Miscellaneous news and information. Do not use this if a post belongs in another category. This category is for “announcements” that do not fit into other categories well.
In preparation for our Heathlake Holiday Party we’d like to invite you to join us at the Clubhouse on Thursday, Dec 2nd at 4:30 to help setup the community Holiday decorations.
As an added bonus, The Men’s club will be meeting later that evening at the clubhouse at 7.
Join us for our first holiday party on Friday, Dec 3 at 5:30. All are invited. We will have an outdoor movie, food truck, desserts, drinks, s’more, and music. You may want to bring a chair and/or blanket for the movie and drinks to share. This event is free unless you buy from the food truck. See you there!
A friendly reminder to every homeowner to vote for the two open board seats. One vote per household, owners only. Do not forget to sign.
Also, do not forget to submit your vote for the proposed Deed Restriction Amendment change.
Both ballots can be submitted the following ways:
The Michael H. Solomon Memorial Tennis, Basketball, and Pickleball Courts are available to residents and their guests, including instructors by reservation on the Multi Sport Courts of the Heathlake HOA website. If, however, there are no reservations on the website, courts are available on a first come-first served basis. If people are waiting to play, please limit your time to 90 minutes. The courts are open for daytime use. Contact Frank Del Nogal 281-871-8744 with any questions.
It’s best to make a reservation, even if the courts are available when you arrive, to avoid getting bumped.
We are excited to announce Heathlake’s very own Crystal and Carriage Hill streets were selected by City of Houston Council Member Greg Travis for the Mayor’s Street Rehab Program!! Each District can select up to 2 lane miles of residential streets each fiscal year and Heathlake was Greg Travis’s 2022 selection! We will learn more details as this develops, but it appears we will be receiving a new street in the years to come.
This would not have happened without our selfless neighbors working together to improve our community. We’d like to give a big shout out to Carlton Jones, Susie Trahan, John Trahan, Kathy Clark, Kathleen Shelton, Greg Travis and each of you who filed a 311 report.
This will bring our 2022 street improvement initiative (if we want to give our volunteers hard work a formal name) up to 3 new patches, 1 curb replacement, and 2 road replacements at $0 additional cost to Heathlake.
As part of our community service research (post dated November 3), we shared Heathlake was not receiving the number of patrols as expected, and was paying more per home than the average home participating in our co-op. In light of this, further investigation has been done, and we discovered the vast majority of our patrols are done during the day when crime is low. We found this significant since we cannot request patrols at specific times, (we attempted this when repeat disturbances were occurring on Friday and Saturday nights). The reasoning received was patrols are random and meant to keep criminals off guard, and there are not as many deputies on duty in at night in our co-op. The following is a chart displaying patrol activity over the past 245 days for Heathlake (March – October), total of 171 patrols.
Do we have any tennis players that are willing to spend a few days giving tennis lessons to a few neighborhood kids? We have about 5 kids interested in learning. We have no idea of the structure/frequency of lessons. All that can be worked out with whomever is willing to give a bit of their time, even if just for a few group lessons to learn some basics. Anyone interested? Please contact Evelyn Nordin at eveadele@gmail.com
Join us Thursday, 11/18, for the November Heathlake Ladies Night. We will be at the clubhouse 7-10pm having a fall party with activities and feel free to bring a fall bite to share!
Call or text Carolyn with any questions (210)867-5394!
As the board continues to research Heathlake’s Security, we recently confirmed the over-payment and under re-imbursement our association has historically and currently received as a participant in the coop. We are currently working with the Constables and co-op lead to reduce or eliminate this oversight. Due to security being our largest budget item and the disproportionate treatment to Heathlake equating to $11,000-65,000 per year, Security has become our priority (alongside the tax exemption misuse). We will continue to share our research and progress along the way by means of our website and e-blast.
If you missed it in our security update last week, I added a snip-it below from the post Security Research Update
Due to our Security services being our largest expense, ~40% of our budget, extensive research has been done and we’d like to share a few of our findings with you.
The data thus far is painting the picture that Heathlake spends more and receives less than the average homeowner participating in the co-op. Sara, Stephen and the rest of the board are currently working with the Constable, Co-Op and surrounding communities to improve the status quo.
The HOA has entered into an agreement with Texas Pride, our refuse and recycling hauler, to provide every home with a 65-gallon bin with lid to contain recyclable items. The large bins will hold a lot more cardboard, when adequately cut and folded, than our current small bins. The lids will protect paper and bottles from blowing away on windy days, and prevent water damage to paper and cardboard on rainy days. The new bins will be delivered to every household within the next couple of weeks. The bins will become the property of the association after 5 years and the cost was $1/home/month resulting in $60/bin over the next 5 years.
Heathlake and Tax Exempt Status 501 c 4.
Heathlake has claimed to have the 501 (c) 4 federal tax exemption for decades. We recently tried to take advantage of a free upgrade to our Slack workplace software and to do so needed to prove our tax exempt status. The current board had not been able to find proof so we enlisted our management company to help us gain a copy of the tax status approval.
Much to our surprise, when Graham Management contacted the IRS agent they informed us that the association did indeed apply for tax exempt status in 1995, but the application was declined. Unfortunately this information was ignored and lost throughout the years as successive boards have since operated under the believe that it had been granted.
For the past 7-8 years we have been filing federal tax returns through Canady and Canady and each year assumed our tax exemption. The IRS did not correct or comment on the returns for past last 6 years at a minimum.
We have researched Heathlake’s options going forward and believe it is in our communities best interest to apply for a 501c4 tax exemption going forward. Unfortunately there was not a simple solution for the back tax liability associated with claiming an exemption that was not granted. We will learn more about the implications as our attorneys learn more and we apply for the exemption going forward.
We bid out the permitting and have decided on the attorney’s Holt & Young. They are experts in the space, are familiar with our association, and were 3x cheaper than Canady and Canady.
Holt & Young will be researching and assisting Heathlake with applying for federal, state, developer and any other associated tax forms with a goal of reclaiming the exemption status that we believed to have had for the past 26 years.
This was an unknown and a surprise to us all and as such there is $2000 set aside in the 2022 budget to account for the costs of refiling. We do not yet have indication on the consequences, fines or tax liability that this mistake may imply. We will learn more as we apply for the tax exemption and take the misunderstanding to the IRS as opposed to waiting for the IRS to pursue the association.
We did reconfirmed with the State of Texas that we are indeed exempt from paying sales tax!
If you have further questions you can reach Per at Treasurer@heathlake.org or Stephen at President@heathlake.org
We have some great plans for our holiday party on December 3!
Holiday movie on the lawn: We’ll be watching The Santa Clause with Tim Allen. Kids will be on blankets in the grass. PJs, movies, s’mores 🙂
Food: We’ll have a food truck available to purchase dinner (food purchase is optional. Feel free to bring your dinner or we will have a few snacks)
Drinks and desserts: We’ll have desserts and some drinks from the community.
Music: We’ll have festive music and karaoke
So please plan to attend. It’ll be a good time. We do need some help from the community. So please volunteer where you can. Also, if you have teens that need service hours for school, this is a great way for them to get hours.
Reach out to Evelyn Nordin at eveadele@gmail.com to express your interest in helping in one of these areas.
The HOA has made it a priority to look into each of our services throughout 2021. Our goal has been to optimize and improve those services while minimizing cost and maximizing the community’s benefit. Our vision is for Heathlake to be the community of choice in West Houston. The services analyzed and/or in process of being analyzed in 2021 include landscaping, communications, web services, irrigation, cleaning, pool maintenance, trash and our security services.
We are in the midst of researching and improving security and landscaping, our first and third largest expenses. Currently we are:
Due to our Security services being our largest expense, ~40% of our budget, extensive research has been done and we’d like to share a few of our findings with you.
The data thus far is painting the picture that Heathlake spends more and receives less than the average homeowner participating in the co-op. Sara, Stephen and the rest of the board are currently working with the Constable, Co-Op and surrounding communities to improve the status quo.
If you would like to participate and/or give back by assisting with landscaping, security services or any other community activity please reach out to President@Heathlake.org or Vice.President@heathlake.org.
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Please Save the Date (Friday Dec 3 evening) for a holiday party at the clubhouse. The details are being worked out, but we are working toward a community wide event!
REMINDER: Our Fall Family Fun event is approaching on Saturday, November 6 at the clubhouse. Please bring your kiddos to have a sweet snack and get to know the other kids in the neighborhood. 2:30 – 4:30pm We hope to see you there!
The first Thursday of every month, the guys have a little get together. We will be meeting at the clubhouse at 4:55 and leaving at 5 for a taco truck crawl. After tacos we’ll meet back up at the clubhouse for brewski’s, ping pong, and man talk.
If you want to join us in the middle of the taco truck crawl or would like us to pick you up some taco’s to eat back at the clubhouse give Stephen Read 309-253-7887 or Jamie Ewton 205-821-1455 a call.
By now, or shortly, you will have received the HOA dues notices for 2022. Due to a procedural error and associated time constraint, the board will officially record the vote for the 10% dues increase at the December board meeting. This will be in addition to the annual meeting. These changes will be reflected in the meeting minutes. Also, please be on the lookout for the budget which will be shared in the near future.
If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to VicePresident@Heathlake.org
The Heathlake Book Club is reading John Irving’s The Cider House Rules for our November 9th meeting at 7 p.m. in the clubhouse. Anyone is welcome to join and don’t be worried if you haven’t had a chance to finish reading that lengthy book!! We will still love to see you and have you join in the discussion!
We chose a fun and short read for December due to everyone being busy: Murder at Melrose Court by Karen Menuhin, a mystery set in the early 1920’s. It’s a pretty short book, very funny, and my strong recommendation is to listen to the book as the narration is so well done. Also, periodically there is a barking dog! I enjoyed this book thoroughly and have spoken with others who did as well.
Hope to see you in November!
Laura Leib, Book Club Chair
We have focused on keeping the dues low for many years. In my opinion, this has led to the lack of adequate maintenance and infrastructure improvements. These, in turn, have contributed to an image of an aging neighborhood in decline. To test this theory, I gathered the sales data over the last eleven years (2010 – 2020) for several of the communities in our area and plotted them versus time.
The following data show correlation between the money available to spend and the observed price increase.
| Appraised Value Range1 | Price/sq.ft. Increase from 2010 to 20202 | Number of Homes | HOA Dues | Pools | Tennis Courts | Clubhouse + Common Areas3 | Dues/Amenities4 | |
| Heathlake | 260 – 560 | 16% | 312 | 700 | 1 | 2 | 2 | $43,680 |
| Ashford (ACA) | 210 – 650 | 55% | 932 | 625 | 2 | 4 | 2 | $72,813 |
| Yorkshire | 800 – 1300 | 78% | 150 | 850 | 0 | 0 | 1 | $127,500 |
| Lakes of Parkway5 | 600 – 1200 | 14% | 873 | 2600 | 1 | 2 | 2 | $453,960 |
| Village Place | 350 – 900 | 48% | 517 | 800 | 1 | 4 | 2 | $59,086 |
| South Briar | 260 – 350 | 65% | 803 | 675 | 1 | 4 | 2 | $77,432 |
| Briar Hills | 240 – 370 | 59% | 440 | 700 | 1 | 2 | 2 | $61,600 |
| Westchester | 150 – 615 | 54% | 486 | 784 | 1 | 1 | 2 | $95,256 |
| Nottingham6 | 440 – 770 | 65% | 932 | 650 | 1 | 5 | 2 | $75,725 |
| Notes | 1 Appraisal Value ranges were those reported by HAR and only provide an approximate range | |||||||
| 2 Price/Sq.ft. increases are based on actual sales values per share foot for the year 2010 and 2020 | ||||||||
| 3 In an attempt to quantify amenities in some way Common Areas that require landscaping were added to clubhouses | ||||||||
| 4 In order to get a rough approximation of the money available to care for the amenities, the HOA dues times the number of homes was divided by the sum of the amenities (Pools+Tennis Courts+ Clubhouse+Common Areas) | ||||||||
| 5 Lakes of Lakeside is a gated community with 24 hour security and is, therefore, not comparable to other communities in this table | ||||||||
| 6 Nottingham Forest also collects a substantial amount of money from $450/yr Tennis memberships that is not reflected in these numbers |
Heathlake has more amenities to maintain and collects less dues to do it. The last column shows a simplistic ratio of the dollars we collect to the number of amenities that must be maintained, and does not mean to imply that each amenity costs this much to care for.
This post was researched and written by the Heathlake board member John Trahan and edited / approved by the rest of the board (Sara Mammadova, Stephen Read, Per Voie, and Mary Puccini)
April Ladies Night – 4/16/24April 10, 2024 - 3:27 pm
March Ladies Night – 3/21/24March 14, 2024 - 8:01 am