Dear Overdale Neighbors,
We hope you are having a wonderful holiday season. We saw many of you at the party earlier this month and continue to enjoy the lights on the homes in the neighborhood. Thank you Jenni Sullivan for organizing the Light Competition! That was a fun way to acknowledge the beauty the lights and season bring.
On an unrelated note, as your Board, we strive to lead with transparency. With the recent discussion on Facebook about the Water Board ULID and the distribution of assets, we thought we should do our part to be as helpful as we can. Note the Water Board is no longer functioning as a legal entity and was a completely separate entity from the HOA Board. Some of you have raised questions about the distribution of funds. While the HOA Board was not part of that decision making process, we reviewed the notes from HOA meetings where the Water Board provided annual updates. Attached is an outline to aid in a better understanding of the process that occurred. We hope this outline will provide you with more information and clarity on the process. You may also submit other questions and concerns pertaining to this issue to the HOA Board here. We will compile your questions and aid in responding to them as best we can at our quarterly meetings.
Warmly,
Amber Malmgren
Overdale Park HOA President
Your Overdale Board has as one of its goals to make sure that members of our community are aware of things that affected/might affect us. While there is no longer a Water Board for our community, questions have come up related to the history of the Water Board and the ultimate transfer of our water to the Sammamish Plateau Water District. Below is a brief recounting of that history:
- Originally our water came from a couple of wells here in the community. Those wells failed
- A new well was dug but found to be contaminated by unhealthy levels of arsenic
- Our Water Board sought out sources of water from the City of Issaquah and the City of Sammamish
- Issaquah declined but Sammamish agreed to provide us with water
- Sammamish Plateau Water incurred debt of over $2 million in expenses to conduct a feasibility study, build a pump house, and repair/replace water lines and meters etc.
- The Sammamish Plateau Water ULID 30 was created to fund this cost
- The cost was then assigned to all of the existing lots in Overdale in proportion to the size of each water connection (basically most everyone had the same original “loan”)
- A meeting was held at the Sammamish water district, hosted by the County, where it was explained that if an owner paid off his/her loan, that owner would not be eligible for any credits coming from future sales of assets. There was also some written communication to owners related to the ULID and the loans. Unfortunately, it was not clear to all of the owners that paying off the loan would render owners ineligible to benefit from future sales of assets and a reduction of their principal
- The “loans” are administered by King County Treasury and each owner receives a statement in the fall with the balance owed and the amount due by Dec. 20 of each year until the full loan is paid off (loans accrue interest at 3% per year)
- The Water Board attempted to sell the water rights, but was unable to find buyers (e.g. golf courses, other municipalities, etc.) and was opposed by local tribes. The rights were donated to the Washington State Water Trust.
- The Water Board was able to sell other assets of the community (vacant un-owned lots) and those dollars were used to pay down the ULID loans of all owners who had a principal balance
- Eligible homeowners generally received a reduction of their principal by roughly $3,500 when the proceeds from the asset sales were applied to the total loan balance.
- The Water Board was dissolved and that dissolution required the expenditure of some of the proceeds from the asset sales