When do HOA boards approve landscaping budgets? A contractor’s calendar for renewals and enhancements

What Florida law says about bids and renewals

Section 720.3055 requires an association’s contracts for services to be in writing, and adds a bidding rule. If a services contract requires payment by the association that exceeds 10 percent of the association’s total annual budget, including reserves, the association “must obtain competitive bids.” The same section says nothing in it requires the association “to accept the lowest bid.”

Renewals have their own sentence. If a contract was awarded under the section’s competitive bid procedures, a renewal is not subject to those requirements “if the contract contains a provision that allows the board to cancel the contract on 30 days’ notice.” The section also exempts some professional services, landscape architect services among them. Whether any rule or exception applies to a particular maintenance contract is a question for the company’s attorney, not for this guide.

Two practical points follow without interpreting anything. A large maintenance contract may go out to bid at renewal whatever the relationship, so the renewal package should be ready to stand next to other bids. And board meetings run on notice: under section 720.303(2), board meeting notices must identify agenda items and be posted in a conspicuous place in the community at least 48 hours ahead, except in an emergency. The meeting where the budget is considered is on a calendar someone can share.

Build an HOA landscaping budget calendar, account by account

Start with a list of every HOA, condominium and managed community account, one row each. Part of each row comes from the contract file; the rest comes from one email to each property manager.

• The association’s fiscal year end.
• The month of the meeting where next year’s budget is considered — and, for a condominium, the date the proposed budget goes to owners, at least 14 days before it.
• The date the manager closes the draft budget: the real deadline, earlier than either.
• The contract’s term, renewal date and cancellation notice, from the signed contract.
• Whether the contract was last awarded by competitive bid, and whether a rebid is expected this year.
• Enhancement proposals sent this season and still open — mulch, seasonal color, irrigation upgrades, tree work — with the date each was sent.
• Who decides: the manager, a landscape committee or the full board.

A contractor with forty association accounts has forty calendars, not one. The list turns them into a single sheet, sorted by the date each draft budget closes. The manager is the route to most of these dates — the same point an owner of a landscaping and snow removal business raised in a 2025 forum thread, asking peers whether they had “an in with HOA management companies.”

Work back from each budget meeting

For each account, count backward from the date the draft closes. The renewal price needs the season’s crew-hours on that property, and those need the timesheets placed on properties — the method in the guide to landscape job costing by property. An enhancement proposal needs a site walk, a price, and time for the manager to put it in front of whoever decides.

Illustrative example: an association with a December 31 fiscal year end considers its budget at a board meeting in mid-November. If it is a condominium, the proposed budget must reach owners at least 14 days earlier, around the start of November. Say the manager closes the draft three weeks before that. The landscaping number then has to be in the manager’s hands in early October, which means the season’s hours on that property are counted in September, while the crews are still mowing. The dates are invented for the example; the account’s own documents set the real ones.

Run the same arithmetic for an association whose fiscal year ends June 30 and the deadline lands in spring, in the busiest weeks of the season. That renewal has to be priced from hours counted at the end of the previous season, which is one more reason to count them before the crews go out again.

What the renewal and enhancement package should carry

A manager has to explain every line of the budget to a board. The package should make that easy.

• The property’s own hours: this season’s on-site crew-hours against the hours the current price assumed, in a sentence the manager can repeat to the board.
• The price, and what changes with it — frequency, specs, or nothing.
• Wage floors where they moved. The Florida Department of Commerce states that the state minimum wage became $15.00 an hour on September 30, 2026, effective through December 31, 2027. Where crew pay moved with it, that is a reason grounded in a public fact. Whether a contract allows a price change on that basis depends on its own terms.
• Enhancement proposals as separate, priced options, each with the date a decision is needed to fit this budget.
• The dates: when the renewal takes effect and when the new price applies.

A round-number increase with no reason attached gives the board nothing to weigh against a rebid. The property’s own hours give it something.

Find the accounts where the numbers arrived after the vote

The calendar works forward from here, but last year’s record shows how much it matters. For each association account, set three dates side by side: when last year’s renewal or price letter went out, when each enhancement proposal was sent, and when that board considered its budget.

Count the ones that arrived after the draft closed. A renewal that reached the manager late had no line in the budget it needed. An enhancement proposal that arrived after the vote had no money set aside for it, and may still be sitting in the estimating software marked “Pending.”

The count is the finding: how many accounts, and what the renewal differences and the open proposals were worth. It is the number that decides whether next year’s calendar is worth an afternoon in midsummer.

When this is not worth paying anyone for

A contractor with a handful of association accounts, all on calendar fiscal years and all managed by one company, can hold this calendar on a single page. If last year every renewal and proposal landed before its draft closed, the routine already works; keep it.

An outside review earns its fee when timing is one gap among several: renewals priced without the season’s hours, extras never ticketed, invoices waiting past their terms. Our Revenue Review takes two weeks. It reads the contract files, renewal letters, proposal log, timesheets and invoices, read-only, and shows which renewals went out without hours behind them and which proposals missed their board, with a monthly dollar figure where the records support one. It contacts no board member, property manager or resident, gives no legal advice on association statutes or contracts, and sells no leads or introductions to management companies. Nobody here runs a landscaping company, and there are no client case studies on this site yet.

If it is unclear whether any of this is worth a fee, start with a free 20-minute call, where a company too small for the arithmetic is told so.