The Master Association · October 22 budget workshop
The Master’s 2027 budget workshop: the quarterly fee would rise to about $400
Nothing was voted on. The quarterly assessment, $285 since 2009, came out near $400 on the worksheet. The legal line nearly triples. A resort shuttle returns as a placeholder. A redrafted budget goes to a later board meeting.
These are not the official minutes of the meeting. This is The Tops’l Post’s own account, written from its recording of the open workshop. The Master Association has not reviewed or endorsed it, and neither has anyone else. Every figure below is a working estimate; none has been adopted.
In brief
- The fee: the worksheet put the 2027 quarterly assessment near $400, against $285 today. No vote was taken.
- Legal: $100,000 for 2027. The 2026 budget was about $35,000; spending had already reached $113,000. A director said counsel expects insurance to cover most of the cost of one of the lawsuits.
- Transportation: $110,000 placed in the budget as a placeholder for a resort shuttle. Director Mike Wade, who ran the tram this year, said the figure is one of the bids in hand and that other bids are being sought. The board has not voted to adopt the service.
- The grounds: landscaping enhancements back to $80,000 after the 2026 money went largely unspent; irrigation doubled to $40,000 for a controller that dates from the 1980s.
- Reserves: about $405,000 on the balance sheet, $452,263 at the end of September.
- Next: the manager redrafts the budget and the board approves, rejects or changes it at another meeting. Owners get copies once it is approved.
Three things came out of the Master Association’s budget workshop on Thursday. The quarterly assessment, $285 since 2009, would go to about $400. The legal line would go from $35,000 to $100,000, after a year in which the association has already spent $113,000 on lawyers. And a resort tram, which the board has not voted to run, would get $110,000 as a placeholder. Nothing was adopted. The manager redrafts the budget and the board votes at a later meeting.
The workshop ran from 10 a.m. to just before noon, in person and by Zoom. Jason Willis, the association’s manager, walked the board through a spreadsheet on the screen; Kayla, the association’s accountant, joined by Zoom. Directors Todd Garey, Mike Wade and Rod Whitman spoke. Owners attended in the room and online.
The fee: $285 toward $400
After the board had raised its lines, the 2027 assessment came out near $400 a quarter. Whitman matched the roughly $275,000 a year that represents to the big changes in the draft: about $80,000 more for legal, $110,000 for transportation, $50,000 more for landscaping and $30,000 for the trash compactor.
Flat since 2009
The case for the increase, as the directors made it, is that the fee has not moved since 2009. “I’ve been here since ’09, and it’s been 285 since I’ve been here,” one said.
Prices have risen about 57 percent since 2009 by the federal Consumer Price Index. A $285 fee that had kept pace would be about $445 today.
The escalators
A director listed a dozen contracts, from landscaping to insurance to the CPA, that rise three to five percent a year: “That alone would probably be forty, fifty percent.” Joel Richardson, a Summit owner on Zoom, made the other half of the point: inflation has averaged about five percent a year for five years, owners expect dues to rise about that much, “and as a first-year homeowner now, I get a raise of over a hundred dollars.”
What went undone
The directors also said the money that was not raised shows on the grounds. “If anyone thinks that their dues should not have gone up since 2009, I think that is very unrealistic,” one said. Another: “You guys been operating black and white for so long, and this is the reason why the resort isn’t exactly the way you want it.”
“Things should have been addressed ten years ago.”
A Master director, October 22
The board was told that irrigation on the boulevard islands “has been neglected for a long time,” and that the irrigation controller is from the 1980s. The association’s 2025 audit lists $2.33 million of estimated replacements against $395,267 in reserves. “Our restriction of spending in some areas is going to reduce property values,” a director said.
The renters
The guest registration fee, which began in 2023, has carried the budget while the assessment stood still. “In my mind, that’s one of the reasons that that 285 has not increased,” a director said.
How much of the cost belongs to renters was raised more than once and not settled. “What is the true cost of having renters, and how do we separate that? How do we properly allocate what the fee should be?” a director asked. The directors agreed the association needs a clear way to tell the costs renters create from the costs owners would carry anyway, so that the assessment and the guest registration fee can each be set fairly. “Ultimately there has to be an easy formula,” one said. None was settled on.
What Sandestin charges
The nearest yardstick is next door. The Sandestin Owners Association, the master association for the 2,400-acre resort, publishes its 2026 assessment: $1,692 a year for a home or condo, which is $423 a quarter, billed as $492.10 with the cable pass-through added, and $846 a year for a lot. It pays for 24-hour security, daily trash pickup, roads and drainage, landscaping, lake maintenance and architectural review.
- Sandestin, 2026. $423 a quarter to the master association, plus $69.10 for cable: $492.10 in all, or $547 where the neighborhood has fiber.
- Tops’l today. $285 a quarter to the Master, plus about $140 for cable billed through each building: about $425 in all.
- Tops’l under the draft. About $400 a quarter, plus the cable: about $540 in all.
Legal fees: $100,000
Willis put $100,000 in the legal line. The 2026 budget was about $35,000. “We are already at 113,” he said. A director called it “a smart estimate given the amount of legal activity we’ve been doing in 2026.” Nobody asked to change it.
Richardson asked how insurance affects the legal cost. A director answered that the association’s lawyers “have told us, advised us, guided us that insurance should cover, I’m very strongly confident will cover, the majority of the legal costs that we’re dealing with with one of our main lawsuits.” He added: “I’m not sure exactly how much I’m allowed to say.” Willis said the board had talked the day before about how to “transition to insurance.” The $100,000 stays until that is settled.
Transportation: a $110,000 placeholder
A new line for transportation was set at $110,000. Willis called it “a preemptive strike for the 2027 budget, should you choose,” and said whether to go forward at all “is going to be on a separate vote.” Asked whether the figure is a contract, he said it is “one of the bids that I have.”
Wade, who operated the tram this year, spoke to the line. Staffing and insurance are the hard parts, he said, and the number was set above the first proposal because of insurance. “We’re working to get other bids too.” The service has to match drivers to demand: “We can’t have staffing without demand.” “Anything that I’m involved with will be publicly put out there,” he said, and the service should be put out to bid. Another director summed it up: the $110,000 is an estimate, and what Wade described would become the requirements in a request for bids from other providers. At Sandestin the tram is not in the master association’s budget: the association’s website says the service is run by a private company, Sand Dollar Transportation, that owners ride free with their ID card, and that unaccompanied guests ride under a contract their rental company holds with the operator. The Post’s account of the October 1 tram discussion is at topslpost.com/master-board-oct-1-meeting.
Landscaping and irrigation
The 2026 budget had $80,000 for landscape enhancements, the island beds along the boulevard. The manager’s draft for 2027 showed $30,000. “We didn’t even come close to hitting that number,” a director said of this year. Kayla said most of what was actually spent went to the spring and fall color change, not the islands. The board put the line back to $80,000. Willis said he was “very displeased” with Russell Landscaping’s response after the storm and wants to bid the landscape contract.
Irrigation pump maintenance was drafted at $20,000. Brian Wilson, the head of security, who has taken over the system’s upkeep, said the controller is the problem: “It’s from the eighties.” When it fails there is no alert. “The only way for me to tell it is, unfortunately, the grass starts dying.” Willis estimated another $20,000 for a controller that can be run remotely, and the board doubled the line to $40,000.
Security, management and the Summit office
Security is the biggest contract: $565,000 for 2027, below the $580,000 budgeted for this year but above the roughly $546,000 the association expects to spend, with more staff in the busy season and bonuses. The management line, about $200,000, is not only Virtuous’s fee: “That’s Katrina’s half of her salary, my salary, and the management contract,” Willis said.
The $30,000 the Master pays the Summit for office space stayed in the draft. Willis said keeping or dropping it “would have to be a board vote.” The manager no longer works from that office, and someone suggested $15,000, since the space now houses Katrina alone. One speaker cautioned that the Summit would then be short as much as $30,000 in its own budget. No change was made.
Also in the draft
- Reserves. Kayla: about $405,000 on the balance sheet, $452,263 at the end of September. The Master’s reserve is voluntary, not set by a reserve study. “I don’t know how you sleep at night if you don’t have a healthy reserve because we are at risk of hurricanes,” a director said.
- A restroom at the circle. Water, sewer, electricity and cleaning to be raised now for the permanent restroom the board has discussed. “I don’t see a world in which we don’t do that,” a director said.
- Printing and postage. Raised, partly because of records requests. “Given the number of record requests we had in 2026, it would be foolish to take that number down too far,” a director said.
- Website. Left at $12,500. Willis has bids to redo it for about half that.
Owners’ comments
- The Tides amenities. An owner questioned the amenity payment to the Tides, saying not many people seem to use the putt-putt and basketball court. Garey, who is also the Tides’ president, answered that those two are the most used amenities, that the Tides “dropped six figures” redoing them, and that it spends about $36,000 a year on security from 3 to 11 p.m. in season, mostly to watch them.
- The dunes. A Beach Manor owner asked about the dunes, which Dune Doctors maintained under a contract that lapsed in 2022 and which “are in terrible shape.” Willis said the property lines come first. Dune Doctors had bid on the whole beach, but the association has since concluded that it owns only the boardwalk and the beach: Beach Manor owns its dunes, and the entity that owns the restaurant parcel owns the dunes in front of it. “It would be detrimental to the TMA to pay for something that’s not their property,” he said. A survey may be needed, and the owner pointed out that the ADA beach walk may then sit on someone else’s land. “Under the scrutiny that we’re under,” a director said, “we need to make sure that whatever we touch belongs to us on a going forward basis.”
- Bidding the boardwalk. Richardson returned to a question he asked October 1, whether the boardwalk was bid out: “I find it incredibly irresponsible to not bid projects of that magnitude.” “Joel, I want to address your first statement. You’re factually incorrect,” Willis said. It went no further during the meeting. After the adjournment, with owners still in the room, the subject came up again and Garey gave the explanation that had not been given from the table. The board does seek bids, he said, but not every firm answers, and the packet has only ever shown the ones that did. “If we go out for four bids on an owner’s lane, for an example, the only thing that we’ve ever put on the agenda are the two that responded with a bid.” Owners see one or two bids “and it gives them the impression that maybe we’re not doing what we know we need to do.” “We went out for four, two responded and two laughed at us because it was too small of a project.” He said the board should start listing every firm it asked, not just those that replied.
Willis closed by saying he would redraft the budget and send it to the board. “We still have decisions to make, and we’ll set up another board meeting for that.”
These are not the official minutes of the meeting. This is The Tops’l Post’s own account. The Master Association has not reviewed or endorsed it, and neither has anyone else.
The documents behind the story
- The approved 2026 budget, income section
- Sandestin Owners Association, accounting page (2026 assessment), captured Oct. 23, 2026
How this was reported. The publisher attended the workshop and recorded it. Quotations are from that recording. Where the recording does not make clear which director was speaking, the speaker is given as “a director.” The 2027 worksheet was shown on screen and has not been distributed; the figures above are as they were read aloud. The reserve figures are from the Master Association’s audited financial statements. Price changes are from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Consumer Price Index, all items, 2009 annual average to September 2026. The Sandestin figures are from the Sandestin Owners Association’s accounting page; the tram description is from the association’s communications page. Tops’l’s cable figure is the Master’s 2025 cable assessment, $341,861, spread over the units in its Cox agreement.
Documents and corrections: [email protected]