HOA budget front and center at Monday's meeting

The Palermo HOA is meeting onMonday, with raising the $268 a month dues on the agenda. This is from an earlier posting but is timely again: Where do your HOA dues go, or where are supposed to go? Here's a look at the expenses, not including reserve payments, that your HOA dues are supposed to pay for every month per unit if the 2011 budget was followed (figures are rounded up to the nearest dollar):

1. Landscaping, $28
2. Electricity, $21
3. Gas, $20
4. Trash, $19
5. Management and extras, $19
6. Insurance, $12
7. Fire sprinklers, $11
8. Janitorial service/supplies, $10
9. Water, $9
10. Pools, $9
11. Bad debt, $8
12. Security, $7
13. Minor repairs, $6
14. Lighting maintenance and extras, $6
15. Legal, $4
16. Postage and printing, $3
17. Pest control, $2
18. Telephone, $2
19. Audit, $1
20. Cable, $1
21. Taxes, permits, reserver study, $1

Please remember the above figures were rounded up to the nearest dollar just for ease of discussion. In terms of broad categories, the actual 2011 budgeted expenses breakdown per month as follows: Utilities, $69.59; administrative, $45.04; Grounds maintenance, repairs and janitorial, $38.63; Landscaping, $27.42; and Pools, $8.02, for a total of $188.70 per month per unit. Then $79.30 of your $268 in monthly dues is supposed to go to reserves. But it is not because so many of other expenses listed above actually are over budget and in many cases you are paying more per month than what is listed above. To a lesser degree, some money isn't going into reserves because of some past-due accounts but bad-debt expenses listed above helps take care of some of this. The biggest reason for the non-funding of reserves is spending above what was budgeted. Miss Penny Lane says: She last balanced her own check book in 2001.