Greetings Neighbors!

Welcome to the many new neighbors that have joined us in 2025! It seems this year has been the busiest in recent memory. We have a couple of topics to cover as we close out the year, so we appreciate your attention as we share here a quick outlook for the end of 2025 and beginning of 2026. 

First, we have scheduled the annual member meeting for December 4, 2025 at which we will have one Board seat open and will be voting on either re-election or voting in a new Board member. If you are interested in running, or finding out more about it, please email Board@Saratogahillsaustin.com. The seat up for election is currently held by Lorna. As a reminder, Jody’s seat is up at the end of 2026 and Justin’s at the end of 2027. At this meeting we will cover our financials including reserve management, dues for 2026, and other topics which we will solicit for inclusion soon. If you have something in particular on your mind, please email us. While we have not had many specific requests for CC&R changes lately, this annual meeting is also your opportunity to put such recommended changes in front of the community. To submit an issue, document the specific changes you are seeking, get 50 neighbors to indicate interest (digital is fine), and we will work with you to get it on the ballot. The purpose of the 50 interested neighbors is to demonstrate sufficient minimum interest as a change actually requires 104 affirmative votes (104 Households).

Second, after much deliberation and an in-depth review of RowCal’s operations, tools, and performance to date, we believe we have no choice but to switch management companies effective November 1, 2025. We knew there would be some pains in the change (and there were), but we simply cannot sustain the consistent stream of missing ACC submissions, missed bill payment (we nearly had our insurance cancelled for non-payment), late payment of property taxes (we caught and had to remind them), a barrage of late fees from 2025 dues caused by truly poor communication, and a number of other complaints from neighbors as to their handling of things. In reviewing the recent care team reports, there are multiple requests by new neighbors as to how one would get access to portals etc. RowCal is failing in even the most basic functions of a property management company in simply welcoming new residents. The silver lining is that the system we will return to is PayHOA. For those of you who were here in 2023 and early 2024, you will remember it. It is rather easy to use with a much better user interface - the difference this time is we will have a management company (YourHOA) backing us up for inquiries and any assistance. 

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We’ve chosen YourHOA after a review of other more traditional options. One of the biggest factors is the use of PayHOA - as for most neighbors, the only interaction you have with the HOA or management company is in paying dues and submitting ACC requests. We know PayHOA is a great tool that works very well. Having interviewed the executive team at YourHOA, it is a family run business that has scaled to over 11K units under management - not too big but certainly experienced. We reviewed all RowCal care team reports over the last year and looking at what we need, we believe this group will serve us well. Using the emails on file with RowCal now, we will create accounts for everyone in PayHOA and follow up soon with any action needed. Since dues payments do not begin until December and end January 15th, we have time to make the change. 

Reminders:

• All building structures or additions of pre-fab structures require ACC submission and approval. We seem to have quite a few situations recently where additions are started, trees and landscaping are removed, or structures are added in without submission. Our only goal is to hold all improvements to the standards provided in our CC&Rs as is required. 
• Big thanks to all who are mowing 15’ back from the road in the “wild” portions of their property. Walkers/runners truly appreciate it and it makes the neighborhood look that much better. 

Lastly, landscaping - We completed our review mid-summer and having received a few other bids, we have re-affirmed that Perfect Cuts will remain our provider. With each alternative provider one can find some complaint. While Perfect Cuts has been far from “perfect” - having discussed our issues at length we feel they are committed to open dialogue and improvement. Some of our issues relate to the original scope of our agreement which is being fixed. Others relate to the need for more communication as crew staffing changes and certain nuances are missed. 

We’re looking forward to the upcoming meeting. Thankfully this year has been rather uneventful outside of the late night gate incident which outside of frustration was resolved at no cost to the HOA.

You will see separate communications for the meeting with instructions on accessing it, as well as separate communications regarding the PayHOA account setup. 

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Regards, 

Saratoga Hills HOA Board

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