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Announcement of Insurance Decision

Published: April 28, 2021

As some of you may be aware, the Association held a telephonic Board of Directors meeting on Thursday, April 15th.

In that meeting, there were ten members (including the two Board Members) that left the Board with the choice without significant input from the Community as a whole. The decision set before the Board of Directors was either: 1) Try to minimize the increased cash flow out of every household pocket at a greater risk or; 2) Try to minimize risk of significant loss to the members in order to hopefully reduce cash flow. In the end, the risk outweighed the cash flow savings.

The actual decision came down on Friday night as the existing HOA policy term was to terminate at midnight (17th). This time crunch further compounded the concerns expressed by some of the members who participated with the teleconference meeting. The option to reduce cash flow by having all members convert to townhome policies may be viable in the long run, but truly not in a 24 hour period. That would take a lot of pre-planning to succeed and can be reconsidered at a later date.

In the end, regardless of opinions expressed during the teleconference call, the Board had to take the more prudent action to bind the HOA Policy before expiration on Friday night. We did succeed in placing enough pressure on our existing carrier to cause them to lower their previous 2021 proposal and reduce the HOA risk. The policy terms negotiated was a reduced annual deductible from $15,000 to $10,000 per occurrence. Lowering the wind/hail endorsement from 2% to 1% deductible and the carrier agreed to finance the policy costs so our members do not have an immediate lump sum payment and allow to pay over time.

We have requested that the agent provide the updated bound policy so to provide to all members for their review/record.

With this said, a lot of energy has gone into this aspect in order to best navigate the best fiscal direction for the Association for the foreseeable future. Given we have determined the confirmed insurance costs for the 2021 fiscal year, the Board will be finalizing the operating budget and providing a decision towards the deferred increase in the quarterly maintenance assessment along with the insurance assessments. We anticipate that this decision will be provided to all members shortly.

If you have any further questions with regard to this matter, please do not hesitate to contact our office at (972) 428-2030, extension 7346 or steven@essexhoa.com. We thank you for your time and attention to this matter.

Parkmont Place Townhomes