The Grand Illusion
Owning a house requires continuing maintenance, especially if you’ve lived in it for years. We’ve owned our present domicile over thirty years (the longest time either of us has stayed in one place), and during that time, the house has required repairs and replacements of items like the air conditioning compressor, dishwashers, washing machines and driers, as well as repainting and reroofing… and much more.
All this is obvious, but the need for such maintenance doesn’t apparently occur to far too many local, state, and federal officials. The amount of foregone maintenance in the Forest Service and National Park system is staggering, yet the current administration’s present and proposed budgets for the National Park System only address (from what I can tell) less than ten percent of the more than $24 billion of unfunded maintenance requirements.
One GAO report found that DOD was only funding 57% of the necessary maintenance at twelve major military bases. Another GAO report found that 73% of all Air Force maintenance on Air Force aircraft was delayed, up from 31% in 2019.
This isn’t confined to the federal government. Here in Cedar City, roughly twenty years ago, the city built a civic theatre, which was badly needed. That theatre has been essentially booked solid a year into the future, but the city council underfunded maintenance, which resulted in major maintenance work requiring total closure of the facility for months.
The Utah state legislature appropriates funding for new buildings for state colleges and universities, but little or no funding for ongoing maintenance, one reason why the roof of the music building at SUU leaked copiously after any significant rainfall (rare as it is).
Everyone wants the newest whatever – from military aircraft to public buildings – but governments at all levels continue to ignore the maintenance requirements, which just might also have something to do with the problems aboard the Abraham Lincoln, not to mention the fact that the President’s maintenance requirements seem fixated on a ballroom, an unneeded triumphal arch, getting his name on the Kennedy Center, and of course, the slope of the White House helipad.
A fun thing related to this is, at least in Nevada, the state government requires HOAs to have a reserve study done every few years, and dictates that the reserves need to cover the expected repairs / component replacements. The reserve study is not a simple thing, and requires extensive and detailed reporting from good contractors.
In one part of our HOA the streets aren’t public, so the reserves have to account for street repaving / resurfacing, sidewalk repair / replacement, and other structural maintenance. The reserve study shows the expected life of the item (at the time of the study), the current state, if wear has accelerated, and when the expenses for repair/replacement are likely to come due. All of that then figures into what dues are required just to replenish the reserves to the mandated level. If the board then doesn’t set the dues as a level sufficient to cover this, they can be held liable.
While the government requires this process is followed for the HOA, from what I can tell the state itself doesn’t have to do this for itself. They effectively do the reserve study, but the legislature doesn’t have to set the dues (taxes) at a level sufficient to cover the costs.