Protect Our Rights

We stand united to preserve our community's voice and prevent unchecked HOA fee hikes. We are a grassroots movement made up of your friends and neighbors that live beside you in the Sutton Lakes neighborhood.

The problem at hand is that the Sutton Lakes Homeowner's Association, Inc is attempting to amend Article III and alter the requirement that they cannot raise our annual assessments over the prior year by more than 5% without the approval of the homeowners.

The current annual assessment for 2026 for our community is $397.07 per household. Per the Florida Realty Marketplace, the average HOA annual fees in Jacksonville, Florida averages about $3,600.

If the HOA were to raise our fees to this average amount, which they do like to point out that our community's fee is far below the average, that would be about a 900% increase over our most recent annual assessment. That is merely if they only raise the fee to meet the average amount. There is nothing to prevent them from raising this to double or even triple that amount.

Think that's unlikely to happen? Just look at other neighborhoods.

The Association has stated that by taking away the requirement for a membership vote if assessments are raised by more than 5% from the previous year's assessments, this will "provide greater authority to the Board to budget for the operating and reserve needs of the community. Removing this member vote makes it more likely that the Association can continue to operate as provided in the Declaration."

If you read this closely, what it is saying is that the Association's idea of an operating budget, is not really a budget. A budget is required to be balanced, they are not attempting to balance the budget, but to keep spending and keep hitting our pocketbooks.

The problem is not a revenue problem; it's a spending problem. If you're fairly new to our community, did you ever wonder why there's an eyesore of a cellphone tower in our neighborhood? The HOA permitted a monstrosity of a cellphone tower to be erected in the property's common area, without a thought or consideration of the detrimental impact to our property values when our scenic backyard lakes and wooded areas now had this sticking out above, and the justification for this was that they were receiving revenue for leasing its use, and get this, "the revenue provided from this will ensure that the Association will be able to continue to fund all of its needs to provide for the community, without there ever being a need to raise assessment fees again."

Are you seeing the problem now?

Do you really want to give this Association a blank check to spend without any oversight???