Ah, the Glory of Garbage

I am learning that serving on an HOA board of directors involves a significant amount of cleaning up other people's garbage. Sometimes more literally than others.

Notice anything odd about where the dumpster at the junction of Johanna Ave and Hawthorne Trace is right now?



Right. It's sitting outside its normal container. You're very astute. Why would the garbage truck driver put it there? Hint:



Correct! Because it wouldn't fit with all the garbage left there that people didn't bother to put inside the dumpster.

So guess who got to spend part of his late afternoon doing trash duty? Right again, amigo! Your humble blog author - slash - friendly neighborhood garbage man. Much to the great disappointment of the ants, flies, roaches and at least one toad that had come to feed on the insects.

By the way, if you're trying to diet but struggle to curb your appetite, clean up a dumpster area. That'll clear your food craving right up!

I could have waited for the person we pay to pick up trash around the community to do it. Didn't know we had one of those? Yep. We pay someone roughly $200 a month to pick up the trash that we're too lazy to put into the dumpsters ourselves.

Maybe I should have. Maybe if more people see how disgusting the dumpster areas get, they'd put the trash inside the dumpsters, like the sign on the gate instructs. As it is, there is some sentiment among board members to install surveillance cameras to identify the people who seem to insist on trashing our community.



They won't get any argument from me.

Community Security

One of the efforts discussed at the last HOA meeting was to set up a list of people willing to be called to help handle routine security matters that don't rise to the level of something that requires police involvement. They would be things such as confronting people at the pool after hours, people causing minor disturbances and solicitors.

People who noticed such activity could call people on the list until two or three who were available could go as a group to greet the offender.

Again, we're not asking that people who volunteer for this do police work. Nor are we discouraging people from not calling the police if they see criminal activity. This would be for matters in our community that need not involve the police but that should be addressed.

People willing to do this can e-mail communitywatch1@verizon.net.