ARC Annual Report 2018

Greetings to all Villages of Garrison Creek Homeowners…

The Architectural Review Committee wants to thank each of you for attending your 2018 HOA Annual Meeting, and for this opportunity for ARC to update you on a couple events occurring during this past year.

Of major importance is the expansion of ARC to three members with the addition of Tom Emmerson. To the surprise of none, Tom has been a valuable and key member of ARC. Many of you may remember that Tom is a former President of the MPMA Board and a former member of ARC.

One of ARC’s biggest challenges over the past years has been in the area of Parking. As most of you know, ARC has been responsible for issuing “Temporary Guest Parking Permits” and Jim’s wife has told him many times that this task has been taking a majority of his ARC time. So, to keep a happy house, ARC passed this responsibility on to the VGC Phase Leaderships. This appears to be working very well, and it should, as who best knows the needs of each Phase… Phase Leaders or ARC? Phase Leaders of course. ARC still continues to issue “Temporary Medical Parking Permits”, and “Guest Permits” exceeding 14-days when special circumstances arise.

Next spring ARC will be asking each Phase to work with ARC by watching for parking violations within their Phase, and informing ARC of repeat violators where ARC involvement may be needed. This approach will eliminate the need to pay an outside contractor to monitor for parking violations. Some of you are already notifying ARC when you notice parking and other violations, and this is really appreciated.

Other large challenges have to do with fence maintenance, painting of our Homes, and the removal of items on front porches and front yards that are prohibited by the CC&R’s or the Land Use Standards. The ARC has received several emails and texts informing ARC where Land Use Standards have been violated, and by casual observation ARC has additionally noted several violations of the Land Use Standards. Some of these violations have been subject to fines, however ARC has been lenient this past year and has not levied any fines. Next year ARC may not be as lenient. Many of us fail to remember that the Land Use Standards are by reference included in the VGC “CC and R’s” which we all signed and agreed to follow when purchasing our homes. And, here is where ARC wants to remind you that we need all VGC HOA members, Renters, and Guests to work with ARC and adhere to the Land Use Standards. To help in this regard, ARC has prepared copies of the latest “Land Use Standards” (dated: December 2018) which will soon be hand delivered to your doors. These will also be available on the The Villages Web Site (if not already there).

Recently ARC requested volunteer assistance for some simple tasks within the Villages that we wanted to complete before the cold weather set in. However, we needed a few more volunteers to enable meeting our goal, other than one (1) Board Member and two (2) ARC members only two (2) HOA members stepped forward. Many thanks go to VGC new residents, John and Yvonne Jaso, for their work on improving the appearance of our Bridges.

Thanks also go to Roger Williams, Ray Goff, and Scott Towsley for all their work keeping our Common Area parks and walking trails looking great. Many of you volunteered to work with them to clean up falling branches, and weeds along the walking paths, your time and energy is greatly appreciated and helps to reduce contractor maintenance costs.

ARC has recently obtained a few new street sign boards which, in the spring, will be used to replace some existing broken horizontal street sign boards, and a new “Yield” sign should soon be installed at the East end of Garrison Village Way. Other new signage next year will include additional signs for “Park on Other Side of Street”, “Private Road” and “Speed Limit” signs along Garrison Way, “Watch for Humans” signs, and a few “Blind Intersection” signs. These additional signs will be locally made and similar in design to existing signs.

Please remember, the ARC is here to set standards and monitor compliance to keep our community attractive, and preserve our property values. But sometimes it is a real challenge when a few homeowners don’t follow the simple rules. The ARC is empowered to levy fines to Homeowners, however, we are not the police and really don’t want to act as police.

There are three (3) final items that ARC would like you to think about:

  1. The MPMA Board and the ARC, only ask you for compliance to our established standards and policies – we desire to keep the community safe, looking nice, and a place people want to live. So please work with us, and help to keep our property values up.
  2. “Pedestrian Safety within our neighborhoods”. You will probably see and hear a lot about this throughout the next year. Please remember that our streets are shared by both vehicles and humans, we have a 15 mph speed limit throughout our Villages, and there are many “Blind Intersections”. So please drive carefully, watch your speed, and watch for children, other vehicles, mobility scooters, and small and large folks that may be walking or skateboarding in the streets. And,
  3. Ask yourselves if you are doing your share? We only need an hour of everyone’s time to accumulate more than 250 hours. That would be at least sixty 4-hour days. Can you imagine what could be accomplished during that time to further beautify our community?

Thank you for being here today, and for being part of The Villages of Garrison Creek.

Do you have an idea? Want to be on a committee? Want to help?
Ask any Board member TODAY, where you can contribute to help our community.

Have a Very Merry Christmas and a Safe and Happy New Year

Your Architectural Review Committee,

Tom Emmerson
Dennis Olson
Jim Murphy

VillagesARC@gmail.com

“Don’t put off until Tomorrow, When you can volunteer Today”