BYE BYE PROPERTY TAX!

After a great deal of WORK and negotiation the Assessor of Utah County has waived ALL our Common Area property taxes for the past five years and ALL Common Areas are now re-classified as exempt. For more details feel free to contact Secretary Robin. One less thing to worry about, folks!

Summer News 2008

We would like update our Cove residents with information of what your Board members have been doing for our community. Behind the scenes we are working hard on some projects to make things better, and also to correct a lot of problems that many of you might not be aware of.

• PLAYGROUND We have been working on putting a playground in for our children. We have been in ongoing discussion with SunCrest to make sure safety is considered but budget and aesthetics as well. That includes using a galvanized steel set, and shielding the park from view with raised berm landscaping treed with Aspen. If we can get some kind of approval from SunCrest then it will be put up to the residents for a vote. We want to give everyone the opportunity to vote on, make suggestions for, and make voluntary donations towards this project.

• LEGAL STATUS OF THE HOA We had a couple of residents questioning the legality of the status of our sub-association. Scott Hawker of Alpine Homes provided a comprehensive summary of all legal documents and had them reviewed by attorneys to make sure it was all recorded correctly. Secretary Robin has all the paperwork to back this up if you wish to see it. Please note that when the turnover from Alpine homes to the new Board occurred, all the filing documents and a corporate minutes book were handed over. They were never passed onto the present Board from the previous Board. We do have all the corporate financials though.

• INCOME TAX We recently filed the Cove’s income taxes for past two years. We found this was never done. Even though we are a non-profit company and don’t have to pay taxes it is law that they still need to be filed. This was another example of why we fired Community Management, (which was run by a CPA, no less.)!

• PROPERTY TAX We are also working on our property taxes for the Cove. We had never received any bills until now. It looks like the Assessor has these coded incorrectly as open land instead of exempt common area and we are working for a retroactive credit. This is a lot of work. We will update all owners promptly when this is resolved

• GATE Please see Treasurer Amy if you need an extra gate remote or new phone number added to the call box, or if you even want your personal gate code changed. And by the way, Gene Marcum, our incredibly helpful neighbor is a professional metalworker and will be taking down our gates to sandblast and repaint them. He also added a new type of hinge to the walk-in gate to ensure it automatically closes. Thanks Gene!

• ROADS We are doing some pavement patching in the next couple of weeks. We also replaced the broken grate near one of the mailboxes. That is not something you can just find at the mall but we managed to track down the right one for our private street.

• TRASH Just a reminder per the CC&R’s the trash cans need to be kept out of view of the street. If you want an extra trash can please see Amy. The cost is $7.00 a month, which is what the Cove is billed by Ace.

• LAWN SERVICE If you would like your backyard mowed, the cost is $12.00 per mow. Please see Amy and she will set it up through Prosecutive Landscaping.

• CC&R’s & BYLAWS If you need a PDF file emailed, please see Amy or Robin.

• RECEIVABLES Our current balance owed is $9,021.07. This makes it very hard to operate a HOA. We are going to have to crack down and find ways collect our money. The consequences will include cessation of trash and snow removal, as well as legal action for those who do not get current.

• LIENS We currently have two home liens placed. If you continue your past due balance of more than 30 days then liens will be placed and collection actions taken which will affect credit reports.

• SNOW As you may know with our last snow season came a pretty hefty bill we didn’t budget for. Past seasons we spent around $30,000 for snow removal. This year our snow was $10,000 more than that. However, “Hooray!” we just finished paying the last bill. We have also managed to stay current with lawn service. Even though we found ways to reduce costs in other areas we don’t have any extra money towards snow removal for this coming season. Let’s hope it is not a bad winter or we will have to make special assessments.

• ACTIVITIES Please look in the SunCrest Newsletter coming out. We are working with SunCrest’s OA to put together some group activities for each month. So far we have the Book Club, Wine Tasting Club, and “Mom and Tots” groups.

Property Taxes for the Cove Common Areas and Slopes

We sent a Spring newsletter out on 4/22/08 with the May bills. It talked about the amount of property tax owed. Here are more details and information for those of you who would like to know what is being done.

The Board has discovered that the previous Management Company never paid any of our property taxes. Combine that with the change to the county line from half Salt Lake County to All Utah County in 2006, incorrect addresses on file and there has been an accrual of $11,917.13 including all taxes and penalties.

At the time of the handover in December 2005 to the HOA Alpine informed the new Board of this and documents were given. Alpine Homes had been paying the taxes before. The county line was changed and Managment Companies were changed and no one followed up. Community, our last Management Company is run by a CPA however among other improprieties this was not handled. Apparently, and unbeknownst to us, property tax is quite standard for common areas.

All possible measures have been researched to avoid this: Filing a non-profit 501c3 or c4 exemption status are not options since we are neither a benvolent charitable group nor do we operate for the public good, only our own private owners. So we are indeed liable for property tax.

Amy discovered the unpaid taxes after a small bill was forwarded to us by the first Management Company to Community who sent it to us long after we had fired them. This raised a red flag so we got to work. By going parcel by parcel through our plat maps Amy finally researched all the lots and Robin worked with the County Attorney and SunCrest to find out how to handle this.

Some of the land is being taxed at an improper rate, that is, assessed as residential use when it is a steep slope, and so forth. So we have to first appeal all parcels to the Utah Tax Assessor to be rated differently and correctly at a lower rate. We must present photographic evidence and plat maps to prove our case. We also need to ask if this can be retroactively adjusted for this error.

Once the tax basis is adjusted the appeal must then be made to the Utah Property Tax Attorney's office for a waiver of fees and penalties due to the breach of fiduciary by CPA who used to represent us, the previous Management Company and/or adjusted for change to tax basis.

Once they have rendered a decision the amount remaining will need to be either set up on a long term payment plan which can come out of general operating funds or it will be specially asessed to all the homeowners as a one time assessment at the discretion of the Board.

This Board is working to handle this matter promptly and will inform the owners a soon as resolution has been reached. It is our goal to have this handled by September 2008.