We will be doing a water line repair tomorrow beginning around 9AM and involving the following addresses on East Mountain Creek Court:
The leak itself is in front of number 7, but the main cutoff for the area will shut off water to those addresses above. We will have the water back on as soon as repairs are completed.
At the Annual Meeting held tonight, members voted to fill 2 Board positions. Our 3 candidates were: John Moreno, Bobby Gentry and Karen McCrary. After all votes were tabulated, the two Board positions were filled by John Moreno and Karen McCrary. We welcome Karen McCrary to the Board.
We would like to thank Bobby Gentry for his long service to the HOA and wish him a speedy recover following abdominal surgery today.
We elected Board Officers following the Annual Meeting; Officers will remain the same as last year.
The 2016 Annual Membership Meeting will be held this Thursday, March 31, in the GPMCHA Office located at 3402 South Belt Line Road, Grand Prairie, Texas. The meeting will begin at 7 PM.
There are 2 Board positions which need to be filled. For these 2 positions we have 3 candidates, 2 of which are incumbent Board members. On the Ballot are Bobby Gentry, John Moreno and Karen McCrary. Mr. Gentry and Mr. Moreno have been on the Board for many years and Mrs. McCrary is running for the first time. We appreciate these individuals expressing an interest in our HOA.
Please remember to send in your Absentee Ballot or Proxy at least 10 days prior to the Meeting. Please do not include your assessment dues payment with these. We will not open any election related envelopes until the Annual Meeting has begun.
All homeowners who file absentee ballots are hereby advised of Property Code 209.00592, (C) (3) :
“By casting your vote via absentee ballot you will forgo the opportunity to consider and vote on any action from the floor on these proposals, if a meeting is held. This means that if there are amendments to these proposals your votes will not be counted on the final vote on these measures. If you desire to retain this ability, please attend any meeting in person. You may submit an absentee ballot and later choose to attend any meeting in person, in which case any in-person vote will prevail.”
The new GP Pipeline is posted…
As I was on my way back to the house around 4:40PM today, I saw a pickup truck parked on the grass and loaded with conifer branches. I went to investigate and there was a guy cutting down a Cedar tree located on common property in the front bed of a house. This tree had been there for 25 years or more and was about 15 feet tall or more.
I asked why he cut down this tree and his reply was that the “real estate agent told him to” do so. He was just following those instructions. He also mentioned the neighbor also said it was OK; apparently this neighbor did not know that in the front, your property stops at the foundation. Anything beyond the foundation, the flower beds, sidewalk, etc, it Common Property of the HOA. The same is true of the grass area between the rear fences and the street.
Any changes, additions or removals require Board permission; always has. The tree he just cut down was HOA property. Had the “real estate agent” called the Office, or bothered to look at the CC&R, it would have explained this. We will be sending an invoice for the unauthorized removal of this tree.
The Office will be closed periodically all week. Some days, it will be closed 8AM to Noon, others, Noon to 5PM.
The best way to see if we are open is call the Office. Terry is taking care of someone who has been hospitalized.
The photo to the left is the remnants of a local moving van backing up to someone’s front door. This was not a pickup truck or a U-Haul, but a moving van composed of a trailer and truck. The ground was wet from the recent heavy rains, which a reasonable person might think would not be an appropriate surface to hold up a vehicle that holds an entire house full of furniture. In the center of the photo is a drainage area that had standing water in it, another indicator of wet ground.
When I spoke to the individual whose house the mover backed up to, they told me they asked another resident and were told that it was OK to drive a vehicle onto the common area, because they had done the same and no one said anything. The Notices we have sent out for the past year specifically state that no vehicles are allowed on any Common areas, so I have no idea why someone would think it was permissible.
The only motorized vehicles allowed on our common areas are the maintenance carts and they use the sidewalks as much as possible when the ground is wet. Some areas require them to cross the grass, and they do leave tire tracks on the grass; the maintenance carts weigh about 800 pounds, a significantly lower weight than a fully loaded moving van, a pickup truck, or a U-Haul truck.
In an effort to qualify how much trash is throw out by homeowners, renters and their guests, I asked our guys to bag it up and set it aside. Over the course of 5 consecutive days, we picked up 5 contractor size bags of trash that our residents and guests intentionally tossed out onto our common areas. The average contractor size bag holds approximately 9 cubic feet. That means we picked up 45 cubic feet of loose paper, plastic drink cups, fast food bags, candy bar wrappers, snack packages, discarded food, and a variety of other trash that could have just as easily be thrown in the trash at the home of the originator.
To put it another way, the man-hours expended to try to keep the subdivision presentable amounts to around $30,000 per year picking up garbage from our common areas. This is money that could be better spent on other things. We sometimes have to send out two guys to pick up the grounds on Monday as the volume increases over the weekend. All of this trash has an effect on our property values, and ties up both men and money that needs to be used for repairs, painting and other projects around the 22 acre subdivision.
If things do not improve over the rest of the year, we may need to look at an increase in assessment dues next year to compensate for the money spent to pick up grounds litter that shouldn’t be there in the first place.
The March 10th GP Pipeline is posted.
This Friday, March 11th, Oncor (or a subcontractor) will be working on a transformer which feeds the following addresses:
Notices have been placed on the effected homes. They estimate the power will be off from 1PM to approximately 4PM. They will also be replacing a meter housing which is corroded due to age.