing and mailing.  Less than 50 cents of the monthly assessment will go towards these neighborhood functions.

Any remaining monies will go into a reserve account.  The primary reason for a reserve is because sometimes property owners will procrastinate paying their semi-annual assessment.  As a neighborhood, we do not want to be put in a position of deciding whether or not to pay the lawn service or the electric company.  The neighborhood needs to have some reserves.