Your HOA elected officers, your Executive Board, MUST provide a proposed budget prior to the date of your annual meeting so you can clearly understand the information. At your annual meeting you will have been provided a hard copy or even an overhead projection for the assembly of homeowners to see, with discussion and definition of line items. You participate in this presentation. You, the individual homeowner, must cast your vote for or against that proposed budget. You must be provided with a copy of the ratified budget. The following statute is/should be followed by all HOAs in West Virginia. It is your protection and the required transparency expected by all HOA individual property owners who are the voters.

 §36B-3-103. Executive board members and officers.

(c) Within thirty days after adoption of any proposed budget for the common interest community, the executive board shall provide a summary of the budget to all the unit owners, and shall set a date for a meeting of the unit owners to consider ratification of the budget not less than fourteen nor more than thirty days after mailing of the summary.

Unless at that meeting a majority of all unit owners or any larger vote specified in the declaration reject the budget, the budget is ratified, whether or not a quorum is present. In the event the proposed budget is rejected, the periodic budget last ratified by the unit owners must be continued until such time as the unit owners ratify a subsequent budget proposed by the executive board.