February 10, 2006

From your HOA President, Tim Eckardt:

Last night, we had the second attempt at our Annual Meeting.  The proxies and the attendance at our first one did not give us a quorum.  Thanks to everyone who sent in proxies and/or attended either of our meetings!  Your participation in our community’s affairs is not only appreciated but vital.  For the next Board Meeting on February 28 you will be seeing new signs posted in 3 spots around the neighborhood and you SHOULD be able to see the time and location from the car.  This is just another attempt at making sure that you know you are welcome and have every opportunity to participate in YOUR HOA.

Congratulations, to our new Board member Bill Rowsell and to our re-elected member Jim Jenkins!

We are very pleased that we have had some excellent response to our landscaping contest.  So far, Tagawa Garden, Pine Lane Nursery, and Cherry Creek Tree Farms have committed to gift certificates for our Grand Prizes.  We will also have judges from some of these companies as well.  Most of them will also be offering our homeowners discounts for shopping with them and they will be printed in our next newsletter later in March.  If you plan to start your work before that, let me know and I believe that I could get one to you.  Please remember that you will need to submit a Design Review Request before beginning your work & it would not be recommended that you wait until the last minute as we might not be able to process your request in time.  We are looking at doing the judging in late June.

Keep in mind that as you are considering the status of your lawns for this year, if you have sod it must be kept alive.  SB100 allows for a lawn to be xeriscaped but it does not allow for lawns to be left for dead.  Some lawns will most likely need to be re-sod this year so please make plans for that in the Spring.

The Board and community volunteers have decided to take matters into our own hands concerning the condition of our flower beds.  As I am sure you well know, we have not had much color in our beds for the last couple of years.  This year we have found a way of having both phenomenal color and giving homeowners an opportunity to exercise the pride they have in our community.  We will be wholesale purchasing Tidal Wave petunias primarily and will be planting with community volunteers.  We would love to have AT LEAST two people per bed, so if you would be willing to spend a couple of hours on a Saturday morning in late May or early June planting some flowers, please call me at 720-939-4663 or e-mail tim@timeckardt.com.  We might even have a little barbeque afterward to celebrate our community pride.

You are probably wondering why the landscaping has not begun at Orchard & Gun Club!  ECCV is going to be cutting a pipeline in the vicinity of that area & we have decided to wait a bit until we are sure that our new landscaping will not be impacted by this project.  Keep in mind that when that line goes through Orchard will be closed at Gun Club for a few days sometime this Spring.

We are looking forward to our next Social Committee event – Spring Fling 2006!  It will be held on Saturday, April 15 from 1-3pm at Antelope Ridge Elementary.  There will be two Egg Hunts at 1:00pm for ages 5 and under and another for K-5^th grades.  There will also be a bouncy Castle, popcorn, cotton candy, and more!  If the weather is bad, we will move it inside the school. Bring your children to enjoy this first community event of the season.

The Board is interested in your opinion.  The Copperleaf Development will be building to the North of our neighborhood and their hope is that Tempe will be able to connect to their streets.  This will give our homeowners a more direct route to Quincy and Chenango but will also add to the amount of traffic in our neighborhood which might even consist of construction traffic & shoppers of Saddle Rock Marketplace.  There is a chance that the Copperleaf Development District has the power to open this street without our approval, but it may be possible to keep Tempe as a dead end.  Please let us know what you think.  We will be trying to add a page to the website for this topic but for now, please send me an e-mail on your thoughts or questions to tim@timeckardt.com

Tim

October 14, 2005

From your HOA President, Tim Eckardt:

In the last day or so, you should have received the notice from Westwind Management Group that they are going to be our new management company effective November 1, 2005.  This year, the Board had become more and more dissatisfied with the level of service that we had been receiving.  We heard many complaints from homeowners and we have all witnessed the covenant violations that had not been tended to for so long.  We let them know what we expected and they opted to not comply with our wishes.

You should be comforted to know that your Board did a great deal of work for several weeks interviewing management companies, as well as the Board members and homeowners who they serve.  We are very pleased with our choice of Westwind and feel strongly that they will be a great fit for our community.  Rest assured however, that your Board will not be handing over the reigns and hoping for the best.  We will be very involved with the decision making and working with Westwind to make sure that they provide you with the service that you deserve.

Your Board is also pleased to announce that we have chosen Tom Tanner to complete the term of Shannon Campana who recently vacated her position.  We are very appreciative of Shannon’s work on the Board, but she decided that she had just too many commitments to spend the time necessary with so much going on.  We interviewed several people who ran for the Board last year and found that Tom had actually tied the vote but lost the coin toss to narrowly miss making the Board.  Tom has been a quick study and has already proven to be a very valuable member.

STOP!  We are very pleased to announce that the County did honor our appeal to put up stop signs at Orchard Road and Zante Way.  We are all going to be much safer when traveling through that intersection!  Very soon, you will begin seeing the landscaping work started there as well.  We have been waiting on the County to decide whether they would be willing to shrink that large median to the same size as the one across the street.  At this point in time, they claim that they do not have the budget for it however.  We are going to continue to appeal to them but are proceeding with the landscaping which should begin very soon.

Because of the management change, we have decided to move our annual meeting to Tuesday, January 10, 2006.  In the near future, you will be receiving official notices of the meeting and requests for “Letters of Interest” from those who will be seeking to run for the Board.

We did receive several calls from folks who are interested in volunteering or who are interested in the Senior’s Group.  We will be following up with the Seniors very soon to discuss possible meeting dates.  Please call me and let me know if you would be interested in meeting to discuss plans for your group.

The legal beagles encouraged me to change the plans that I had for weeding the lawns of vacant homes.  Apparently there is some potential for liability if we enter a property uninvited--even to pull weeds!  Some of your Board members did get out and help someone who had been in the hospital to do some sprucing of the lawn however.  We and other volunteers are very willing to help out people who really need it so PLEASE call and let us know of these situations.

At this point, our website www.SRRHOA.com has had 210 visitors.  We still have some work to do on it but it does have some good content already.  Remember, we would like to hear from you on the kind of content that you would like to see on the site.

You can reach me at 720-939-HOME (4663) or at tim@timeckardt.com.  As of November 1, you should make your business calls to Westwind Management Group at 303-369-1800. Please report covenant violations & other general complaints by e-mail to Molly Ryan, our new manager, at molly@westwindmanagement.com.  If you do not have access to e-mail call the office number.

Tim

September 1, 2005

From your President, Tim Eckardt:

I am very pleased to introduce you to something new that your HOA Board is doing to keep you, our customers/residents, informed.  The primary complaint by far that I hear from talking to people around the neighborhood is the lack of communication and the feeling that the HOA is not doing anything for them.  I can assure you that your HOA is and has been working for you, but we have not been communicating those things to you.  You have a Board that is truly interested in reaching out to our residents and trying to keep you informed on what the Board and management company is doing. 

We now realize that the quarterly newsletter is not enough to get information to you in a timely manner so we are going to begin mailing another communication to you in between.  This communication will be in the format of “Board News”, and will be a summary of what the HOA has been doing on your behalf.

First, we are VERY excited to announce to you that we have FINALLY negotiated a settlement for the landscaping around the Gun Club and Orchard Road intersection.  We have received a check and the work will commence very soon.  We hope to have the project completed this Fall.  A separate issue that is ongoing at this intersection is that our request for a 4-way stop has been denied by the county.  We are currently appealing this decision and hope that the county will change its mind as this intersection has turned into a pretty dangerous place.

In case you are not aware, the greenbelt areas in our neighborhood are part of the development plan of the Arapahoe County Parks and Recreation.  You will be happy to know that some of us on the Board have been to an ACPR board meeting and have been  requesting that resources be devoted to Saddle Rock Ridge.  They are in the process of budgeting for next year and we have been told unofficially that they plan on budgeting $200,000 toward our community and hope to spend similar amounts in future years.  We have recommended that first attention go to paving trails through many of our greenbelts.  You may or may not be aware, that on rainy days our children are walking to school and bus stops through muddy greenbelts.  Another area that we have suggested landscaping is the vacant lot at the corner of Ida and Riviera next to the open space.  That corner is at the edge of our community and has been a poor reflection to passersby for many years.

You may have been noticing a number of street signs in our neighborhood that have been leaning.  I have made note of each of them and have contacted the county department that is in charge of sign maintenance.  I sent them a list of 45 signs that are in some degree of lean so if you know of one that has not been corrected by now, please let me know.  Signs, sidewalks and street problems are the types of things that will probably not be attended to unless reported so feel free to call or send an e-mail and I will forward it on to the proper county department.

Along with this additional communication, we have further opportunity to make appeals for help.  I hope that you are beginning to realize that you have a board who is working very hard for you, but we could do so much more if we could get some help from you.  If you have pride in your community and have the ability to donate some of your time,  there are many areas where we need help.  If you will contact me, I will be happy to suggest something or allow you to suggest a need and begin addressing it yourself.  Some areas that we definitely need help with are the Social Committee, Design Review Committee, and website committee.

Most of the lawns in our community have been well landscaped and well cared for, but there are a few homes that have a considerable amount of weeds.  Since this is a covenant violation, these homes have been receiving violation letters from the management company.  We know however that we have many vacant homes in our community as well as some homeowners who are disabled and can not tend to their lawns like they wish they could.  I am organizing as many volunteers as I can to spend a couple of hours out in the community on a weekend or after work some evening, pulling some weeds and helping to beautify our neighborhood.  If you would like to help or if you know of a home that needs some help, I would love to talk with you!

One of my pet projects is the creation of a Senior’s Group in our neighborhood.  We have a number of seniors in SRR and I will not try and guess what kind of group you would like to have.  I will depend upon some senior volunteers to let me know what they would be interested in.  As soon as I hear from some people, I will be happy to help set up an introductory meeting to get you started.  I feel that this could be one of the most meaningful things that we could do in our community as I know of some seniors who would really like to get involved and make some new friends.

Lastly, we are in the process of creating an SRR website.  We have reserved the domain name www.SRRHOA.com and it is online but we have not filled in much content yet.  This will be another way of showcasing our community on the internet and getting information to you like event calendars and HOA documents.  We would love to have anyone who is experienced at building websites give us a hand.  We would also like to hear from you on the kind of content that you would like to see on the site.

Lastly, the Social Committee is working on a Fall Festival for the later part of October.  We will be getting details about that to you soon, but if anyone would like to help make this event even better, the committee would love to have you.  Let me know and I will be happy to put you in touch with the Director – Liz Butler.

I hope you are as excited as we are about this new line of communication!  I hope you are also excited about getting involved in the community to make it a more enjoyable and valuable place to live.  I look forward to hearing from you and working with you.

You can reach me at 720-939-HOME (4663) or at tim@timeckardt.com.  You should still make your business calls, report covenant violations and other general complaints to Vista Management, but I am open to hearing from anyone in the community if you would like to speak with me.

Tim