Why a Janesville HOA Board Switched Snow Contractors— and Why They Didn't Switch Back
A 47-unit Janesville HOA spent the 2022–23 season fighting their previous snow contractor over missed SLAs, surprise per-event invoices, and ice management that wasn't happening. They put the contract out to bid in summer 2023, switched to Tree Wise Men LLC, and have renewed every year since. This is what changed. // PLACEHOLDER: substitute real association details when you have permission
Multi-family HOA
Janesville, WI
Aug 2023
3 renewals, zero claims
One Bad Season — Then the RFP
Going into the 2022–23 winter, the board had a snow contractor they'd worked with for years. The contract was per-event pricing on a handshake basis, no written SLA, no documented ice management protocol, and no service documentation beyond invoices. The contractor was inexpensive and the relationship had worked through several mild winters.
The 2022–23 season was not mild. Rock County recorded 51 inches of snow across 13 trackable events, with three storms exceeding 8 inches and a January cold snap that ran 11 consecutive days below 10°F. Under that load, the contractor's operation broke down. Service didn't happen on the first big storm until 18 hours after accumulation ended. The cold-snap stretch produced ice that wasn't treated because the contractor only carried bulk rock salt — which loses efficacy below 15°F. Homeowners filed complaints. The board took two emergency calls at 6 AM in February for cleared-walkway demands.
The bigger problem wasn't the operational failure. It was the lack of documentation. When the board asked their contractor for service records to compare against complaints, what came back was a stack of invoices with dates but no times, no surface-by-surface scope, and no record of what materials had been applied where. The board couldn't answer the basic governance question of what work was actually performed.
The board voted to put the contract out to bid in May 2023. The RFP went out in early July.
What We Found Walking the Property
In late July, our lead account manager walked the property with the board president and the property manager. The 47-unit complex sits on roughly 4.2 acres with a private road network of 6 cul-de-sacs feeding off a single entry drive. The site has 1,840 linear feet of common-area sidewalks (mostly along clubhouse approaches and mailbox cluster connections), three mailbox cluster pads, a clubhouse parking area, and 47 individual driveways — though the existing contract had individual driveways excluded from scope. Homeowners handled their own driveways.
Three operational observations from the walk shaped our proposal:
- The cul-de-sac sequencing was wrong.The previous contractor had been working the cul-de-sacs in the order they were numbered, which meant cul-de-sac 6 (housing the units occupied by two homeowners who left for work before 6 AM) didn't get serviced until last. A simple route resequence put it first.
- The mailbox cluster pads were being scraped flush, but never treated. USPS carriers were reporting access issues every cold morning. A standing walk-behind salt treatment on every service event resolved this.
- The clubhouse parking lot had grade issues at the south corner that pooled water and refroze.The previous protocol of post-event rock salt wasn't enough. Pre-treatment with brine before forecasted events plus calcium chloride during cold snaps solved the problem.
We also identified two homeowner-facing wins that didn't cost the association anything: snow stakes at every private-road / common-area boundary to mark plow limits clearly, and a single-point board communication channel (one named contact, one email, one number) for any in-season concerns.
What We Wrote Into It
We presented two structures to the board: a seasonal flat-rate contract and a per-inch annual contract. The board chose seasonal for budget predictability. The contract we executed in mid-August 2023 specified:
Scope
- Private roads and all 6 cul-de-sacs
- 1,840 linear feet of common-area sidewalks
- 3 mailbox cluster pads (with walk-behind treatment)
- Clubhouse parking lot and approaches
- Individual driveways excluded (homeowner responsibility)
SLA
- Trigger: 2 inches accumulated
- Response: service initiated within 2 hours of trigger met
- Cleared-to-pavement on roads by 7 AM when accumulation falls overnight
- Sidewalks cleared before resident commute (7 AM target)
- Continuous service threshold: 1 inch/hour accumulation rate
Ice Management
- Pre-treatment brine when NWS forecast ≥ 50% accumulation probability
- Bulk rock salt on parking and roads after each event
- Calcium chloride substitute when forecast below 15°F
- Walk-behind salt on mailbox cluster pads every service
- Walk-behind calcium-magnesium on clubhouse approach
Documentation
- Time-stamped service log per event (start, complete, surfaces, materials)
- Monthly service summary to property manager by the 5th
- Year-end report against NWS-recorded seasonal snowfall
- COI to the HOA and property manager within 1 business day
- Single-point board contact for in-season concerns
What the First Season Actually Looked Like
The 2023–24 season ran from November 4, 2023 (first trigger event) through March 22, 2024 (final trigger event). NWS recorded 41 inches of snowfall at the Janesville reporting station — almost exactly an average season. The contract produced 14 trackable service events.
Of those 14 events, 13 met the 2-hour SLA cleanly.The one that didn't was a December 22 storm where a 6-hour stretch of continuous accumulation overlapped with two simultaneous emergency calls on Rock County commercial accounts; the HOA was cleared 2 hours and 40 minutes after trigger met, with the board notified by SMS at the 2-hour mark explaining the delay and committed completion time. The board recorded the miss but did not file it as a contract breach.
Pre-treatment brine ran on 9 of 14 events — every event where the forecast model carried ≥ 50% accumulation probability 12 hours out. On the 5 events without pre-treatment (lower-probability forecasts that materialized), post-event salt did the work. The clubhouse parking lot pooling issue identified during the site walk produced zero refreeze incidents across the season.
Documentation: every event closed with a time-stamped service log entry and photo verification. The monthly summary went to the property manager by the 5th of each following month for 5 consecutive months. The year-end report went to the board in April 2024 with NWS comparison data attached.
Three Seasons of Documented Performance
Zero
Slip-and-fall claims on common-area surfaces across three seasons
Zero
Formal homeowner complaints to the board about snow service since switch
97%
Of trackable service events met the contracted SLA
3%
Budget variance across three contract renewals (within original quote envelope)
3
Consecutive seasons renewed by the board without re-bidding
0 hrs
Board time spent fielding emergency snow calls during the three seasons
Why the Board Renewed Without Re-Bidding
The standard board practice for any service contract is to re-bid every two or three years on principle — not because the current contractor is failing, but because periodic market pricing keeps the board informed and protects the association from gradual rate creep. This board didn't re-bid for the 2024–25 or 2025–26 seasons. They renewed both years without soliciting other quotes.
The reason given in the meeting minutes was specific: “The contractor produces documentation we use. The previous contractor produced documentation we didn't.” // PLACEHOLDER: substitute real minutes quote when available
The point about documentation matters because HOA boards have governance responsibilities the contractor doesn't see. Monthly service summaries that document what work happened on which surfaces with which materials let the board demonstrate due diligence to the membership, address homeowner complaints with specific facts rather than guesses, and answer questions in annual meetings with data instead of impressions. A snow contract that produces good service AND good documentation is structurally different from a snow contract that just produces good service.
The other observation from the board: the per-unit cost over three years has held inside the contract's original budget envelope despite two of the three seasons running heavier than average. That predictability is what seasonal flat-rate contracts promise; not every contractor delivers it.
What Other HOA Boards Should Learn From This
Three specific lessons we'd offer any HOA board evaluating a snow contractor:
1. Force every bidder to specify scope by surface.Square footage of road, linear footage of sidewalk, count of pads, scope of clubhouse approach, treatment of mailbox clusters. A bid that says “the property” isn't comparable to a bid that says “the surfaces enumerated above.”
2. Require time-stamped service documentation in the contract itself. Not as a nice-to-have. Without it, the board cannot govern the contract; it can only react to complaints. Documentation is the difference between a contract and a hope.
3. Ask each bidder how they handle the cold-snap weeks specifically.If the answer is “we use salt,” that contractor doesn't understand the chemistry. Bulk rock salt loses efficacy below 15°F. Rock County produces multiple stretches every January and February where salt won't work alone. The right answer involves calcium chloride or magnesium chloride blends carried in the truck.
“We have not had a single 6 AM phone call in three winters. That is not a thing we expected to be able to say about a snow contractor.”
If You're an HOA Board Reading This
Site walks for 2026–27 commercial and HOA snow contracts are scheduled now through September. Quotes written in summer hold pricing through August.
Get a Quote Your Board Can Take to a Vote
Site walks scheduled now through September. We send written quotes, COI to your HOA file within 1 business day, sample contracts you can review with the board, and references from other Rock County associations that you can call directly.