The board was able to gather data about similar HOAs to Grand Lakes through Elite. We did find that several HOAs had lower dues than us. Some have the same or lower dues but have more members resulting in a much higher operating budget. Raising our rates to $650 will have us closer to the higher range of dues on the list. However, we questioned Elite about the HOAs that had very low dues or operating budgets and they said that a significant difference for those HOAs is that they do not have debt that was turned over to them by their builders. Additionally, Hermitage HOA, which is the most similar to our community, will be raising their dues this year to $650 because they had to do a major renovation to their clubhouse and it used all their reserves and left them with 20,000 in debt. 

Based on this report and that information the board still believes that moving forward with increasing our dues to cover our significant debt is the correct course of action.