The fact that most people in town don’t even know about the existence of the Neighborhood Property Owners Association of Fountain Hills (NPOA) is a testament to the best hidden agency in town.

Your recent initial mailing of “The Neighborhood” introduced you to some of us. That is how I even found out my property was part of NPOA. It certainly was not disclosed to me by my real estate agent back in 2011. In this mailing you present the “great news” of no monthly fees, no annual dues. That may be technically true, but deceptive. There was no mention of a real estate transfer “fee” of $335 in that mailing.

Now we are finding out that the board approved another real estate disclosure “fee” of $400 per property just last month. When added to the transfer “fee” it now adds up to $735 per property. I can guarantee you the public has no idea that this happened since you are the best kept secret in town. There would have been tremendous opposition to such fees being imposed on us.

These are nothing more than a back-door property tax on our properties. The big difference is that they are assessed upon the sale instead of being an upfront tax, which we would have to vote on and have some say in as property owners. And what kind of justification do you have to generate that kind of income over time? You already charge fees for the little that you have to do to approve rules that we have to live by.

You should reconsider this latest fee and find a better way to inform your forced participants of such actions in the future, or we may just find a way to dissolve this association.