Possible Water Interruption's Today 6/29/2012

Utilities, Inc the parent company of Carolina Water Service is working in the neighborhood today on Harpers Inlet Dr repairing a water main leak. They are digging up a parking area to access the pipe. They say they are going to try to limit any service disruptions to as little time as possible. Water was already turned off to the neighborhood for a few minutes and was probably not noticeable to most home owners. The work should be done around 2pm this afternoon.

Apparently the board and Kuester knew about this work ahead of time, but to our knowledge no home owners were alerted, we do have a community email list which is a perfect way to communicate things just like this to the home owners, we are unsure why no notice was sent out, since this could cause interruptions in your water service, it would have been nice to know in advance.

Lots of Sore Feet at the Pool

Kids all around the neighborhood and even many adults are coming out of the pool with cuts on their feet many which are so bad they are bleeding. Apparently this has been very common this year according to a homeowner who knows about pools told us, over the years the chemicals in the pool eat away at the bottom causing the surface to become very rough, a procedure known as "polishing" the bottom of the pool can correct this, however the pool would need to be drained. In the meantime many pool goers are buying pool shoes and hoping that the HOA will drain the pool and fix it at the end of the season.

Property complexes step into DNA testing of dog poop

Interesting article in today's USA TODAY:

USA Today: Property Complexes Step Into DNA Testing of Dog Poop

This is very interesting and is a new trend sweeping the country, being used by homeowners associations and apartment complex managers, maybe this could help solve our problems with people not picking up their dog poop.

Playground?

We have had a few homeowners contact us asking why we do not have a playground and how can we get one?

So we did a little research and asked around about this issue, here is what we found out:

1) The current Board Members, who are all single with no kids living with them in the neighborhood are completely against any playground, their claim is that the insurance needed would be so high dues would be raised to over $150 a month.

2) Some homeowners in phase 1 were told when they bought their home from Mercedes Homes that a playground would be built, although Mercedes plans never included a playground.

3) Many homeowners do not want a playground, they feel it would attract more kids from neighboring communities like Forest Oaks, which would ultimately cause more problems overall for the neighborhood.

From what we can tell, many believe there is plenty of room for a playground maybe near the pool is one  location mentioned, we don't believe the insurance claim, we feel homeowners should request from the board 2 or 3 estimates from insurance companies showing the cost of adding a playground to the existing insurance policy.

This comes down to two sides parents with kids that would like a playground and homeowners without kids that don't want the added expense or potential problems that a playground may bring. Either way we believe the board should get the estimates for both the cost to build a playground and to insure it. and let homeowners decide in a vote, however we don't believe this will happen anytime soon, with the current regime in power.