Dear Buffalo Creek Homeowner,
On behalf of the Buffalo Creek Homeowners Associations’ Board of Directors, this letter is to notify you of the Upcoming Annual Meeting of the Buffalo Creek HOA Homeowners which will be held on Thursday, January 11, 2024, @ 6:30 pm.
2024 Annual Meeting
The Board of Directors will adhere to the Procedures for Conducting Meetings as adopted on January 1, 2006. If you wish to address the assembly, you will need to register prior to the start of the meeting. Upon the start of the meeting the list of homeowner topics will be delivered to the HOA President/Chair and during the “Address the Board on Non-Agenda Items”, the Chair will call on the homeowner for the comment. Comments have a three-minute limit. Each Homeowner has the right to talk without interruption. The Board may elect to reply or take the information for later consideration. Sign In will begin at 6:00 pm and the meeting starts at 6:30 pm. You will need to sign in with your name and address. We are required to determine that voting members and those represented as proxy are of good standing (current – not delinquent on their account).
Your Board of Directors
Pat Cordova - President
Michael Katalenic – Vice President
Dan Satler – Secretary
Ted Craig – Treasurer
John Mueller – Member at Large
Annual Disclosure
1) Buffalo Creek HOA is a Common Interest Community; the Declarations were recorded 5/20/2003, under Reception Number 2003-0061450.
2) All documents can be found on our website: www.buffalocreekhoa.com
3) The fiscal year for the Buffalo Creek HOA is January through December.
4) During the 2024 fiscal year all homes will be assessed $720.00 in Dues. Homeowners have the choice of Annual Billing in December, or monthly Automated Clearing House (ACH) payments.
5) Buffalo Creek Insurance Coverage is through American Family Insurance Company. Keith Montey is our Agent, address: 3011 W 10th St #112 Greeley, CO 80634 (970) 353-1533.
6) The address of Buffalo Creek Management is PO Box 1182, Wellington, CO 80549 and the telephone number is (970) 568-3170. Buffalo Creek Management is managed by Tim Singewald. Email: singewald@aol.com Buffalo Creek Management is also insured through American Family Ins. Co.
2023 Year in Review
Common Area Maintenance: Zak George is our Landscape Contractor. The Board reviewed their service this past year and found that they met all the requirements. They have been good at responding to issues as they came up. The Board entered into a new three-year contract last year. Their contract included annual increases to keep up with cost-of-living averaging 5% per year. The 2024 rate increased to $71,090.00. They have a fuel cost increase adjustment clause.
Republic Trash Removal Contract: Always place your trash can out in the storm drain area, not on the sidewalk. Republic suggests homeowners get and use their App for updated info and to get quicker responses to questions. We are paying $17.00 per home for a total of $88,536.00 per year, billed monthly at $7,378.00. They also have a fuel cost increase adjustment. We retained our Spring Clean-up Day and will schedule our “Middle of May Clean-up Day” for Saturday, May 11, 2024. We have one more year under their contract.
Tree Maintenance: The Board realizes that the trees of the HOA are a huge asset to the community. We’ve lost about a dozen trees each year but expect more going forward. We had $20,000.00 in tree replacements in 2023, however we will be planting these in the spring of 2024. The ash borer beetle is now in the area. $25,000.00 is budgeted for 2024.
2024 Possible Projects
Middle of May is Clean Up Day: We are planning for May 11, 2024, to be our Spring Clean Up.
Fence Repairs: We stained the fence along the north sidewalk and along Washington this past year by a special approval of the Board to catch up on the lack of staining in past years due to covid allowing the Board to hold off on increasing dues back during that time. The Board is looking at another major staining in 2024 to try and stain the fence along Buffalo Creek Parkway and the north side of Stampede. $25,500.00 is budgeted for the 2024 staining.
Trees: We already have multiple trees marked for replacement and will see what the spring looks like for the more stressed trees. (see Tree Maintenance above for more info).
Maintenance Issues: Homeowners have been great about reporting irrigation issues, broken perimeter fence, and downed tree branch issues to Management. This has helped us make fast repairs. The HOA maintains the perimeter fence unless damage to the fence has been caused by the homeowner. The new Irrigation system filter did a great job this year eliminating issues from clogging at the spray heads, saving us time and money.
Home Prices
Home sales have slowed down a lot this past year. Real Estate agents have claimed a 58% drop in sales from September to October this past fall. Home prices have dropped. Realtors say that the increase in mortgage interest rates and concerns about the economy are the main factors. Realtors have also talked sellers into doing interest rate buy downs sometimes as high as $10,000.00 which gives buyers better interest rates for a couple years, however this buy down does not reflect in a lower actual sales price of the property. We’ve only had 3 sales in the HOA over the 4th quarter of 2023.
Reserve Requirements
HOA’s are required by law to have a Reserve Study completed and set up. The formula is based on the dollar amount of HOA assets and their replacement cost. It appears there are not many HOA’s who comply with this and are not meeting their requirement; however, Buffalo Creek HOA has attained and maintains the Reserve Requirement. The Board authorized movement of funds into another CD bringing the HOA into full compliance with our Reserve Requirement for 2023 at $385,000.00
ARC Requests
Any change to the exterior of your house, property, and landscaping needs to have Architectural Review Committee (ARC) approval. Give us a few weeks prior to your project to get the approval process completed. Dumpsters require a variance stating size, dates of delivery and pick up. All dumpsters require placement in the driveway.
Go to the website: www.buffalocreekhoa.com, find the ARC form, fill it out and email or mail it back to the ARC Committee, arc@buffalocreekhoa.com. The ARC committee will go over your request to make sure that everything falls within the HOA Covenants and Site Restrictions. (This is our way of helping make sure that you do not end up investing time and money in a project that is not allowed under HOA guidelines.) The ARC Committee is there to help you, so you do not have to read through a hundred pages of documents to determine if your project is approvable.
The Board authorized a change to the ARC process in 2021. Since 90% of the requests fall into a standard process, the Management Company monitors incoming ARC Requests and issues immediate approval, if possible, for those standard requests. Turnaround time has averaged less than 48 hours for 2023. Requests that do not contain all the information required are also returned rapidly requesting more information. If requests come in that are not standard, those will take longer as those go through the ARC committee process.
The Board approved ARC changes this year restricting certain evasive plants from new ARC Landscape Requests, developing guidelines for eliminating random changes by homeowners to their rock areas requiring them to adhere to the xeriscape guidelines through an ARC approval process and giving those that are currently not in compliance time to correct.
North Sidewalk
Last winter we had a large amount of dirt blow across the north sidewalk and into our grass area (6 to 8 inches deep on the west half). The dirt backed up the water drainage from the farm field runoff and we had a lot of standing water that spring. The Board directed Management to contact the landowner to our north to see if they would help us in dealing with this issue. The landowner came out and looked at the issue with Management and made an agreement with the Board to remove the dirt, scrape down the buildup in the sod area allowing water to drain down to the drain pan, removing the overburden from our spray heads and valve boxes, hydroseeding the scraped area, and trenching their property so that water would be moved to the drain under the sidewalk. They requested to do the project in the fall once the sprinkler system was blown out and no longer under pressure in case something was accidentally broken. The project has been completed.
They did a very professional job, and the Board sent a letter thanking them for doing such a great job.
Snow Removal
Every year there are questions about snow removal requirements. The landscape company has contracted for the snow removal of the HOA Common Area sidewalks. The Town does the snow removal on the streets. Homeowners are required to remove the snow on their sidewalk along their property within 24 hours of the snow fall.