Yeah, that is crazy, NY. I think too many condo associations fall down on their duties and just let the fees accumulate in an account instead of using it as it is intended.

We had the opposite problem when we lived in a small, rural subdivision in central NC. We had a very low neighborhood HOA fee paid yearly, and almost everyone in the subdivision wanted to pay extra for snow plowing on the rare occasions when we had a snow, since the amount in our HOA account wouldn't cover snow removal. We didn't, because we knew that in most cases in NC, the snow will melt within a day or three, and by this time, my DH was retired, and I could work from home in case of inclement weather. We had a huge pantry filled with food stores and a woodstove so didn't suffer too much even if there were power outages, and we didn't mind being snowed in for 1-3 days; we actually enjoyed it! I guess in an emergency, we might have felt differently, but in general, we were just not so important that we had to get out. So we balked at paying extra for this, but we were consistently outvoted.