Lakeport Cluster's Operating Budget for 2021

By Kevin Burke, Treasurer

The Lakeport Cluster Association Board approved an operating budget for 2021 with no increase in assessments. The Board decided to forego an inflationary increase in response to the economic stress that the Covid pandemic has created for some Lakeport homeowners. To be sensitive to this situation, the Board also held down expenses and required that new projects or activities be essential for the maintenance of Lakeport’s quality of life. Thus unnecessary projects and activities that are unsafe due to Covid-19, along with their related expenditures, were either canceled or curtailed. For example, the planned dock party and TGIFs did not take place, and the Annual Meeting was held using Zoom. In addition, last year’s snowfall was minimal, so most of the funds designated for snow plowing and treatment were saved. Finally, as has so often been the case, many Lakeport residents volunteered to help with the maintenance of the common property by trimming trees, removing dead trees and stumps, watering new plantings, and even landscaping common areas adjoining individual property. 

The Board also secured funding from Fairfax County Land and Water Conservation District for most of the costs of constructing the rain garden in the area between Lakeport Way and Lakespray Way that was experiencing considerable erosion. In addition, at the Board’s insistence, a contractor for Fairfax County  paid for replanting Lakeport’s portion of the hill next to the RA path between Sunrise Valley Drive and the Lake Thoreau pool. The trees and shrubs there had been destroyed by storage of equipment used to build the sidewalk along Sunrise Valley Drive. Finally, the County repaired a storm drain cover on Lakespray Way, which will reduce the cost to repair the sidewalks as part of this year’s repaving project.

Lakeport homeowners should be pleased that Lakeport Cluster’s operating budget and reserve funds received a clean audit. In December, the management company sent all homeowners a copy of the 2021 operating budget, along with the explanation of how to pay the HOA assessment.