North Village View

North Village budget and more

by the North Village Board of Directors

Budget for 2025
The Board approved its draft 2025 budget for publication in August and conducted a final vote at the October 17th meeting. The accompanying table provides a brief summary, and the corresponding assessment the Board approved for 2025. We hope you’ll find this information helpful in understanding the budget for next year.
Guided by the by-laws of the North Village Homes Corporation (NVHC), certain expenditure increases are capped by the Consumer Price Index change (CPI) from last year to this year. This expenditure includes everything but the special contracts for security and trash. The CPI change for the evaluation period was 3.3% but the expense increase for those categories under the CPI ceiling has been limited to 1.7%. As last year, we have taken the increasing living expenses that everyone is facing and opted to minimize the NV increase to help where we could. When all outlays are considered, the budget projects to be an overall 1.8% increase this year, the same as last year.

Budget Analysis
Maintenance expenses
Maintenance expenses are the largest part of the budget, consistent with prior years. Of the $261,762 we are budgeting for 2025, the fixed price landscaping contract accounts for $121,312. These funds help ensure that the common area lawns are mowed and that the leaf collection continues. This contract came in at 4.5% higher than last year. A large part of this category is the tree removal line item, budgeted at $50,000. Tree removal is ongoing with aging trees despite addressing them yearly. The $13,936 YTD for 2024 is so far running lower than budget. We spent $61,675 in 2023 and expect to spend slightly less than budget for this year, but we need to maintain the large tree removal budget as the pin oaks continue to fight disease.

Trash, Security and Non-Maintenance Expenses
We have special contracts for trash and security, authorized by homeowner-approved by-laws, that account for approximately $226,683 in our budget. This year we will continue with the security service that provides us with hours dedicated solely to our community and a trash vendor that did not increase their rates for 2025.
Trash Removal: We are budgeting $116,683 for trash removal for 2025. This number represents a 5% increase over last year. J&J remains the most reliable and financially viable option for trash removal. Most notable is that the largest source of the increase is bulk trash.
Bulk Trash: We emphasize that four (4) bulk trash pickups per home are included in J&J’s contract. Through October this year, we’ve spent over $35,000 on bulk trash pickups that didn’t go through J&J. Please encourage your neighbors to contact J&J using their simple website form or by phone for bulk pickup. This will reduce the need for extra resources for bulk trash pickups. Let us work together to minimize these extra costs. Unfortunately, we must budget $45,000 for bulk trash pickup in 2025. We believe this is adequate, but our hope is that residents make better use of J&J pickups for bulk trash.
Security: We have an excellent security service with hours dedicated solely to our community. The vendor kept their fees constant so the budget for 2025 is $65,000, the same as last year.

Non-Maintenance: The third category is the non-maintenance and includes the Montgomery Village Foundation management fee, legal, bad debt and required expenses such as audit and insurance. This category does increase by 4.3% as MVF was unable to hold their rates constant 3 years in a row.
Capital Reserves: The planned contribution to Capital Reserves for 2025 of $157,333 is an increase over 2024 but consistent with recommendations of our 2020 reserve study. We expect to incur costs related to recommendations in that study that cover road repairs and concrete repairs. One other note regarding capital reserves is that the same study would indicate a potential special assessment is needed, but we believe that we can manage our reserves without implementing this.
Please provide questions or comments to the community manager before our November Board Meeting. See contact information below.

Two Leaf Pickups in 2024
Only when signs are posted are you allowed to place leaves in the street. Please bag leaves for recycling at all other times to avoid back up of street drains, and to avoid making it difficult for emergency vehicles to get by. The website link is bit.ly/4flpH8b
• The week of Nov. 18 and scheduled for completion on Friday, Nov. 22
• The week of Dec. 16 and scheduled for completion on Friday, Dec. 20

Important numbers to keep:
J&J Trash Service 301-898-2109
MC Recycling – New Blue Bins - Scrap Metal 311
Pepco 877-737-2662
WSSC 301-206-4001

Next Meeting
The next meeting of the Board will be held on Thursday, Nov. 21, 2024, at 7 p.m. at North Creek Community Center.
You may contact our community manager, April Steward, at 301-948-0110, x-2325, with your interest in attending the meeting. If you have any questions or want to report any problems in the community, please reach out to April at that number or email her at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

North Village View: for residents of Essex Place, Highland Hall, McRory, Perry Place, Picton, Pleasant Ridge and Salem’s Grant.