Georgia budget calendar and the clocks that matter

Start by reading the declaration and the bylaws and writing down, in one place, what they require: the notice period for a budget meeting, quorum, whether the membership approves anything, and whether there is any cap on the increase the board may adopt alone.

Adopt the result as a written board budget calendar and put it in the minutes. Boards and managers turn over; an unwritten calendar is a calendar that quietly shortens every year until something is missed.

The schedule below is a working default for an association on a December fiscal year end. Every row except the notice row is practice rather than law. The notice row is whatever your instrument says, and that one binds.

This is the Georgia deadline with the sharpest consequence, and it runs all year including through budget season. Under the Condominium Act at § 44-3-109(d), an owner, mortgagee, purchaser, or lender may request a written statement of amounts due, delivered to the association's registered office. If the association does not furnish it within five business days, the lien is extinguished as to that transaction. The POAA carries the same rule at § 44-3-232(d).

Five business days is not much time if the person who prepares the statement is also the person running the budget. Decide during budget season who covers payoff statements and make sure the registered office address is current, because that is where the request is delivered.

The statement is binding on the association and on every unit owner, and the instrument may authorize a fee not exceeding ten dollars. A statement issued mid-adoption should be accurate about what has and has not been adopted.

Under § 44-3-109(c) for condominiums and § 44-3-232(c) for POAA developments, an association must give at least thirty days' notice by certified mail or statutory overnight delivery before foreclosing an assessment lien, the foreclosure proceeds by action, judgment, and court order, no action may be brought unless the lien is at least two thousand dollars, and the lien lapses four years after the amount first became due.

Fold those into the budget rather than into a separate collections conversation. The two thousand dollar floor and the four-year lapse are what make the difference between an aging report and an actually collectable balance, and the difference belongs in the bad debt line.

For condominiums, the first bona fide sale of a residential unit for residential occupancy triggers the § 44-3-111 disclosure package. Among the ten required documents are the operating budget and the unit's expense schedule, and the contract is voidable until at least seven days after the seller furnishes them. The right may not be waived.

That means the operating budget the board adopts is not only an internal document; it is a document that has to be furnishable in a form a purchaser can read. A budget that exists only as a spreadsheet on one person's laptop is a disclosure problem waiting to happen.

Georgia does not require the proposed budget to be circulated to owners in advance unless the instrument says so. Sending it anyway, with a one-page summary of what changed, is the cheapest goodwill available to a Georgia board.

Publish the per-unit or per-lot assessment in monthly terms, publish the change in dollars as well as in percent, and publish the date the new rate starts. Then update payment instructions and any automatic payment authorizations before the first billing period.