Oh, I forgot, home prices range from $150k to $400k.
We are not really looking at thinks that the HOA can do that the muni can’t, since at least at first, the HOA will still exist.
The HOA is considered a non-stock corporation, so if it dissolves, the law says that homeowners are not entitled to anything. Maryland law is fuzzy on the subject of where it goes, however, or so our legal counsel tells us.
PM me the names, I will find out if they still live here.
Is your HOA currently part of any existing municipality or equivalent polity? Around here, every square inch of land is part of either a municipality or a township, but I know that varies from state to state.
There are rules. Parking on the street is not allowed, all outdoor projects must be approved by the Architectural Review Committee, and so on. The ARC rules state that any painting must be in character with the rural nature of the community, so as long as it is not garish colors, it will be approved. At first the HOA will continue to exist, so the rules will still be in effect.
I have always been interested in Civics, and doing things to help my community. When I heard of this effort, I pitched in, just so that I can do my best to help improve the community.
Very poor turnout to meetings, but our HOA meetings are just as bad. We have not had quorum at an HOA meeting in over 3 years, and quorum is defined as 100 members out of the 4800 members we have. We usually get 10-15 people to the meetings.
I am not running for mayor, but I may run for City Council. Don’t know yet, I want to get through this process first.
No top hat, yet.
No, we are unincorporated land within Calvert County. As such, we are governed directly by the county, but they have no legislative powers either. All County Ordinances are proposed to the Maryland Legislature, and have to be approved by them.
I guess I’m a bit confused. Is this just an elaborate way of getting some of your state taxes returned to you in the form of road repair and funding? If you incorporate as a municipality, won’t you be collecting property taxes? Are those collected now, and if so, who gets them? If you do start collecting taxes, how is that better than increasing the dues?
Maryland has a system where revenue from gas taxes, vehicle registrations, and vehicle titling fees gets distributed to all levels of government for road repairs. We see a very tiny part of the County’s share of this revenue. We would receive money from the municipality fund, which would bring us much more money.
Property taxes are collected by the county and we see some returns, but not what other parts of the county get. We will be negotiating with the county on that revenue sharing deal. Currently the other municipalities in the county get back approx. 37% of their property taxes for roads and other municipality services. There other issues, such as planning and zoning and engineering that we will also take control of. Currently it takes months to get a roads project approved through the county engineer. We pay an engineering contractor to draw up the plans, then submit it to the county for approval. As a municipality, we could do it ourselves.
Have you developed plans for your mayoral campaign?
I’m just wondering if you guys are walking into a mess you don’t expect.
You’re a HOA. You’ve been running that system and you understand and control it.
You’re planning on entering a different system. One that other people have experience running and which they understand and control.
In the previous experience with the county you described, you expected to receive $200,000 and only got $30,000. And your municipality represents less than ten percent of the voters in the county.
I’m not sure I follow how these points fit together. If the only county functions that currently affect you are schools, hospitals, jails, and courts, do you mean you will be assuming responsibility for those?
On other topics: Do you anticipate the same people holding office in the HOA and the city? I ask because I assume the HOA has private security and will continue to do so rather than the city developing a police force, but I wonder if there is going to be tension over the lines of authority.
Who handles fire protection? I assume there are no sewers? Will the county’s cable TV contract continue to apply to you?
Does the HOA own the common areas and the beaches?
Sorry for all the random questions; it’s an interesting legal situation.
Indeed, I imagine there may be a much wider scope of civil-rights law that will apply, now that this will be a government entity.
I misspoke (mistyped?) on the first issue. The four areas I mentioned are areas that we cannot take over per state law. Some of the services we would be able to assume are the planning and zoning function, as well as the roads engineering function. I would also like to see if we can get into the building permitting side. All of these functions are horridly inefficient at our county. I don’t know if they just don’t like us, or if their backlog is that huge, but it sometimes can take months for engineering approval of a roads project, or a building permit.
I guess I should have put this on my disclaimer earlier in this thread. I currently sit on the HOA Board of Directors. This is why I don’t want to run for office. Even though I think that I can be impartial, it can still be seen as a conflict of interest.
We are looking at using State grants for Police Protection, as well as some of our budget, to contract a police force from the County. The other municipalities in the county already do that, and it works for them. The County will do the training and outfitting, we pay for their use exclusively within our borders. Our HOA security is a joke. Mainly it consists of guys you call if you want to rat out the neighbors on an HOA violation. If there is a real crime all they do is call the County Sheriff’s office.
We would have to hire Code enforcement officers to enforce municipal ordinances.
The other municipalities have their own contract with the cable provider (Comcast) so we are assuming that we will be able to negotiate our own. We do not have sewers, it is all septic systems. Water is provided by a utility cooperative owned by all of the homeowners. Although it is co-extant with the HOA, it is a separate venture, and as such will continue as-is. Fire protection is provided by a local volunteer department that covers a large area of the County. That will remain, although we think we will qualify for more State funds that might be able to help them plus up funding.
The HOA owns all of the common property, including the beaches, the lake, the former stables, as well as most unsold parcels. Some unsold parcels have been declared “green space” so that they will never be developed, and property taxes have been deferred.
Civil rights law is not something that has been discussed. What specific areas are you referring to? We do know that as a government entity the level of scrutiny will be much higher. This is a benefit, because many of the residents are highly suspicious of HOA leadership, and assume that graft is rampant.
How do you plan to address the cliff erosion? You’ve lost 2/3 of the space between the edge of the cliff and the houses. How many inches are you losing a year? How many did you lose during Sandy?
Have you spoken to the environmental agencies about this?
If you want more people interested in the incorporation issue, I suggest making it more controversial. Not in something that really matters, but in something more ephemeral: the name. In other words, suggest a name that’ll make people excited, amused, outraged, or some other significant emotion. Anything other than bored. Your current name, Calvert Shores, I’m afraid, is quite boring.
Some ideas:
- Take a well-known name from fiction. Gondor, Hobbiton, Barsoom, Ruritania, Lilliputia, Lookingglassland, etc.
- Make it a single letter name. AFAIK, there’s never been a single letter town name in the history of the US. You can be the first.
- Use a radical spelling: It’s spelled Xpfwyv but pronounced “Springfield”. OK, that’s probably more radical than you want. Kalvert Shorz? definitely not. Maybe something in between those extremes.
- Start a thread in IMHO asking for suggestions. You’ll get far more than you want.
The problem with the cliff erosion issue is that the Cliffs of Calvert are one of a few known habitats that support the puritan tiger beetle, an endangered species. You can read about the issue here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/24/AR2010012402962_2.html?sid=ST2010100806884
Since that article was written, 10 homes have been condemned, and the homeowners were compensated. My house is about 300 feet from the cliff, so at the rate of less than 2 feet/ year, I still have at least 150 years. My street runs diagonal to the cliffs, so the people across the street and 3 doors up are losing their backyards. I didn’t check the cliff before and after Sandy, so I don’t know how much was lost.
Recently, Maryland Dept of Natural Resources has allowed people to put giant concrete balls at the bottom of the cliff to stop erosion, but all construction has to be done in the winter, when the beetles aren’t active. It is too late to save the road, however. Since the cliff is only 25 feet from the road at one point the weight of a School Bus may cause the whole cliff to give way. I still walk on the closed portion of the road, since it is a 10 minute walk to the beach that way, and a 15 minute drive if I go the other way.
I wasn’t at the meeting when they picked the name, and I agree that it is boring. Unfortunately the name was required on the petition, so now we can’t change it until after incorporation. Unsurprisingly, it has been one of the biggest bones of contention. The other two municipalities in the county are Chesapeake Beach and North Beach, which are equally as boring.
When I started reading your OP, I had a feeling it was CRE. We looked there when we first came to the area, but apart from its inconvenient location based on where we were both working, we didn’t want to live in a community with an HOA. Plus the houses we’d looked at were on dirt roads, and that was another “never again” on our list.
I’ll be following your efforts with interest from the other side of the river. 
It is a 35 minute commute from my house near the cliffs to my job at Pax River, as long as the bridge is moving. I have been trapped at the top of the bridge for over an hour because both sides were blocked by an accident during the evening rush. I have also driven all the way up to Mechanicsville to cross the river at the benedict Bridge, and then driven all the way back down because there was an accident on the bridge. There are plans to build a new, two span bridge, and tear down the old one within the next 10 years.
I’m confused why your HOA is saddled with all the road maintenance. It seems like this should be a county responsibility. I live in Virginia and our HOA doesn’t handle our roads. VDOT maintains them and takes care of slow plowing. Is your situation typical in Maryland?