Residents,
The board has heard lots of feedback around the contractor decals and daily passes and would like to formalize the opportunity to voice your opinion around the prohibition of contractors on Sundays. If we receive more than 25 responses we will summarize the feedback and update this page with the results. This survey will remain open for 45 days.
Financials
The contractor decals in 2022 and 2023 brought in $229,630 and $222,780 respectively. This equates to around $500 per household per year. Also worth considering, the contractor decals have the following overhead associated with them.
- The guard house is double staffed 8hrs a day for a full month during decal renewals, all overtime pay.
- For contractor decals online, we pay a 2.9% + 30 cent per swipe merchant processing fee to Stripe. For the gate software we are switching to, taking cards at the gate would be 5-7% per swipe.
Contractor Decals
In the spirit of fair and open debate we would like to provide background and some of the arguments brought up in recent times. The purpose of the decals was originally to fund road repairs and maintenance. The idea was the heavier contractor vehicles put more wear and tear on the roads and therefore we should offset those costs. When new homes were being built and larger construction projects this does make sense as there’s a larger budget for the contractor to absorb the fee.
In recent years, the following push back has been voiced to the board around the decal/daily pass system.
- More often than not, contractors bill the gate fees directly back to the resident, so there’s no savings over having the fees in their dues.
- When getting quotes, having to rely on contractors with annual passes narrows the pool of companies you can get competitive bids for, leading to higher prices.
- Amazon, FedEx, UPS, USPS are all allowed to deliver for free since there’s no way to force them to buy decals. Residents have voiced pushback over charging local couriers in our community but not large national ones.
- On the topic of deliveries, often times residents do not know who is used for the last mile delivery service. For example, if you order an item off Home Depot’s website, you might have UPS freight or you might have a local store driver deliver it.
- Several residents run up “I owe you” tabs at the gate. When we try to collect it’s frequently claimed that the delivery wasn’t theirs. With no way to prove this we’re on track to write off nearly $10k in decals between 2022 and 2023. Residents who pay theirs have raised concerns this is unfair to them.
Sunday Contractors
Sunday contractors is another rule we have received complaints on. The board has historically waived the rule liberally for anything that’s an emergency, but the line between emergency and non emergency is subjective. Feedback we’ve heard from residents includes
- With how hard it is to get contractors in Savannah right now, eliminating a day of work has a hardship, especially for those who do not work from home.
- For residents who attend church, go boating, etc on the weekend, Sunday work is actually less distracting than work being done on the weekdays for those who work from home.
Security Concerns
Please note that the drivers will still need to be on your guest list as always. Companies who violate Dutch Island policies will still be banned. For the purpose of this feedback there will be no changes to the commercial vehicle check in process.