Interested in joining the Lakewood HOA Board of Directors? It’s a great opportunity to serve your community.

Two board seats are on the ballot. Any property owner meeting the qualifications is eligible. Please fill out this form for the Nominating Committee’s consideration. Final vote will occur at the HOA annual meeting, which is scheduled for 6 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 2 at the Lakewood Clubhouse. Please submit your form no later than 5 p.m. Jan. 14.

For 2026, annual homeowner dues will increase by 5%, or to $743.72. To improve HOA accounting practices and maintain accurate budget tracking, homeowners are asked to pay 2026 fees between Jan. 1 and 31, 2026. Waiting to pay until Jan. 1 will enable the HOA to record your payment as 2026 revenue and align HOA income with the new fiscal year for accurate financial reporting. If you pay your 2026 dues between those dates, you will receive a 5% discount on your annual fee, reducing it to $706.54.

Even with the increase, annual dues in Lakewood remain lower than HOAs in many Austin-area neighborhoods.

UPDATE (Dec. 19, 2026): The contractor for this project is closed for the holiday season and will notify the HOA office when they are back up and running. Earlier work was postponed due to weather.

Sealcoating of four Lakewood streets is tentatively scheduled to start in mid-December, weather permitting. Work had been tentatively scheduled to start late this week, but that has been postponed because of the colder temperatures.

Work crews started the repair last week with filling of holes on parts of Gardenridge Hollow and Dogwood Hollow (Gardenridge is shown above). Turkey Hollow and Winecup Hollow are the other two cul-de-sacs.

Each street will be shut down for one day for curing time, which means cars of residents on those streets must be moved temporarily; those left behind could be towed. Signs will go out on those streets the day before the sealcoating finally begins.

The HOA board selected Lone Star Paving Co. for the work on Dec. 1. Cost of the project is $21,466.77. Next year’s streets will be announced in the near future.

This is true for two reasons. First, the TownSquare app makes it quick and easy to seek HOA approval of your plans for painting your house or adding a fence or a new roof. Have you signed up for it? Please fill out this form. After you’re registered, open the app, click on “Submit for ARC” and follow the prompts to propose your project. Expect a reply in usually a few days.

Second, you can improve the look of your home and the neighborhood by rolling those garbage, recycling and compost bins out of sight after the city picks them up. We all agreed not to leave them at the curb or store them in the driveway when we bought our homes and signed the HOA agreements. AC/heating units should be hidden as much as possible too. Our governing documents, which we all signed off on when we bought our homes, require all this. 

Lakewood’s Michelle Polasek and John Harris received signs designating Lakewood a Firewise community. Fire prevention and evacuation routes in wooded neighborhoods get renewed focus around Austin.

Neighborhood volunteers from across the area met Nov. 20 at the Lakewood Clubhouse to hear updates from Fire Department wildfire experts and others. The Fire Department’s wildfire division reported completing more than 500 property safety reviews out of 833 requests this year, all of them in Northwest Austin.

Fire Department wildlife personnel at the meeting recognized Lakewood as a participating site in Firewise USA, a nationwide designation for communities working to reduce wildfire risks. Firewise USA earlier this year conducted a community risk assessment of Lakewood. Travis County now has 27 active Firewise communities.

The Austin American-Statesman on Nov. 18 reported on the challenges of one-way-in, one-way out neighborhoods.