Back in August we worked through the funding choice - special assessment, association loan, or a hybrid with a prepayment window. This is the other half: once the board has chosen a special assessment, how to actually levy one. Boards get this wrong more often than the funding decision, and the mistakes are procedural rather than financial. FIRST, CONFIRM WHO HAS THE POWER Read your declaration of trust before anything else. Some documents let the trustees levy a special assessment for any common expense. Some cap what the board can do alone and require an owner vote above a threshold - a dollar amount, a percentage of the annual budget, or a stated percentage of owners approving. Some distinguish between a necessary repair and a discretionary improvement, with different authority for each. That last distinction catches boards out. If the project is arguably an improvement to the common areas rather than a repair, you may be in section 18 territory and looking at owner approval thresholds, not a board vote. We touched on that two weeks ago in a different context, and it applies here directly. Get this answered before the board votes, not after an owner's attorney asks. THEN ALLOCATE IT CORRECTLY A special assessment for a common expense is allocated by beneficial interest - the percentage interest in your master deed - unless your documents say otherwise. Boards sometimes want to split it evenly per unit because it feels fairer, or to exempt a unit that does not benefit. Both invite a challenge. If an allocation other than beneficial interest seems right to the board, that is a question for counsel first. NOW THE PART THAT DETERMINES WHETHER YOU COLLECT IT Three decisions, and they matter more than the total. The payment structure. A lump sum due in thirty days maximizes the number of owners who cannot pay. Installments over six, twelve or twenty-four months, with a prepayment option for owners who would rather be done, collects far more of the money. Match the installment period to when you actually need the cash - if the contractor draws over four months, you do not need it all in January.

Two Massachusetts utility items landed this week, and both belong in a budget that most boards are adopting in the next four weeks. THE HEAT PUMP RATE STARTED NOVEMBER 1 Massachusetts has a residential seasonal heat pump electric rate, and the winter period began yesterday. It runs November 1 through April 30, and the state's materials indicate that enrolled heat pump customers receive the winter rate automatically. Three utilities offer it - Eversource, National Grid and Unitil - and the discount applies to delivery charges. Supply charges are not affected by it, which is worth saying plainly because it changes the size of the benefit. Why this matters to a condominium board at all. Two reasons, and they are different. If your association has heat pumps serving common areas - a lobby, a corridor system, a community room - that is an association account, and it is worth asking your utility directly whether that account is on the applicable rate. Associations do not generally get told; they get billed. And if owners in your building have installed mini-splits or heat pumps, this is useful information to pass along in your next owner communication. It costs the board nothing, it is the sort of thing owners actually appreciate, and it reaches people who have no idea the rate exists. One honest caveat. The state materials describe this as a residential rate, and whether and how it applies to a particular association or multifamily account is a question for your utility rather than for us. Ask the question with your account number in hand. A PENDING GAS RATE CASE IS A BUDGET RISK, NOT YET A COST The second item needs more care, because boards get into trouble treating a proposed increase as a decided one. National Grid filed a petition to adjust its gas base distribution rates on January 16, 2026. In connection with that case, the state's bill impact estimate projects that a typical residential heating customer on Boston Gas would see a monthly winter increase of $23.66, or 8.4 percent.

Pondview Green is a 30-unit association in Natick, three buildings, built in 1986. Garden-level units on the north side of Building B back onto a slope. Unit 6 is one of them. Water comes into the back bedroom most springs, usually in late March during a heavy rain on thawing ground. It has happened four times in six years. Each time the board has handled it the same way: dried it out, replaced the affected drywall and baseboard, repainted, and moved on. Twice through insurance, twice paid directly because the amount was close to the deductible. Total spend across the four events, by the treasurer's rough count, is somewhere around $31,000. Nobody has ever hired anyone to find out why it happens. The owner, who bought in 2019 and has lived through three of the four, wrote to the board in September. She has had enough. She wants the cause found and fixed, and she has asked whether the association intends to keep repairing the same room indefinitely. Two other facts landed this fall. The association's insurance renewal came in higher than the market trend, and the agent mentioned loss history. And an owner in the same line, Unit 8, has started noticing dampness along the same wall. The board meets Thursday. One trustee points out that each individual repair was reasonable and within budget. One wants a drainage contractor to come look. The treasurer notes there is nothing in the reserve study for this because it has never been identified as a component problem. DISCUSSION QUESTION Four reasonable repairs, one recurring problem, $31,000 spent. What should the board have done differently after the second event - and what does it do now? RECOMMENDED APPROACH The board's error is not any one of the four repairs. It is that it treated a recurring condition as four separate incidents, which meant nobody ever had to ask the question that mattered. Here is the distinction worth carrying away. An episodic failure - a supply line bursts, a storm drives water past a window - gets repaired. A recurring failure in the same location, on a seasonal pattern, is a defect, and the obligation is to diagnose it, not to keep restoring the finishes.