What trigger depth should a condo association use?

Commonly one to two inches rather than the two-inch residential standard, and set per property rather than by policy. Associations have residents walking between buildings at all hours on graded surfaces, so exposure begins below the depth at which a driveway becomes inconvenient.

How should a board budget for common-area snow removal?

The closest public comparable in this market is the City of Novi's 2024 contract: $0.042 per linear foot per push for sidewalks and pathways, $0.550 for drifting-prone sections, and roughly 15 events anticipated annually. Measuring the common walks and multiplying gives a defensible order of magnitude.

For boards and property managers

HOA and Condo Associations

A board is contracting for surfaces no single owner controls, on a budget approved a year in advance, with liability that runs to the association. The scope document does more work than the negotiation.

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Work is carried out by an independent snow removal operator under their own company name and insurance. This site arranges the introduction and clears nothing itself.

Scope

The Surfaces That Fall Between Owners

Most association disputes about snow are really disputes about scope, and they are settled in October or not at all. A complete Oakland County common-area scope usually covers:

The entrance drive and any internal roads, including whether they are private — if they are, no public agency will touch them regardless of what the association decides. Check first.
Guest and overflow parking, which fills with stacked snow first and is usually where the pile ends up.
Common walks — clubhouse, mail cluster, trash enclosure, the path from guest parking to the nearest unit door. These are blower and shovel work, priced by length.
Unit driveways and unit walks, where a site condominium includes them. This is the largest single scope decision and the one most often left ambiguous.
Fire lanes and hydrant access, which nobody notices until they matter.
Where the snow is stacked, named by location, and at what point it gets hauled instead.

Trigger

Associations Usually Buy a Lower One

Two inches is the residential standard in this county. Commercial and association contracts commonly run one to two inches, and an established Oakland County commercial operator sets the trigger depth per property rather than by policy.

The reason is not fussiness. An association has residents walking between buildings at hours nobody chose, on surfaces with a grade, and its exposure starts well below the depth at which a driveway becomes inconvenient. It is also why de-icing rather than plowing is frequently the service that matters: half an inch of freezing rain triggers no plow contract written at any depth.

Worth knowing that one residential rate card in this market sells a higher tier specifically for this — cleanup visits on events below the trigger and after freezing rain, which it describes as adding the property to its commercial routes. If an association is being quoted a two-inch trigger with no sub-trigger provision, that gap is where the claims happen.

What Changed in 2023

The Board Is Buying Records

On July 28, 2023 the Michigan Supreme Court decided Kandil-Elsayed v. F & E Oil, Inc. and Pinsky v. Kroger Co. of Michigan, overruling Lugo v. Ameritech Corp. (2001). Open and obvious stopped being a no-duty rule and became part of breach and comparative fault. Visible ice used to end a claim; now it starts a question about what the property owner did.

For an association that has three consequences:

What was done, and when, is now the evidence. Timestamped photographs, weather logs and per-visit service records. The strongest commercial operator in this market advertises documented service records for liability files as a feature, which tells you how the market has read the decision.
Liability flows through the contract. Property owners are responsible for the work of contractors they hire, and the allocation between association and operator is a contract term, not a default.
Insurance has to be sized to the actual exposure, and checked. Michigan licenses no snow contractor, and Michigan agencies warn that many commercial auto policies exclude plowing operations outright.

The cases, including the separate contractor line from Fultz to Loweke.

Budget

What the Public Record Supports

No Oakland County contractor publishes association rates. What exists is the City of Novi’s 2024 bid tabulation, which is the closest comparable work anywhere in this market:

A season of municipal lots and selected neighborhood roadways: $144,000 awarded, against competing bids of $255,745 and $483,500 on identical scope.
Sidewalk and pathway clearing across roughly 37 miles at $0.042 per linear foot per push, with drifting-prone sections at $0.550 — thirteen times the standard rate.
Per-push rates of $650 to $1,500 at a top-priority site and $125 to $400 at second priority, depending on bidder.
Roughly 15 events anticipated annually at a two-inch trigger.

The linear-foot rate is the most directly transferable figure for a board: measure the common walks, multiply by 15 events, and you have a defensible order of magnitude to check a proposal against. The drifting multiplier is the second: if the association’s walks run along an open field or a retention basin, a quote that does not reflect that has not been priced by someone who has seen it in February.

HOA and Condo Associations

The Surfaces That Fall Between Owners

Associations Usually Buy a Lower One

The Board Is Buying Records

What the Public Record Supports

Get Comparable Proposals