The story in five paragraphs
Operations are not the problem. In today's dollars the Association spends 7% more per lot to run the community than it did in 2004, with the same number of people on staff. Against Sea Pines and Kiawah its operating cost per property is ordinary and its staff per property the leanest, while it maintains far more road per lot than either. The 2023–25 step-up of $2.2 million is the one period that outran inflation, and it deserves a line-by-line explanation it has not had.
The repair fund is the problem, and it is bigger than the Board has said. The reserve study prices 834 components at $66.5 million and finds the fund 27% funded against a 30% floor the Board asked for. It carries the storm drains only as six years of maintenance; it never replaces a foot of the 89 miles of 54-year-old pipe, a large part of it corrugated metal in salt water by the Board's own description. The Association's one estimate, $40 million in 2020, has not been shown to owners since.
The study's own plan stops after six years. Its spending schedule copies the Association's six-year capital plan and then drops the drains, paths and road maintenance entirely, which is why the "required" number looks smaller than it is. Carry those allowances for thirty years and set a 70% target, and the floor is $3,250–3,600 in 2028, indexed to inflation. The first 2026 proposal was close to that number; what it lacked was the rule, a reserve policy, a storm contingency and a corrected study.
Every healthy peer funds reserves from more than dues. Kiawah's owners put $375 a year into reserves through dues and the fund is 89% funded, because a half-percent fee on every sale and contractor access fees pay the rest. Sea Pines bills a dedicated infrastructure line approved by referendum; the Town of Hilton Head pays for drainage inside its gates. The Landings funds reserves from the assessment alone, which can only step up by a two-thirds vote.
What should happen next is specific. Commission a scored condition assessment of the pipe and re-run the study with the allowances carried thirty years. Adopt the floor as the working number with a written reserve policy and an inflation rule. Put it to owners by October 2027 with both in hand. Publish a four-page operating fact sheet in every Budget Book. Each is a separate, votable, specific thing, which is the kind that passes.
PART 1 · OPERATIONS
Is there an operating problem?
No. Twenty-one years of audited spending in real dollars, staffing and turnover, the 2026 budget by department, the peers, six flags worth asking about, and how the peers fund their reserves.
PART 2 · INFRASTRUCTURE
What do we actually owe?
More than the study says. Every street on a map with its resurfacing age, the pipe the study leaves out, the six-year gap, the 30% floor, a dial to set the dues yourself, and the Board's own words on the pipe since 2020.
PART 3 · THE NUMBER
What should we vote on, and how does it pass?
A floor with a rule. Why the two 2026 votes failed, what the governing documents require, what the survey said, the paths available, and the proposal that answers the owners' three questions.
The walk-through for community leaders: seventeen slides, each with speaker notes and sources. PDF.
The four pages the Budget Book should contain, drafted from the public record. Red cells are the ones only the Board can fill. PDF.
Where the fund stands, the balance sheet the auditor cannot show you, the map, ten questions, the number. PDF.
The August 2026 survey's requests set against what the second vote packet contained. One slide. PDF.
Who lives inside the gates and how that is changing: age, tenure, home values and income, from county property records, three Censuses, the ACS and IRS statistics. Aggregates only. Appendix to Part 3.
President's Updates, Budget Boxes and Board drop-in recaps from the public website, compiled in one place for reference.
The operating benchmark with all seven tabs laid out for paper. PDF, 35 pages, landscape.
Every figure carries its source: a document, a page, a date. The documents are the Association's own, published to its members in the resident library at landings.org; the citations link there, and any resident can log in and check any number. Where a figure comes from a calculation rather than a page, the calculation is shown. Nothing here is an opinion about anyone's motives. It is a reading of the record, and the record is the Association's.
Within thirty days, the Board commissions a risk-ranked condition assessment of the storm pipe and asks the analyst to re-run the study with the allowances carried thirty years and a 70% target. It adopts the floor, $3,250–3,600 in 2028 indexed to inflation, as the working number, with a written reserve policy, a public trigger, a dedicated storm-pipe line, a $500,000 storm contingency and the deferral for owners over eighty. It puts the question to owners by October 2027 with both in hand. And it publishes a four-page operating fact sheet in every Budget Book from now on. If the Board declines the first step, that itself is the finding, and the number goes forward without waiting.