After careful consideration, and having already received support at last August’s Annual Meeting, the OWW1 Board has voted unanimously to raise the annual dues to $200 per lot, per year, beginning July 1, 2026.
The reasons for this increase are evident. Last year’s repaving project turned out to cost $187,000–more than twice that of the work done ten years earlier–; an amount which exceeded our savings and forced us to borrow $11,500 in order to complete the job. Obviously, the dues rate of $150 had not been sufficient to meet this cost.
Knowing this, and realizing that it is important to begin immediately to prepare for the next repaving, nine or ten years in the future, and, further, projecting that the cost for such a project is likely to be higher than last year’s (particularly since it will then encompass all of our roads, including Heierman, which was not included in the 2025 work), we felt that the proactive thing to do was to institute this dues increase–which should grow our savings at an accelerated rate sufficient for the future Board to meet those costs, as well as to maintain a proper reserve along the way for our other expenses, such as snowplowing, mailbox maintenance, etc.
As your OWW1 POA Board, we feel that this is the responsible action to take, and that the $200 fee–still relatively low compared to other communities–should leave us in better financial shape in years to come.