ARBOR COURT VILLAGE

President's Message - December 2008

(re-printed from Dec - Jan edition of News & Views)

Hi Folks,

It’s that time again. I am about out of words of wisdom, of course I had very few to begin with!

We are about to have a change in our Board of Directors for 2009. We have three residents who have volunteered their services and their names will be on the ballots when they are mailed out for voting. Thank you, folks. I would like to take this opportunity to thank the Board members for their efforts during our time together; Fleetie, Bill, Vi and Carol. I would also like to thank our volunteers: Miss Grace, for her work on our shrubs, trees and general landscaping; our irrigation people, Chairman, George Parsons, and Herb Walter, our time clock guru; also, Carol Parsons, our Meadowcrest representative; and let’s not forget the block captains. Incidentally, we will need a new block captain for Croyden. Jim McCabe is giving up the "ghost" after many years of service to our community. Thanks, Jim and good luck.

We hope to tie up a few loose ends before the end of the year.

• We have budgeted for the remainder of the retaining walls to be replaced.

• The painting of twelve buildings will be starting on Dalary and Croyden.

• There are a few sink holes in the DRA behind Envoy. These should be repaired by the time you read this.

Also, we will be putting together a budget for next year. We will try to keep our fees down, but as everyone knows prices rise. This is mostly related to the price of oil; just about everything we touch is affected by this product. In addition we are looking at a substantial increase in our fees to MCA.

Some of our members have asked about mulch, as I said at our meeting in October, "You can have anything you want." I presented an example – I personally bought (with my own money) over 50 bags of mulch and could have used more, at $2.00 per bag equals $100, multiply that by 127 units – do the math – PLUS you have to pay labor to spread it! It can be done BUT it will ADD to our budget. Some tough decisions have to be made as there is no fat in the current budget nor will there be any in the ’09 budget.

As I have said in a previous column, you can’t be all things to all people. We make the best decisions we can; hopefully they are the right ones.

Keep smiling.

by John Wheeler

Updated 11/18/2008

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