Board Buzz
BOARD BUZZ – April 2026 by Everett Lunsford, Vice-President
Posted on Apr 9th, 2026
In this month’s Town Crier, I have written an article that tries to outline the complexity and interconnections that affect and challenge the Board of Directors work. There are two specific areas where the NTRA Board is currently anticipating that improved documents would benefit all owners.
Improving cost-sharing with NTCA
Board members from both the NTRA and the New Town Commercial Association (NTCA) have been making efforts to improve the working relationships under the Shared Amenities Agreement. Where NTCA has managed most of the purchases and expenses under the agreement, NTCA is paying towards our expenses for trail improvements and the Rollison BMP remediation.
Long term, NTRA is looking to modify this agreement to match the working arrangements that have developed with two different management companies.
Revising our governing documents
Virginia community association law tells an association to ‘follow your documents’. Owners who have kept up with our Association since our 2020 transition from developer control are well aware that has been difficult. The carryover of ‘developer documents’ such as NTRA’s governing documents has left Boards of Directors struggling to ‘following the documents’ in a realistic and responsible way, while considering the needs of individual owners and the community. This has resulted in multiple different approaches to landscaping over the years, a complex budgeting process, and high legal expenses.
In the end, the NTRA Board was forced to say it cannot strictly follow the documents and reasonably manage New Town Residential. As an example, the switch in 2026 to ‘Limited Common Expense’ assessments is using a portion of the documents better suited to what is done for individual lots rather than the general landscaping provisions in our Supplemental Declarations.
To better serve the community, an attempt was made in 2022 to revise the NTRA’s governing documents. That revision failed to receive approval from the required 2/3 of NTRA owners. Last year we proposed a partial revision of only the landscape provisions in each neighborhood’s Supplemental Declarations, but in the face of owner feedback did not bring these changes to a formal vote.
The Board is currently planning another attempt to move to workable documents. The Norfolk law firm of Woods Rogers Vandeventer & Black has been engaged to review all our current governing documents and develop a new set. Lessons learned since 2020 will definitely be incorporated. In conjunction with this, a community volunteer committee will be established to represent owner concerns and work with the Board and law firm on document development. The committee will consist of members throughout the community who will engage with neighbors to help ensure acceptance and passage of the new documents.
No Comments