Month: April 2014

Our request for help building a web site was answered by one of our home owners. Phil Thompson volunteered to step up and designed this web site for our association. Phil is a Front End Web Developer. You can check out his qualifications and his online portfolio at  www.thompsoncs.com. If you need web services, Phil is your man. Thank you Phil. Nice work!

In September a new board took office for a 2 year term. The position of Pond Treatment Coordinator was made a board position bringing the board to five members. The first agenda item was to thank Andrew Callinan and Cathy Knight for serving as ESHA president and vice president for 9 years.

Left to right: Secretary Jayme Artisensi, Treasurer Debra Masters, President John Wolke, Vice President Gary Verke, Pond Treatment Coordinator Jim Wilkinson

Starting Balance 11/01/2013	$       268.50
Projected Expenses
Pond Treatment	$    6,442
DNR Permits	$    1,125
Chara Treatment	$    1,750
Fish Stocking	$       500
Newsletter	$       250
Association Insurance	$       450
Facility Rental  for Annual Mtg	$         33
Total Projected Expenses	$  10,550
Projected Deposits	$  11,100
Expected Balance  11/01/2014	$       818.50

For those of you that are long-time Evergreen Shores residents, you may recall that Bucher Park was last updated in about 1990.  This past year our City Council approved a budget of $580,000 to again renovate most of the park.  The primary improvements completed this summer were:

• New plazas and picnic shelters at the park entrance and adjacent to the baseball and soccer field areas.
• All new playground equipment
• Rebuilt trails and new trail connections
• Much improved drainage of the baseball and soccer fields
• An expanded infiltration basin to treat storm water runoff into Kerry Pond.

Two “observation openings” were also created along the pond edge to allow for a more scenic view from the park area.  They will be completed next spring.  There will NOT be fishing docks placed on those two sites.

Having this beautiful park located adjacent to our neighborhood is great for our families’ ongoing use, and of course adds to the value of all of our homes!

2013 was an interesting spring, as winter hung on as long as possible.  The late spring, combined with ample amounts of rain, led to a rather weedy spring and summer.  To add to the perfect weed storm, our permits to the DNR were delayed due to a mandatory pre-treatment inspection by a DNR representative.  This pushed back our treatment about 3 weeks, so weeds didn’t actually start to regress until late July.  Once the weeds died down, the ponds were more pleasant to all of the users.

Lake Restoration was once again the company we used. They were helpful throughout the process by facilitating the DNR permitting and answering any questions we had regarding treatment.

Regarding finances for treatment, there seems to be a constant need to raise revenue annually by the DNR, and permit fees for lake treatment is a line item that they want to increase.  With that said, we need to be proactive and plan for a possible increase in the coming years, along with the usual 2-3% annual inflationary increase that the treatment companies pass along to the homeowners associations.

For budget year 2013, we did not collect money from homeowners on the waterway because there were ample funds in the ESHA checking account to take care of all ESHA business activities including the treatment of all ponds.   For this 2014 budget year we are asking for a $15 increase from the 2012 dues to rebuild our account and continue all ESHA business activities including treating the ponds and keeping our shorelines and waterways beautiful in order to maintain our property values.