Board Buzz

As the year comes to a close, the New Town Residential Association (NTRA) has been struggling with a number of issues that will impact everyone in our community.  Our highest priority has been developing a program to provide landscaping that better fits the needs of all NTRA members. The Board wants to give owners multiple landscaping options. As you may know our governing documents specify that the NTRA provides only mowing / edging of turf (not behind fences) and trimming of shrubs and trees. If we follow our documents to the letter, we must not provide mulch, weeding, fertilization, insect control, spring cleanup, or fall leaf removal. The Association also cannot provide any services in a fenced yard. Despite this language, the New Town Developer Board started full landscape services, and when an attempt to revise our governing documents including landscaping failed, previous homeowner Boards acknowledged that continuing full landscaping services had become a past practice and expectation, consistent with other homeowner associations and the general marketing for homes purchased in New Town.

 

This fall, your Board of Directors developed landscape amendments to our documents which, if passed with two-thirds vote of NTRA owners, would have given the Board of Directors the authority to provide all services and, at the same time allow homeowners to pick and choose between several service levels and pay for only the services that they desired. These amendments also permitted landscaping of fenced areas.

 

The proposed amendments were presented to members of our community at several information sessions, one for each neighborhood. The amendments, as presented included a full Section 4 which simply restated existing language in our documents, regarding private street and sidewalk repairs, BMP maintenance, and streetlight repairs. Unfortunately, significant opposition developed among a number of Charlotte Park owners because the amendments included these additional Section 4 items. The NTRA Board offered to remove these additional Section 4 provisions since they changed nothing and were only included for clarity. This did not satisfy the disgruntled owners who wanted to correct additional items in our documents.  

 

There simply was not sufficient time to do this, and the Board felt it would be far harder to get the needed owner votes for passage. All the Board wanted to do was change the way that we provide future landscaping. The opposition to these amendments began to spread to Abbey Commons and other NTRA neighborhoods. As a result, we decided to cancel the vote, and attempt to address landscaping in 2026 in some other way.

 

The Board will be finalizing our approach shortly. More information on the landscaping packages and associated costs will be presented at our annual homeowners meeting on  December 10, 2025.

 

Because we do not know the 2026 landscaping costs, the Board is still working on the development of the 2026 Budget which will be presented to the community in January.  The January 2026 (first quarter) homeowner’s assessment will be exactly the same as the 2025 fourth quarter homeowner’s assessment.  The remaining three quarters in 2026 will be adjusted accordingly once we have finalized and approved the 2026 budget. (This is the same process that we used last year when we had difficulty finalizing the 2025 budget.)

 

The Board has also been working on the election of Directors to fill the four positions that expire this December. Electronic voting on EZ Vote has started and the vote will be finalized and the elected Board members announced at our annual homeowners meeting.

 

Although landscaping in our 2026 budget remains unresolved, we have had a very successful year and accomplished the following:

• Improved landscaping with 3 service providers (one was subsequently fired because of performance issues).
• Trail resurfacing with the cost split with the New Town Commercial Association (NTCA)
• Decaying wooden benches replaced with recycled PVC benches
• Crosswalk painting performed by the Virginia Department of Transportation
• Crosswalk stop signs installed by the Virginia Department of Transportation
• BMP repairs with funding support provided by James City County and the NTCA
• Completed lighting and tile repairs at the pool and obtained a new pool cover
• Raised concerns about the lack of maintenance being performed on the Settlers Market owned BMPs with James City County and the owners.