Happy New Year!

As 2011 comes to a close the board would like to thank you for your support this year.  Village Defense has been a success and for our community that means a safer future to look forward to.  We still need more participation to make our neighborhood even safer and a by- product of that means increased communication should we need to contact all of you in case of an emergency. 

The pool is still being renovated during the winter months and will be ready for painting in the spring. Our pool company will be painting the pool in March and if we have the money to pay the contract for the summer it will be opened.  This depends on how many of you decide to pay the association dues.  We will be having a general meeting in early spring to decide if we can open the pool.  In any case it will be ready to open when we do have the funds.

We hope you all had a great holiday and wish you a happy new year!

Pool Closed for Renovations

The pool is closed for renovations until spring of next year.  We will not be filling it before the winter so we don't have to maintain the chemistry over the winter and that will reduce our utility cost.  A big thank you to all of you who came out early in the summer to help with the patching.  Unfortunately as the summer wore on and residents went on vacation and got busy with other things and we couldn't get up enough volunteers to help with the painting.  We had to make the decision to let the pool maintenance company do the painting and the rest of the renovation work next spring.  We will be opening the pool early next year and will leave it open longer as long as we have the continued financial support from the community.

Kittens will soon need a home

In the next couple of weeks I will be posting pictures of the new feral kittens that will need a good home.  There are 6 babies and are about 3 weeks old.  When they are 6-8weeks old they can be taken away from their mother and adopted.  Getting them so early assures that all of their feralness will dissappear with your loving care.  Jim and I have just adopted 2 ourselves and they are just as tame as the ones we had inside.  the kittens are very healthy and if you want to come by and see them give me a call.

We're half way through summer

And its time to remind you to pay your homeowners fees.  If you have already paid thank you!

Dear Resident of Mountain Cove,
This year we opened the pool at the usual time although we were concerned as usual about the slow payment of dues from the members. After taking a poll of the members that had paid their dues it was apparent that the majority of those members wanted the pool open. We hoped more residents would pay their dues seeing the pool open but the dues are still trickling in. Some of you had lost your jobs and it was understandable that you had difficulty paying but that was only a few so it shouldn't have impacted our budget. We did have a couple of additional expense brought on by Gwinnett County by a new ordinance that required us to install a new main drain in the pool and the cost of refilling the pool. The good thing is that allowed us to do some cosmetic work on the pool and it now looks better than it has in years. So here we are in July and it looks like we are going to be short paying our bills at the end of the year unless we either get at least 25 more members or close the pool. Last year this was the reason we opened it late - so many of you waited till late to pay dues we didn't have enough money and the board thought it was prudent to wait till we made sure we had the funds to pay the bills at the end of the year.
At the board meeting last week we explored the problems with the pool and the lack of interest in paying the dues. This Board has tried everything to get the residents of this subdivision to realize how important it is for all of us to help with the expenses. Not just the pool, but all of the expenses. The pool is part of the subdivision and it should be maintained or filled in. It's your choice. The bottom line is we need all of you paying $16.67 a month or $200.00 to make our budget. The reason we came down on the dues to $200 from $350 was we thought it would encourage more residents to pay, but that has not happened with the enthusiasm we had hoped for. It's always the same people paying for the rest and in the Board's opinion, we don't think that will change anytime soon enough for us to solve our problem with paying our bills for the rest of the year.

That leaves us with the only choice, closing the pool early and taking a vote to decide whether to keep it closed for good. If we decide to close it, we will need to eventually drain it and have it filled in. We can't keep water in it as it will breed mosquitoes and if it's not swimmable then why pay for chemicals. If we are going to continue to maintain it we will need to increase the dues to $300.00 in order to make our budget, even though that will not keep it open this year.

I want to outline all of the ways this Board (and I'm sure Boards in the past) have attempted to encourage residents to pay their dues.

• Threatening letters - didn't work
• Nice letters - didn't work
• Calling on phone - didn't work
• Going door to door - didn't work (most people didn't answer door)
• Begging at front entrance - (why should we have to do this)
• Having a membership drive - (few residents came unless we stood out front and stopped them)
• Invoicing (residents paid but - not before March 1, when it was needed to know our budget for the year) this is costly as it takes at least $135.00 to mail to entire subdivision.

What this Board has done for the community to encourage residents to pay dues and take responsibility

• Set up an email newsletter program so that homeowners could be kept up-to-date on all of the issues.
• Tried to encourage the attitude of "All of one, One for All" so that we all assume responsibility for our share in the expenses and keeping our subdivision safe.
• Listened to the complaints of the residents and tried to solve them in a timely manner if we could.
• Tried to implement a Neighborhood Watch Program but not enough residents would sign up (what does that tell you).
• Set up a security team and a security blog and let the local police precinct know about it so we can take an active role in maintaining our security here in Mountain Cove. (thank you guys)
• Set up a communication blog where anyone in the subdivision can post comments and hear the latest news.
• Developed and maintain a website to direct and inform residents where to find information and have the ability to pay dues on-line with a credit card or in split payments.
• Been generally upbeat and positive about our community and hopeful about future cooperation.
• Completed front entrance landscaping and hired a landscaper to mow common areas.

This is not meant to be threatening we just want you to know all the facts. Our main problem here is apathy; we don't have enough residents that care about keeping the facilities maintained. An example would be, someone asked me when they were paying their dues if they had to pay for the front entrance landscaping and another asked if they had to pay for the pool since they didn't use it. There were a lot of complaints about the front entrance but now the front entrance is done and those who complained are still not paying dues. Some of the longtime residents aren't paying because we opened the pool and they think we shouldn't spend money on that. Others threatened not to pay unless we opened the pool. Well, how can the board be expected to please everyone here when our goals are so different. We are a community by the very fact that we are in the same community so why can't we pull together an act like one. A community cares about not only its individuals but takes responsibility for maintaining it's assets. It still amazes me that $16.67 a month is too much money to ask for to solve this dilemma.

We have scheduled 2 meetings- one on July 23 at 7:30pm and the other on Saturday July 25th at 10:30 so we hope to get one member from every household at least at one meeting. If you can't be there you can do an absentee vote if you contact me via email personally.

The vote will be taken on:
1.Increase the dues to $300 payable before the end of 2009 or $350 payable by March 1 2010. (If we don't have the funds next year by March 1 we will not re-open the pool.)

Even if we agree to increase the dues for next year, if we don't get 25 new members by the end of the month, we will still have to close the pool this year so we will have enough money for our 2009 year end expenses.


Or


2.Close the pool for good starting July 31 of this year.


These meetings are meant to allow the residents to have a voice in this decision and also have the ability to give your opinion on how to solve our issues. Please don't come to the meeting with suggestions on how to solve the issues unless you plan to personally act on them...we are all in this together.

Pool Security and Complaints

I have had some complaints about the pool gate being left open and the doors to the bathroom as well during the day when people are using the pool. Since we don't have the funds to hire someone to monitor the pool I suggest you remind your kids about not leaving the gate open and closing and locking the bathrooms when they leave the pool. You could also ask them to put the umbrellas down so they will remain in tack and not blow off into the woods.

This is our community and its not just the board members duty monitor the pool area and keep your kids in line. Those of you that are complaining it might be good to say something directly to the kids that are doing what you don't like or get their names and call their parents. We are going to continue to have this problem always unless we get enough money to be able to afford a lifeguard.

This summer has been a relatively quiet one as far as vandalism is concerned...there has been no vandalism and some climbing over the fence. I have gone down to the pool around 8:30pm to close it down for a couple of weeks now and the kids that were in the pool area were very cooperative in doing what I asked them to do to close it down. I think we need more communitcation with the kids and we need to include them in understanding this is our community and if we want it to be better then all of us have to participate, not just complain.

Pool Party a Success!

A big shout out those of you that helped with the pool party yesterday, it was a big success. You can view the pictures here and they are compliments of Dale Burgess of Dalbu Visual Productions
https://cid-f7a069160413bd5e.skydrive.live.com/browse.aspx/Mtn%20Cove%20Pool%20Party?ct=photos&sa=877283548

The weather was perfect aside for some umbrellas that took off into the woods a few times. Hot dogs were perfectly made by Jim Edwards. Cheryl Grattan showed up early to help set-up and Lisa Worley came a little later to help with serving lunch. Marty Barrett brought a cheesecake that we somehow managed to turn into more slices than we could eat and there was a wonderful plate of mouth watering watermelon from Tafee and Steve. Gale Burgess brought some cookies and Cheryl brought the brownies. We are still trying to figure out who ate the most hot dogs.
Our decorations were provided by the artistic family of Deborah Simmonds.
Pool security was provided by Qualmi (sorry if I spelled that wrong) Simmonds who promised me he would lock up after everyone went home later that evening.

A big welcome to all the new members and the old members who came for the first time. Were glad you're here!

All in all it was a great day!