But conspicuously absent were the results of the election in November 2010.

Board: “[...] it is grossly unfair for 130 homeowners to pay for the services received by 142 residents. Our legal counsel continues to aggressively pursue every avenue for the Association to recover the tens of thousands of dollars of delinquent charges that have accrued.”

The 130 out of 142 figure was cited in the November meeting. Thankfully it hasn’t grown worse. On the other hand, with new counsel in place, why hasn’t this moved any? Is ‘every avenue’ blocked, or what?

Board: “When the final invoices are received from our [snow removal] vendor, we will have a better idea of the assessment needed [...]“

What a surprise, eh? Granted, there was record snow, but I witnessed plenty of waste, too. Our snow removal vendor or, at least, some of their workers mock us.

Board: “If everyone makes a call to the Roads Department mentioning the holes, we will stand a better chance of getting things fixed.”

Not according to the township folks that spoke at the November meeting. Rehabilitation of Riverbend Drive is not in the Master Plan. On the potholes, and this is based on my observation only, we see some holes filled when there’s a bit of extra material remaining on the truck at the end of the workday. The crew uses it up wherever they see something that’s close to where they were working.

Board: “Our electrical contractor is working as quickly as possible to complete the removal of the old fixtures and the installation of the new walkway lights.”

Bravo! This project is a good one. The lights look and work great. Glad to see the contractor back working on it after the crap weather.

Board: “As the snow has melted, you can see a number of pieces of debris that were buried under the snow. You can also see the plastic bags of animal waste that were accidentally/deliberately thrown into bushes and along the ground.”

People are effing slobs. Take their pictures when you see them, and turn them in to the township with your complaint. Screw ‘em.

Board: “[our official] community website [...] has been up and operational for several months, yet we are getting no more than a handful of hits each week.”

Bummer, that. Yet, traffic to *this* unofficial site is well into five figures for 2011 alone. (It’s not policy to disclose anything more than highly generalized figures for my properties – UNLESS you’re a paid advertiser, of course.) I’m flattered – thanks, readers – but you really should pay more attention to the Board’s official site. And, if I may, I urge you to hold their feet to the fire and make ‘em deliver what you want.

Board: “[...] will conduct a door to door census in order to get your input on the web site.”

Should be an interesting exercise. Let us know how you make out with that.

Board: “Let’s look forward to Springtime!”

I’ll drink to that!

To Phillip and Zuri, you’ve already seen that you’re free to comment on articles as you wish, but if you want to author your own you’ll need to obtain Resident status. Everything you need to know about doing that is right here.

Phillip and Zuri (Halloween Tricksters)

Folks who can’t make the meeting to cast their vote in person should bear in mind that the official proxy is due in the EPM office by COB November 2.

Sincerely

Lopez family

PS I’ll try my best to make it to the meeting but since i work in the city its hard for me to make the 7 o’clock meeting…

Then there’s this stuff they use to grow grass alongside highways when they install new overpasses and such. A truck comes by in the morning they spray green stuff from a tank using a thick hose to cover the bare earth with a dull green material. A day later it’s sprouting and a week later you’d swear the thick, green carpet has been there forever. If they overspray onto, say, concrete then grass will briefly grow there, too. But since concrete doesn’t supply nutrients like the earth does, that grass dies quickly. Anyway, whatever stuff that is it would probably do the trick.

You mentioned trees, too. I’ve heard it said over and over again by various landscape folks – so it must be true – that many of the trees in our community have simply outgrown their usefulness. Trees grow, and what was once nicely proportioned is now too big. The Board has planned and rehabilitated some of the common areas already, but there’s still much to be done. (Search the site for tree work related missives from the Board.) One problem is that some of the problems exist on private property and thus fall into the domain of homeowners. And that can be expensive, as you point out.

I’m no expert, but I don’t think you can just magically shrink roots. Maybe it’s time to remove or replace the tree you mention, so as to bring in some sunlight for grass and other plants? Maybe you can cut a deal with our landscapers? (See my notes on the last Board meeting.) There’s a tree service I’ve used on another property, with rates I thought to be quite reasonable, and I’ve seen them doing work here in the community for individuals. If I see you outside sometime I can give you their card. With the down economy, I’ve found prices for work like this are actually pretty good.

Good luck!

I’m a little curious about the nature of your interest, Christine, as I can’t see much reason for it – other than your own idle curiosity, of course. The site doesn’t sell anything. Although there’s been interest from various commercial interests that would love to reach Riverbend homeowners, I’ve rejected their offers. (Yes, I’ll admit that we’re not absolutely pure – we do run the Google AdSense content. But trust me; Google generates such a vanishingly small stream from this subdomain that it wouldn’t buy you a cup of good coffee.) The site doesn’t ask readers for contributions of money or support.

With the stage set, here are some answers.

Yes, I could provide hard numbers, but I won’t. I’ll go as far as to say that we get hits to the site every single day. Not a whole lot of hits, as the focus of interest is very narrow. But some. Every day. We run on Apache, and the raw logs – which include IP addresses – are collected and stored in an offline SQL Server database for further analysis. We also run several COTS analysis tools on the timeoff.org domain and naturally the riverbend subdomain is part of those analytics. If I were to call out one (commercial) demographic segment that seems over-represented I’d have to say it’s realtors. WRT how many residents have accounts, I’ll say way more than post and leave it at that. (Residents, feel free to jump in here!)

Those are good questions, Christine, I’m glad you asked ‘em. If there were compelling reasons to tell more – oh, like if I were selling eyeballs or something – then I’d have more definitive answers. Does that make sense?

Finally, I, too, wish that more folks had more to say. Both passers-by who may comment freely merely by supplying an email address (which is not made public) and Residents who may author new articles. But the fact is that most people just don’t like to write! Not only here, either, it’s true wherever you look. Heck, even the EPM newsletters have trickled to a halt. Haven’t seen one of those since February 2008. [shrug] I don’t lose any sleep over it.

Can you provide some numbers for me?
-How many hits does this site get per month? Do you track the different IP addresses?
-How many Residents have accounts?

I wish more people posted on here.

http://riverbend.timeoff.org/2009/07/27/board-meeting-4/