Survey Results
In this edition of the Desert Ridge Lifestyles Magazine, we present the outcome of our most recent survey. The survey polled Desert Ridge residents on important questions about our community. It’s an interesting article, so I encourage you to read it.
Among the most important answers we received was a concern for improving landscape maintenance. Over 20% of the respondents requested an improvement to the maintenance of our community. This theme has been repeated in several of our monthly board meetings, as well as from personal communications we have received as a board.
After studying this issue, the DRCA board voted to increase funding in this area. To fund this increase in services, we also increased our semi-annual assessment to $222.00. Starting in January 2020, you will see your assessment increase by $6.00 per month. This is the only increase we have had since 2003, about 16 years ago. The increase was caused by inflation, increases to the minimum wage, as well as the aging of our community as a whole.
In 2016, I published a comparison of our Assessments to inflation. I’ve updated the chart below to reflect the changes we’ve seen from 2003–2019.
As you can see, if our assessments had increased with inflation, they would currently be $512 per year. At $444.00, we are $68.00 dollars below that number, a difference of 15.3%.
The additional funding for landscaping will be used to reduce our landscape rotation from 12 weeks per cycle, down to only 8 weeks. This will substantially improve the look of our community and raise the maintenance level to a level our community has requested.
It is a pleasure to serve our Desert Ridge Board. We appreciate your support and look forward to seeing you in the neighborhood.
Doug Dickson
President
Desert Ridge Community Association
