Terry is taking a vacation, so the Office will be closed for 3 days, next Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. The Office will reopen on Thursday, August 11th.
We will be checking the drop box daily; you can deposit your dues payments there. We may have someone in the Office but not from 8am-5pm.
The FBI Dallas Division has received reports of a recent wave of scam attempts targeting senior citizens in North Texas, particularly in the Sherman and Denison areas.
Callers with foreign accents identify themselves as FBI agents and typically tell people they have won a lottery and must pay “taxes” in advance via commercial money transfer companies to receive their winnings. These phone calls are fraudulent, and call recipients should hang up immediately. The FBI has no affiliation to any lotteries and does not call members of the public demanding money.
Additionally, a scam phone call may seem legitimate because scammers can spoof caller ID information. It may appear the call is coming from a legitimate FBI phone number or from Washington, D.C. The FBI strongly encourages anyone contacted by a caller who says they are with the FBI to verify the information with the Bureau. The main telephone number for the FBI in Dallas is 972-559-5000; contact information for other FBI field offices can be found at www.fbi.gov.
In similar scams, callers have claimed to be with the IRS, DEA, or another government agency. As above, be suspicious and verify the caller’s information with the appropriate agency. There are many versions of this government impersonation scam, but they are all variations of the same tactic. This type of scam has been around for years and targets people across the country.
In some instances, after the victims stop sending money, the scammers continue to contact the victims via e-mail purporting to be high-level FBI executives threatening arrest on money laundering charges unless more money is sent.
If you are a victim of a phone or e-mail scam, you can file an online complaint with the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3). Filing a complaint through IC3’s website allows analysts from the FBI to identify leads and patterns from the hundreds of complaints that are received daily. Compiling and analyzing these complaints can lead to stronger cases and help zero in on the major sources of criminal activity. The IC3 then refers the complaints, along with their analyses, to the relevant law enforcement agency for follow-up.
The Federal Trade Commission—the nation’s consumer protection agency—offers the following advice to avoid falling victim to lottery scams and other telemarketing frauds:
Here’s a link to the 1st and 2nd Quarter Report for 2016 which highlight things the HOA has done this year.
We will not be picking up garbage on Monday, July 4th. We will be picking up garbage on July 5th, Tuesday.
During the past week, we have had a few events which required a visit by the Grand Prairie Police:
The GP Officer that came out for the shop burglary call told me he used to work this area (the HOA area) and that it was well know for vehicles ducking in and parking here because it is out of the way and off the main roads. These individuals that do this are more often than not up to no good and use our property to drink, smoke dope, and other activities for which they hope not to get caught doing. We have called the Police on several of these people. some ending in their arrest for possession.
The take away here is that we all need to keep a better eye on our neighborhood and those who do not belong here. We have had 5 or 6 vehicles in the past few months that the Police came to check out; some were innocent, others had drugs in the car and were hauled off. Don’t be afraid to call the GP Police non-emergency number to report suspicious vehicles, people or activity. That number is (972) 237-8700
We can reduce crime within the HOA by reporting suspicious people and vehicles.
We have been using Metroscape Landscaping for the past 2 years at a cost of about $76,000 per year, which included mowing, edging, flower bed turning and shrub trimming. It also has 2 “weed and feed” applications scheduled for Spring and Fall. This annual contract was up for renewal at the beginning of June 2016. We looked into other landscaping contractors to do the job but did not like the prices we were given, between $92,000 and almost $100,000 per year.
After doing some digging and looking for possible alternatives, we arrived at a solution. The Board voted at the April 2016 meeting to do the landscaping ourselves and approved the purchase of the required equipment. We now have 2 mowers, a 60″ and a 48″ which were delivered today.
Both are the Toro 5000 Series commercial grade -Zero-turn mower. Here is a picture of the mower type we bought:
There are a few more items we need to get to have the proper equipment to do the entire subdivision. We have hired someone to mow and he has many years experience on the grounds here because he used to work for one of our previous lawn contractors. When necessary, our maintenance guys will assist as needed when schedules permit. We should have much better control on things using our own people to do the landscaping.
The HOA will begin doing landscaping on July 1st.
Terry is still not feeling well, so the Office will remain closed today.
Office will be open again on Friday, June 10.
The Office will be closed today, Monday, June 6th.
The Office will be closed at noon on Friday, May 20th. We will reopen on Monday at 8 AM.