February 11, 2024

Dear Greenfield Farms Homeowner:

This letter is to notify you that the 2024 annual assessment for Greenfield Farms Homeowners Association (GFF HOA) of Bedford, NH will be going up by $100.00 from last year. The assessment of $595.00 will be due on April 1, 2024, and represents a 20% increase from the prior year. The purpose of this letter is to explain why the Board of Directors increased dues by $100.00.

From 2020 – 2023, the common areas of Greenfield Farms were maintained by Outdoor Pride Landscaping. During late 2019, the Board of Directors entered into a three-year contract with Outdoor Pride and the annual contract price that was offered to our HOA was fixed at $73,426/year. As you may recall, Covid-19 hit in early 2020 and shortly thereafter, labor shortages became prevalent, fuel prices skyrocketed, and inflation rose significantly. During this time, Outdoor Pride was obligated to uphold the contract they offered to GFF HOA even though they were likely facing financial pressure during this uncertain time.

In anticipation of a significant increase in pricing for the 2024 year from our incumbent, Outdoor Pride, the Board of Directors decided to issue a formal Request for Proposal (RFP) to multiple landscaping companies in an effort to obtain the best possible pricing. As it turns out, many larger landscaping companies chose not to submit a bid to GFF HOA, preferring not to deal with Homeowner Associations. Some other companies were concerned about not having sufficient labor to handle their existing customers, let alone taking on a property as large as Greenfield Farms. That being said, we did receive a bid from Morin’s Landscaping and Outdoor Pride. Morin’s offered GFF HOA a two-year contract for $84,770 per year. Outdoor Pride’s proposal came in at slightly over $92,000 and they only offered a one-year contract.

The Board of Directors had heard good things about Morin’s Landscaping and contacted 6-8 of their references, all homeowners’ associations. We heard glowing reports that most of Morin’s employees have been with them for a long time and are well trained. As well, their references said Morin’s has wonderful attention to detail, they provide excellent service, have prompt response times, and they assign a dedicated manager/foreman to our contract for easy communication if problems occur. Given these glowing endorsements and the fact that they offered a two-year contract at more than $7,000 less than Outdoor Pride, the Board of Directors made the decision to move our landscaping contract to Morin’s effective 2024 through 2025.

The increase of $11,344 in landscaping contract costs from 2023 to 2024 ($84,770 – $73,426 = $11,344) essentially results in an increase of $51.79/homeowner/year. The Morin’s contract at $84,770 will cover spring and fall clean-up, weekly mowing, fertilization, GFP ornamental tree pruning, shrub trimming and weeding. Additional services like brush overgrowth cutback, replacement of trees and shrubbery from storm damage, removal of fallen trees etc. are not covered in the landscaping contract. These services are offered by Morin’s but on an ad-hoc basis and are priced separately. Now that the Greenfield Parkway road pavement project is complete (with the exception of the bridge repair), one project we anticipate undertaking is to improve the center medians of the Greenfield Parkway. Many of the mulch beds were removed with the repaving project and many shrubs have died. The Board has allocated an additional $11K from last year’s budget for these projects which equates to an additional $50/household from last year.

If you wish to view the 2024 budget in more detail, please go to www.greenfieldfarmsnh.com and navigate to the Welcome page. On the right-hand side, you’ll see under “Recent Posts,” the HOA 2024 Operating Budget. If you open this presentation, you’ll see on slide 7 more detail regarding 2023 actual expenses vs. budget and the 2024 budget.

The Board of Directors is working hard to maintain a beautiful neighborhood here at Greenfield Farms while always striving to keep costs as low as possible. As well, we are always looking for volunteers. If you wish to know more about what the Board of Directors does to serve Greenfield Farms, please feel free to email us at bod@greenfieldfarmsnh.com.

Respectfully,

Board of Directors,
Greenfield Farms, Bedford NH
PO Box 10344
Bedford, NH 03110