New Property Owner Welcome
The Board of Directors of the Old Farm Lakes Property Owners Association, or simply OFLPOA as we refer to it, welcomes you to what we believe is one of the finest neighborhoods in Bloomington/Normal. We are so glad you decided to make Old Farm Lakes (OFL) your new home. By owning a home in Old Farm Lakes you automatically become a member of the OFLPOA Homeowners Association.

Member Privileges
Being a OFLPOA member and resident in Old Farm Lakes offers you access to several exclusive privileges:

• Over eight acres of common property green space
• Two lakes stocked with fish, one with a fountain
• Over a mile of paved walkways around the lakes
• Very nice playground area for children, and
• Our signature windmill!

OFLPOA
Old Farm Lakes has a very pro-active Homeowner’s Association. The Board of Directors oversees the administrative activities for the Association and is responsible for managing the common property green space, lakes, and playground. We also maintain the Association website, publish a yearly e-newsletter in March, conduct the annual Association meeting in April, and organize our annual subdivision-wide garage sale in May. As you can tell, we are very proud of our neighborhood and there are definitely a lot of things to see and enjoy within Old Farm Lakes.

Covenant Protected Neighborhood
Pride of ownership is very high throughout the subdivision and a lot of that can be attributed to the fact that Old Farm Lakes is a covenant-protected community. This means that all property owners, by owning a home in Old Farm Lakes, have agreed to abide by the Covenants and Restrictions for the subdivision. Hopefully your realtor, or the previous homeowner, made you aware of this important fact. Our subdivision developer wrote the OFL Declaration of Covenants and Restrictions in April, 1987 when the subdivision was founded. As a legal document, the Declaration requires that an elected Board of Directors enforce the specific restrictions, set policy in areas not addressed by the Covenants, maintain the common property, and collect annual Association dues from all homeowners.

Annual Association Dues
Old Farm Lakes is a fair-sized community in and of itself. We have 375 homes within our subdivision. Each of those homeowners is required by the Declaration of Covenants and Restrictions (Article V, Section 1) to pay annual Association dues to maintain the Association common areas and pay for routine expenses such as: lake and shoreline maintenance, lawn mowing and fertilization, playground maintenance, utilities, insurance, etc. The current annual dues are $225 and are collected in January of each year. Occasionally, we may encounter major capital expenditures that exceed our annual budget. If that occurs, the Association can take out loans to pay for the work, and if necessary, issue special assessment fees to each property owner to pay off the loans. The last time a special assessment was issued was in 2004.

Property Change Approval
It is important for all OFL residents to understand that the Covenants and Restrictions require pre-approval of all property changes. If you are planning to make any changes to your property, plans for the modification must be submitted to the Architecture Review Committee, for review and approval, before any changes are made. Association members often ask when do I need to submit a plan and when do I not need to do so? Many changes should have no problems being approved but the Covenants and Restrictions clearly state that any change must be reviewed and approved before being acted on. The best advice the Board can give is for you to always submit a plan on any change no matter how minor it may seem to be. Here are some key points to be aware of:

• You can submit your plan (two copies) to any one of the three Architecture Review Committee
• The Committee is acting on the behalf of the OFLPOA Board and has full authority to approve or disapprove homeowner’s plans
• While each plan is evaluated on its own merits, the potential impact on adjacent neighbors and the overall harmony with surrounding structures and topography are variables that may affect the Committee’s decision
• The Committee will act on your plans promptly and return the plans to you with a cover letter indicating whether the plans, as submitted, are approved
• If the Committee has concerns with your plans, they will discuss them with you and see if adjustments can be made to allow you to go forward with the changes to your property

Additional information about the architectural review process, including the current architectural policies set by the Board, can be found in the Property Review section of the website. The OFLPOA architectural restrictions are documented in the Covenants and Restrictions (Article IX), which are available in the Covenants section of the website. We encourage you to take some time to familiarize yourself with the Covenants to help the Board and your neighbors maintain the quality of this fabulous subdivision that we all enjoy.

OFLPOA Website
Please make the oflpoa.org website one of your browser favorites. The Association website contains a lot of other helpful and important information such as FAQs, useful local links, subdivision news, classified ads from Association homeowners, a listing of Board members with contact information, and the past several years of Board meeting minutes.

OFLPOA Facebook Group
OFLPOA has a closed Facebook group for members, Old Farm Lakes POA. This is a great way to get to know your neighbors. You will find people coordinating events, lost/found items, residents who are giving away items for free porch pick up, beautiful pictures of the neighborhood, updates about the neighborhood, and more.

Old Farm Lakes and Oakridge Subdivisions Garage Sale Group
During the year, the Old Farm Lakes and Oakridge Subdivisions Garage Sale group is intended to help you sell items you no longer want to families who could use those items in the surrounding area. It is also used to communicate the houses that are participating in our Annual Garage Sale.