ROAD FEES
Road Fees are stipulated in most property owners deeded covenants; they are mandatory and legally enforceable. The road fees are collected by the LBCA to an account that restricts how funds are disbursed from that account. These funds are used to maintain the two miles of private roads in our community, the majority of these two miles are the roads adjacent or near to our community’s private beaches. The remainder of the roads in our community are public, county roads. The private roads at the beaches are what keeps our beaches private; if all the roads were public roads we would not be able to restrict access from the public to our beaches. Every property owner has the right to access the beaches on these private roads by foot or by car (drop-off and pick-up beach gear and family/guests). The covenants guarantee this access. Property owners who wish to park in the beach parking lots may do so with parking passes (hang tags) that are issued with full membership in the LBCA.
The Road Fee Fund may only be used for road repairs, maintenance such as removing fallen tree limbs on the private roads, or removing snow and obstacles like the sand slide caused by stormwater erosion at the end of Cedar Rd (prior to the installation of the LBCA Stormwater Management Project at the base of the hill along the flats), installation of speed bumps, etc. Road fee funds may NOT be used to pay for parking passes (hang tags), porta-potties/trash disposal/lawn care on the beaches. These expenses are paid from the General Fund which is funded by Membership Dues and Donations. For many years, parking passes were issued to property owners who paid their Road Fees. However the money coming in from Road fees could not be used to cover the expenses of parking passes and other parking lot amenities. Since those expenses could only be paid from the General Fund, the Board voted in December 2021 to move the relationship between parking passes away from road fees (where it never really belonged) to the General Fund.
Not every property owner has the same covenant as their neighbor and this makes the management of road fees complicated. And not every property owner has a covenant that requires road fees. Out of 649 properties, 70 do not have covenants that stipulate road fees. One set of covenants specify an amount based on road frontage per linear foot while another set of covenants calculate based on how many lots of frontage - a few covenants stipulate a flat rate. The Road Fees had not been raised since the inception of our community, more than 83 years property owners paid Road fees based on the Consumer Price Index (CPI) from the 1930’s; one dollar in 1939 is valued at $20.24 today. This has been a problem for our community for a long time, and the topic of discussion at almost every board meeting. The roads can not be fixed based on the dollar value of the 1930’s. After working very diligently, meeting with other similar communities that share these issues, and with the help of legal counsel, the LBCA Board voted unanimously to increase the Road Fees base on the CPI from 1970 rather than from the 1930’s. This was a big cost increase for property owners who had paid unrealistically low road fees for years, but it was less than a third of what it could have been had the Board used the 1930’s CPI as the basis.
The Road Fees are a work-in-progress and it will take time to make changes due to the complication with the variety of covenants. This is a topic that will continue to be discussed within the community and the Board will make sure to provide status updates at the open monthly meetings and by email to property owners. For more information click the link below to download the meeting minutes. The first three meeting minutes have many details about the Road fees.