F.Y.I. The Newsletter of Edgewood Townehouse Association
PO Box 5424, Eugene, OR 97405January 2017 Edition
Upcoming Events
Next Regular Board Business Meeting:
Tuesday, February 14, 2017 at 6.30 pm in the ClubhouseBy-The-Brook Book Group:
Wednesday, February 8, 2017 at 2 pm in the ClubhouseTea Time:
Tuesday, February 21, 2017 at 3 pm in the ClubhouseJanuary Quarterly Open Forum Business Meeting:
Tuesday, January 24, 2017 at 7 pm in the Clubhouse. Special Speaker: Kirk Martin, State Farm Insurance.April Quarterly Open Forum Business Meeting:
Tuesday, April 25, 2017 at 7 pm in the Clubhouse. Special Topic: Emergency PreparednessCONTENTS
Message from the Board
Board Business Meeting Minutes
Facilities Report
Things to Know, Learn and Remember
Storm Damage Cleanup
By the Books Readers Club
Website ReportEditor: Guest Editor
MESSAGE FROM THE BOARD
Preserve. Restore. Maintain.
Robert Bruce Trafton, President, Edgewood Townehouse AssociationIt is a New Year and the first half of this month was frigidly cold and a pall of sober quietness covered our community. The weather kept many businesses, schools, and professional offices closed. Meetings and sporting events were cancelled. For some of us, the first half of this month felt like hibernation. But, as the month ensued, ice and snow melted away, and contractors were able to assess our site for damage control and repair operations. We are now well over a month past the traditional holidays, and the aftermath of the December 14, 2016 Ice Storm continues to linger.
Slowly we are moving forward with the cleanup of our grounds, the repair of our damaged buildings, and our routine maintenance. It is safe to say, we will be in the clean up process for the next few months, and things will get better.
In matters of governance, the Board took action on three items. The first item was the election of Fiscal Year (FY) 2017 officers. The incumbent officers agreed to continue serving and were unanimously approved by the Board. Bruce Trafton will remain as President; Christine Donahue will continue on as Vice President; Michele Coney will be our Treasurer; and JoAnn Wilson shall serve as our Secretary.
The second item the Board took action on was setting its FY 2017 goals. At our December meeting the Board brainstormed several goals to identify and pursue during the year. The general theme for this year was education and looking into the far future. The three goals that were identified for this year are: (1) to pursue and prepare an Emergency/Disaster Preparedness Plan, including special speakers to help us better prepare and manage in times of community crisis; (2) to pursue an Architectural Review and Plan for updating our Clubhouse to be in compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA); and, (3) to prepare a Strategic Marketing Plan looking out 5, 10, 15, and 20-years into the future.
The third item the Board took action on was parking. The Board reviewed letters submitted by homeowners. The Board reviewed the sites, and the vehicles in question. The vehicles’ owners were contacted. In reviewing the entire matter, the Board determined that the existing wording of rule could be misconstrued. The Board revised the rule for clarification. Our Parking Policy will be: 1. All homeowners should park vehicles in garages. 2. Temporary parking by homeowners or their guests must be in designated parking spaces.3. Waivers for Special Circumstances: Homeowners may request waiver of the Parking Policy in the event of exceptional or extraneous circumstances. Waiver Forms are available by contacting the Board, the Facilities and Operations Director, or at edgewoodhoa.org/. The Board will review each case and render a final decision.
In light of the Board's theme to educate and look in the far future, the Board has invited a speaker to address risk and insurance matters regarding the Association Master Policy and Individual Personal policy matters. As a Board, we want to encourage as many owners as possible to attend the January Quarterly Open Forum Business Meeting on Tuesday night, January 24, 2017 at 7 PM. We will be hosting Kirk Martin, our State Farm Master Policy Insurance Agent. He will discuss and answer insurance questions regarding our Master Insurance Policy, how it interfaces with your individual/personal homeowner’s insurance, and even questions regarding our December 14, 2016 Storm Damage claim. The presentation is intended to be educational. Also bring any Association issues or questions that are important to you to our meeting.
EDGEWOOD TOWNEHOUSE ASSOCIATION
BOARD OF DIRECTORS MONTHLY BUSINESS MEETING
Preserve – Restore – Maintain
Tuesday, January 17, 2017Call to Order: The meeting was called to order at 6:30 p.m. Board members present were: Bruce Trafton, Darell Bidstrup, Michele Coney, Christine Donahue Sharon Kimble, Michael Maulding, Don Pasquali, Jennifer Smith, and JoAnn Wilson. Also present was Frank Gaddini, ETA Director of Operations and Facilities.
Election of Board Officers: The incumbent officers agreed to continue serving and were approved by the Board. They are Bruce Trafton, President; Christine Donahue, Vice President; Michele Coney, Treasurer; and JoAnn Wilson, Secretary.
Approval of Minutes: The Board approved the minutes of December 13, 2016, as amended to reflect that the minutes approved in the December 2016 meeting were for the November 15, 2016, meeting.
Standing Reports:
- Facility Report: Submitted
- Treasures Report: Submitted
- Website Coordinator: Submitted
- Swimming Pool: Closed
- Clubhouse Coordinator: None submitted
- Hospitality Coordinator: None submitted
- Welcome Coordinator: None submitted
Old Business:
- Final Repair of 40 Brae Burn: Still pending.
- Goals for FY 2017. Board members approved the following goals: (a) Emergency/Disaster Preparedness Plan; (b) Clubhouse ADA Compliance Plan; and, (c) Market Plan/Strategic Planning 5, 10, 15, 20-Year Planning and Development for Future Technologies.
- Parking Policy Review: The policy was revised to read as follows:
1. All homeowners should park vehicles in garages.
2. Temporary parking by homeowners or their guests must be in designated parking spaces.
3. Waivers for Special Circumstances. Homeowners may request waiver of the Parking Policy in the event of exceptional or extraneous circumstances. Waiver Forms are available by contacting the Board, the Facilities and Operations Director. The Board will review each case and render a final decision.- Insurance Premium Payment Strategies: President Trafton will speak to the insurance agent and update the Board at a future meeting.
New Business:
- Waivers: None.
- Strategy to Replenish Insurance Deductibles: President Trafton will speak to the insurance agent and update the Board at a future meeting.
- December 14, 2016, Ice Storm Damage Report: Frank Gaddini, ETA Director of Operations and Facilities, summarized the damage suffered to the property from the ice storm and outlined the repair and maintenance jobs performed during December 2016, including estimated costs for repairs before the insurance payment is received.
- Executive Session
ANNOUNCEMENTS:
- The next HOA Quarterly Meeting: Tuesday, January 24, 2017, in the Clubhouse at 7:00 PM. The guest speaker is Kirk Martin.
The meeting adjourned at 8:35 PM.
Secretary JoAnn Wilson ( _ )
Looking Back Over December 2016 Facilities and Operations Report
Frank L. GaddiniThis report is a review of facility and grounds work performed in December 2016.
December can only be described as extraordinarily memorable. The beginning of the month was quite unremarkable. Temperatures were mild and we were working on routine leaf removal, softscape maintenance, and the final steps of our groundwater repairs in Driveway 10. Reports of impending freezing weather in the latter half of the second week prompted the hasty installation of insulating covers over as many unprotected hose-bibs that we could see. Snow was predicted, but instead it came down as freezing rain.
On December 14th we woke up to a wickedly beautiful vista – treetops were glistening with ice encased branches and needles. The freezing fog, mist, and rain continued through the day. Trees laden with ice, began to snap, break, and crash to the ground. Our roadways, walkways, and grounds were littered with fallen trees and branches.
The next day, with the help of a few homeowners and contractors, we cleared roadways and walkways of frozen limbs and fallen trees. We staged mountains of debris in our parking bays for collection and disposal off the site. For the next eight days, the temperatures plunged well below freezing at night, and we continued the hard work of cutting fallen limbs, dragging them to staging piles, loading the trucks, and disposing the debris off-site. Throughout the last two weeks of the month, we disposed 120 yards of tree limb debris.
Just prior to the ice storm, our contractor poured and finished 120 feet of new concrete sidewalk, curb, gutter, and ADA ramp as part of our groundwater drain repair in Driveway 10. During the thirty hours of no electric power, our Pool’s sump pumps were unable to pump. Water flooded the Pool/Clubhouse equipment room causing our hot water heater to fail. As soon as power was restored, we had the hot water heater immediately replaced. We are still assessing the furnace which heats the Pool’s water.
During the month, we recorded and completed forty-six (46) jobs. Through the year’s end, we completed nearly one-thousand-one-hundred eighty-four (1,184) discrete jobs. The lion’s share of our December jobs was engaged in cleanup of the December 14th Ice Storm.
THINGS TO KNOW, LEARN, AND REMEMBER
1. Updated and Revise Parking Rules
1. All homeowners should park vehicles in garages.2. Temporary parking by homeowners or their guests must be in designated parking spaces.
3. Waiver for Special Circumstances. Homeowners may request waiver of the Parking Policy in the event of exceptional or extraneous circumstances. Waiver Forms are available by contacting the Board, the Director of Facilities and Operations, or on-line at www.edgewoodhoa.org/. The Board will review each case and render a final decision.
Board of Directors Approved January 17, 20172. Satellite Dish Guidelines
Edgewood Townehouse Association
1. Authorization to install a satellite dish must be pre-approved by the Director of Facilities and Operations and will only be approved under the following guidelines:2. Mounting, installation, or penetration of any satellite equipment or fasteners to any portion of the roof(s) or roof soffit(s) as in drilling, nailing, or screwing to fasten equipment to the roof(s), or drilling holes into the building’s horizontal or vertical wood exterior surfaces is prohibited.
3. Mounting, installation, or penetration of equipment or fasteners to any portion of the building(s) siding as in drilling, nailing, or screwing to fasten equipment to the building is prohibited.4. The use of mastics, glues, or any adhesive compounds to affix a satellite dish is prohibited.
5. Fastening satellite dish system equipment to the building’s railings, posts, beams or balusters with the use of clamps and/or banding material is permissible.
6. Mounting a satellite dish system in any way that prevents, detracts, or interrupts the quality of visual enjoyment of the environs of other Edgewood Townhouse homeowners is prohibited. Homeowners wishing to install a satellite dish system are encouraged to review the location of the dish’s placement with neighboring homeowners.
7. All liability and damage resulting from any installation of a satellite dish will become the financial responsibility of the individual townhouse owner and the installer to restore the damaged and adjoining affected areas to their original condition.
Board of Directors Approved December 8, 20153. Volunteer Needed
If you are interested in serving as our Hospitality Coordinator, please contact Bruce Trafton ( _ )
A volunteer coordinator position is open and available for homeowners with an interest in serving the Association. The position is known as our Hospitality Coordinator. The Hospitality Coordinator plans, organizes, and presents refreshments at each of the Quarterly Meetings (the fourth Tuesday of January, April, and July, as well and the Annual Business Meeting (the fourth Tuesday of October). The Hospitality Coordinator also plans, organizes, and presents the Winter Holiday and Christmas Season Celebration at the Clubhouse. The Mission of the Hospitality Coordinator is to promote community good will, cheer, and refreshment.
DECEMBER WEBSITE REPORT
Toni Horodysky, Webmaster for Edgewood Townehouse Association
During the period December 1, 2016 to January 5, 2017, our website, www.edgewoodhoa.org had 50 visitors who looked at 72 pages.
STORM DAMAGE CLEANUP WILL TAKE EFFORT AND TIME
The December 14, 2016 Ice Storm has seriously impacted our community. The work before us will take considerable time to clean up our grounds and repair the facilities that were damaged. The storm struck just before our seasonal holidays. The following thirty days were fraught with weather related issues that closed most schools, many businesses, and offices. Contractors, equipment, and labor were in short supply for the past several weeks.
We are currently coordinating and scheduling storm damage clean up and repairs. The days between January 5th through the 11th were so cold, that many of the limbs and branches we were clearing were frozen to the ground, and the icy roads made it difficult for trucks labor, and equipment to respond to our clean up efforts.
We will be engaged in these storm related clean up efforts for the next two months, as we also perform our normal seasonal maintenance work. Please be patient. We will soon be back to normal in our park-like community.
If you have concerns, you can contact Frank Gaddini, our Facility and Operation Director ( _ ).
BY-THE-BROOK READERS CLUB
Join us in our clubhouse for the next meeting of ETA readers on Wednesday, February 15, at 2:00 pm. We talk about what each of the attendees has been reading—a diverse group of readers who choose not to all read the same book. Here is what was talked about last month:
Bruce (T): Free on Kindle is Donna Foley Mabry’s first-person story of her grandmother’s life, Maude. Born in 1906, married at 14, widowed at 16, she lived a hard life Going from town to town and crisis to crisis, she was tied to the Holiness Assembly Church and the strictures put on women through the 20th century. She died in 1978. Highly recommended.
Gloria (G): Nancy Isenberg’s White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America traces the various iterations—waste people, rubbish, squatters, clay-eaters, mudsills, crackers, rednecks, hillbillies, trailer trash—that have existed as “elite” settlers brought poor people, swept up off of urban streets in England, into the colonies to do manual labor under slave-like conditions. Then move forward in history with some areas of the country considering education a waste of time on such lower life forms. Disturbing perspective.
This year’s National Book Award winner for fiction is Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad which plays with the idea of an actual railroad under the ground run by freed slaves and abolitionists. The plantation conditions leading to attempting escape are vivid and then we have fantastic portrayals of states that use eugenics to control the black population, or weekly festive lynchings, and more. A bit of alternative history from the author of G’s favorite book about rival elevator inspectors, The Intuitionist.
Delicious Foods by James Hannaham is not a frothy dessert but a gristly novel about modern day slavery. An agribusiness recruits its farmhands by gathering addicts off urban streets, promising them jobs and luxury living conditions—and their drug of choice. Reality is living in a locked converted chicken shed, docked wages, company store, etc. It’s a bruising read but not totally unbelievable, unfortunately.
Connie (H): Highly recommends Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. About 70,000 years ago, when cognition seemed to have evolved, there were other versions of humanoids. What happened? Language, the consequences of mutations, ideas like survival vs belief in the abstract, agricultural vs scientific revolutions. More interesting than Jared Diamond’s books like Guns, Germs, and Steel and others. (Toni also recommends Before the Dawn: Recovering the Lost History of Our Ancestors by Nicholas Wade.)
Toni (H): Related to recent travels in France, Toni read Stephen E. Ambrose’s Pegasus Bridge: June 6, 1944 which details the first operation before the D-Day attacks. Paratroopers are landed by glider to defend the bridge from German destruction, led by bagpipers. There’s the blow by blow story - geographical as well as chronological - including illustrations and quotes from oral histories. A harrowing account.
Related is Cornelius Ryan’s The Longest Day a shorter but classic story of D-Day. Also Robert Capa’s collections of photographs.
Ken Follett’s The Key to Rebecca has British intelligence battling a Nazi spy with Arab-German ancestry.
Daniel Silva’s The Black Widow is page-turning suspense featuring master spy Gabriel Allon. ISIS has set off a bomb in Paris. Allon plants a young woman doctor in the group to preempt future attacks. Ripped from the headlines, as they used to say on Law and Order.
[Phone numbers, e-mail addresses, and street addresses have been removed for privacy reasons.]