Tool two: the 14-day insurance clock

Among the conditions an association may attach to an installation is reimbursement of “any increased insurance premium attributable to the EVSE” — and the statute sets the deadline: within 14 days of the association's invoice.

Two weeks is short by the standards of association billing, and the section does not say what happens if the owner disputes the attribution. What it does say, elsewhere, is that unpaid sums due the association are enforceable in the same manner as unpaid assessments (§ 3-116(a)). An owner who declines to pay a premium-differential invoice is therefore arguing about a lien, not about an invoice.

Where the super lien stops

This is the distinction that decides how much leverage the board actually has. Vermont's six-month super-priority lien, at § 3-116(c), reaches ahead of a first mortgage only “to the extent of the common expense assessments based on the periodic budget adopted by the association pursuant to subsection 3-115(a)” for the six months before the enforcement action.

A charger-infrastructure assessment levied outside the periodic budget is not a budget-based common expense assessment. It is enforceable, and it is a lien, but it sits behind the first mortgage rather than in front of it.

The foreclosure floor still applies

An association cannot move straight from an unpaid charger invoice to a foreclosure. Section 3-116(m) bars commencing a foreclosure action unless the owner owes at least three months of common expense assessments based on the last adopted periodic budget and has failed to accept or comply with a payment plan the association offered, and the executive board has voted to foreclose against that specific unit.

And § 3-116(o) closes the other route: where the sums due include no unpaid assessment at all, no foreclosure may be commenced unless the association first obtains a judgment and perfects a judgment lien.

The payment-application rule boards keep getting wrong

Section 3-116(n) sets a mandatory order for applying an owner's payments unless the parties agree otherwise: unpaid assessments first, then late charges, then attorney's fees, costs and collection charges, then all other fees, charges, fines, penalties, interest and late charges. A board that applies an owner's check to a charger invoice before the owner's regular assessments is inverting the statute — and manufacturing the assessment delinquency that § 3-116(m) requires before foreclosure.

What to watch next

Nothing in § 3-125 tells a board how to size or apportion an infrastructure assessment among installing owners, and nothing sets a ceiling. Vermont has no agency that reviews association assessments, so the first test of “the cost of the required improvements” will be a Superior Court case brought by an owner who thinks the number is made up.