The truth behind the two-thirds argument: What every Eastridge homeowner should know.
The two-thirds argument misses the point. If you followed the conversation about adding an eight-hour guard at the back gate, you’ve probably heard one line more than any other. “EPOA members would pay two-thirds of the cost.”
That statement is arithmetically true, but it doesn’t tell homeowners what they actually need to know. Homeowners don’t pay percentages of an association-wide total. They pay a monthly amount out of pocket.
And that amount is not two-thirds of anything.
If the monthly cost of back gate guard coverage is around $8,516 and the cost is shared by the number of homes, 208 homes in EPOA and 81 homes in Eastridge Hills, then the estimated cost per home is quite modest, about $29.50 a month for an EPOA household and about $29.49 for Eastridge Hills homeowners. (Give or take a few cents from rounding.) Those are the numbers families actually experience.
There is another important piece that’s often overlooked. Eastridge Hills already invests heavily in security, roughly $6,700 a month for The Eastridge’s security gate coverage, which works out to about $83.00 dollars per Eastridge Hills home each month.
Security is not a new expense. It’s something homeowners have long chosen to fund.
Scaling the Walls at the Back Gate
The question on the table is whether extending that coverage is worth the additional per-home cost. That’s a fair debate, but it should be grounded in the numbers that matter to homeowners, what each will actually pay and what they will receive in return, not in a percentage that sounds larger than it feels in the monthly household budgets.
Clear numbers make for better decisions.
