FOUND and Meeting

This very sweet, loving female cat walked up to someone's front door in our community. If you have lost her, you can contact Jessica at 813-468-8077.

This serves as another reminder that no pets are allowed outside without their owner's supervision. I saw a raccoon feeding on cat food someone left on their front porch. The food people leave outside for their pets often disappears thanks to other animals they did not intend to feed, and invites nuisance animals to the community.

Also, a reminder that our last scheduled HOA meeting of 2014 happens THURSDAY (not the usual day of the week) at 7 p.m. at the dining area of the Target store on Bloomingdale Ave. (also not the usual meeting location).

We'll talk tree replacement, and anything else that concerns residents of St. Charles Place. As always you can bring issues to the HOA board's attention by emailing board@stcharlesplace.us.

Street Lights Out? Tell TECO.

Tampa Electric maintains our street lights. If you ever notice one not working correctly, just make a note of the number on the pole (it's two sets of five digits), and fill out a simple form on the TECO website.

Here's the link: https://secure.tampaelectric.com/tampaelectricsecure/forms/residential/streetlightout/.

Next Meeting & Tree Replacement

Our next meeting, and the last one planned for 2014, will happen Thursday, November 20. We cannot get our regular meeting room, so we will meet at the dining area in the Super Target store on Bloomingdale Avenue. Start time is the usual 7 p.m.

A longtime discussion topic at board meetings is the long-term need to get some of the large oak trees away from our buildings. As they continue to grow, they will encroach ever more on our buildings, and eventually endanger their slab foundations.

That would be bad.

With an arborist and our landscape company, the board has begun a scheduled plan to remove the troublesome trees and replace them with ones better suited to live near buildings. We have narrowed the list of replacement trees to three kinds that stood out for their combination of attractiveness, heartiness in our climate, and ability to thrive close to structures and paving.

They are Dahoon Holly, Crepe Myrtle, Southern Red Cedar and Ligustrum Patio. Scroll down to see photos of each.

We’d like owners’ feedback on which you prefer. You can email board@stcharlesplace or show up in person. We would entertain others not among those three, but those are the ones that our landscaper and arborist recommend. Click on the images to see larger versions.

Crepe Myrtle:

Dahoon Holly:

Ligustrum Patio:

Cedar:

I might not have the correct cedar tree here, because I don't think we'd want them that large, but it's an evergreen and the photo should give you a decent idea.

We would not go exclusively with one kind throughout the community, but rather a mix to give our landscaping variety while having trees that work better close to buildings. This will be a long-term project with the oaks causing the most risk getting priority for removal.

The trees will likely be much smaller than the ones they replace, but in a few years, they will grow and mature into ones that give our community its distinctive look, without the danger of harming the integrity of our buildings.

Again, send thoughts to board@stcharlesplace.us.

New Board of Directors - 2015 Fees Unchanged

Sorry I did not get to this earlier. You'd think I would have reported sooner on the new HOA Board of Directors since it decided to make me its president. But we did reach a quorum for our annual meeting and we elected a new board, with two new members and three holdovers from last year.

So here you go, the St. Charles Place HOA Board of Directors for the next year:

John McQuiston, President
Lauren Brusa, Vice President
Denise Taraschi, Treasurer
Randall Boston, Secretary
Rachel Modrow, At-Large Member

As always, you can reach the entire board by emailing board@stcharlesplace.us.

Also, as always, and it's even more important that I mention it now, but I created this blog myself as a resource for residents and owners and it represents my own opinions, and not necessarily those of the St. Charles Place HOA. I will try to make clear when something is a board of directors decision, and just my own opinion.

Also, the outgoing board passed the budget for 2015. Fees will remain the same. We might still have some catching up to do to get our reserves as full as we should have them, but it looks like we can make progress on that even without raising dues for now.

Let's hope!

Please Return Your Proxy Forms

If you own a home in St. Charles Place, you should have seen notice of our annual meeting in your mailbox. It's hard to miss, even in the sea of Winn-Dixie flyers and other junk mail, because it came in a large white envelope with St. Charles Place HOA as the return address.

Please open that right now if you have not. Inside is the proxy form for the meeting. This is the form you can use to designate someone to vote in your place (as your proxy) in the annual election for the board. But the form plays a more important role: it also serves as your consent for the meeting to happen in your absence.

We need 30% of homeowners either to attend the meeting in person or to return the proxy form for us to reach a quorum, which is the number of voters we need to make the meeting official. We need the quorum to elect the board of directors for the next year.

If we can't elect a board, our HOA could go into receivership, which basically means that we'd pay lawyers a boatload of money to do what five of our fellow homeowners currently do for free. So, PLEASE, fill out and return your proxy form today. It could save you a lot of money.

Do it even if you plan to attend the meeting. If you show up, they throw out your proxy and you count, so you don't forfeit any rights by returning the proxy. If something comes up last minute and you can't make the meeting, we have the proxy to count.

You can send it through the regular mail (return envelope provided). You can fax it back. You can also scan and email your completed form in.  The return addresses and fax number are all right on the form.  If you have any questions, or can't find your form, email board@stcharlesplace.us, and we can email you another copy.

Oh, and the meeting itself is next Tuesday, October 28 at the usual meeting place, the River of Life Christian Center on Krycul Ave. That's about 1 mile from our community.

Pool Problems

Our property manager informed the board that someone broke the gate at the pool and tampered with with the pool equipment, which partially drained the pool.

This will cost money to fix. Money that we all pay because someone vandalized our property. If you see something suspicious anywhere in the community, you won't only do your civic duty by reporting it to police, you might also save your wallet a favor.

The HOA has invested in a new security system at the pool, which soon will help us identify people who break in and/or do damage in the pool area. Even then, nothing works as well as people caring enough about where they live to keep their eyes open and report what they see.

If you ever see something that looks wrong and wonder why no on has addressed the problem, email board@stcharlesplace.us and ask. It could be that no one on the board or the property manager has noticed the problem.

Reminder: HOA Meeting Tomorrow Night

The St. Charles Place monthly meeting happens tomorrow night at 7 p.m. at River of Life Christian Center.

This is the meeting at which the board should go over the next year's budget.

The board also has an opening after one of its directors resigned.

Your Community Needs You

A member of the HOA board of directors resigned today, citing overwhelming commitments at home and at work. This creates an immediate opening on the HOA board. If you want a bigger role in how the HOA runs itself, serving on the board will do that. You can help decide how the HOA spends its money, how it sets priorities, and how it serves all residents in St. Charles Place.

This is especially important because the board president announced at the last HOA meeting that he would not run for another term when his current one ends next month. A third member (your humble blog author) would like to take a year off if suitable candidates come forward to run for the board.

That's the thing. Only one time since the turnover from the developer-controlled board to the one the owners run have we had more than five people run for the five board seats. Two or three years ago, we had six.

Yes, it involves some homework. No, it does not pay. But if you have concerns about anything going on here, if you think things could go better, if you think we can get more out of our HOA fees, this is your chance to help make it happen.

The board can appoint a replacement at Tuesday's meeting, which happens at River of Life Christian Center on Krycul Ave. at 7 p.m. Go around to the back entrance. Items on the agenda include hashing out the budget for next year.

$32 More a Month?

As someone who has never missed a meeting since owners took over the St. Charles Place HOA, I confess: I hate HOA meetings. Really. I hate most all meetings, actually. They usually take time away from doing either something productive, or something fun.

So I get it when you say you have better things to do September 23 at 7 p.m. than go to the monthly HOA meeting, especially with the annual meeting coming in October that I will harass you to attend.

But you need to come to this one. This one is the one in which the board hashes out the budget for 2015. The budget meeting itself in October is a 15-minute rubber stamp for the budget that gets decided this month.  The preliminary budget from our property manager proposes a $32 hike in monthly HOA fees.

Thirty-two dollars more. Every month.

Don’t like that idea? Neither do I. But the biggest expenses we have to operate the community (insurance, electricity, water), won’t go anywhere. We managed to shave off a little money in the insurance rate for next year, but not so much to offset rises in other areas, including our reserves, to which our reserve study last year revealed that we had not contributed enough. Not by a drastic amount, but enough that we have to play catch up.

So the board needs your ideas. Can we do something more cost effectively? Is there an alternative to our current landscaping that we could more easily (and cheaply) maintain? Is there something more we can do to maintain the integrity of our buildings so that they better resist wear-and-tear that requires fixing?

Pull out the copy of the budget you got from last year. The categories have not changed. If you don’t have yours, email the board (board@stcharlesplace.us) for a copy. Look for things that the board might have overlooked, or things it can explore, to save money and reduce the hit to our wallets a $32 fee hike would mean every month.

September 23 at 7 p.m. at River of Life Christian Center on Krycul Ave. That’s the time and place to have your say.  

Actions Taken at HOA Meeting

In a lightly attended meeting last night, some of the same issues the St. Charles Place HOA board has heard before cropped up again. Our property manager was on vacation and did not attend, so some questions owners raised remain unanswered.

The board approved a bid from AIO Services to clean out our gutters. Finally! The failure of our property manager to take care of this sooner despite repeated requests caused frustration among some board members.

A couple pieces need to fall into place before the new security and card key system goes into effect at the pool. When it does, your key will not open the pool gates. The HOA will mail out new key cards by certified mail. This does mean, unfortunately, that we will all have to trek to the post office to sign for them.

The board has requested that the property manager get bids on seal coating and striping our streets and parking lots. It will cause some inconvenience when it happens, but it’s past time to do this preventive maintenance to extend the lifespan of our paved roads.

One owner on Great Carlisle Court mentioned cars parked on the street making it difficult for her to get out of her home. Our community documents prohibit street parking, and the offending cars can get towed after ticketing.

The problem enforcing the rule is that none of the board members live in that area, and if the property manager writes tickets on one of his two monthly visits, he has no way to follow up, and the board members have no way to know which cars to have towed away.

To that end, board member John McQuiston (also your humble blog author) asked whether the board could form a traffic committee consisting of non-board members who could write tickets and call for towing. That way someone on Great Carlisle affected by the issue, and willing to help combat it, could do so.

One owner expressed concern about darkened streets due to light outages. Tampa Electric maintains all the streetlights in the community, and anyone can report ones that are out. Every light has two rows of numbers plainly visible on the pole. Simply enter those numbers on this page on the TECO website: https://secure.tampaelectric.com/tampaelectricsecure/forms/residential/streetlightout/ and TECO will take care of it.

TECO crews do non-emergency repairs on a fixed schedule, so if it’s our turn, the light could come back on the next day. Or it could take a month. But any one of us has a simple way to report lights out.

One owner worries about trees hanging close to his property. The board has a list of trees that it plans to have trimmed, or removed if necessary. If you have one that you think poses a danger, email the board (board@stcharlesplace.us) so we can add that tree to the list if it’s not there already.

As it was, a brief but strong storm August 21 blew down part of a tree on a neighboring property onto a couple of units on Marble Fawn Place. Our buildings withstood the blows and a tree service cut the parts of the tree apart and took them away the next day.

I think that the neighbor whose tree caused us to pay the tree service should bear responsibility for that cost. It’s a question the board has put to our property manager.

Finally, and something I will write about again, at least one board member says he will not run again when elections happen October 28. Another prefers not to run if a replacement will volunteer.

That means we need people to step up and serve. If we don’t have a board, our HOA could go into what’s called receivership, and we’d pay lawyers truckloads of money to do what our fellow homeowners currently do for free.

For the same reason, we need 30% of eligible owners to show up or return proxy forms for the annual meeting. So make plans to attend, or at least keep an eye on your mailbox for the proxy form. You can sign it, scan it and email it back to the board.

HOA Meeting Tomorrow Night

The St. Charles Place HOA monthly meeting happens tomorrow night at the usual time and location, 7 p.m. at the River of Life Christian Center on Krycul Ave. Map of the meeting location is below. Use the door at the rear of the building.

All homeowners are welcome.


View Larger Map

Special Meeting Thursday

The HOA board plans to meet Thursday so that one of its members can show the rest how to use an organizing tool called box.com. That probably has no appeal to you but because four board members plan to attend, that constitutes a quorum for an official HOA meeting which every homeowner is invited to attend.

It will happen Thursday at 7 p.m. at the Super Target on Bloomingdale. The board will meet in the small dining area at the front of the store.

HOA Meeting Tomorrow Night

The St. Charles Place HOA monthly meeting happens tomorrow night at the usual time and location, 7 p.m. at the River of Life Christian Center on Krycul Ave. Map of the meeting location is below. Use the door at the rear of the building.


View Larger Map

HOA Meeting Recap

We had only two board members at tonight's meeting, so it did not vote on anything. That raises the fact that the board still has a vacancy. If you want to have a voice in running your community, email the board at board@stcharlesplace.us. (clickable link in the sidebar column to the right -->)

Or just show up at the next meeting. The board does not really govern St. Charles Place, but you can play a role in bettering where we live by serving.

That said, here's a preview of the meeting minutes, as recorded by your humble blog author.

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Present: President David Hey, Secretary John McQuiston, Property Manager John Calcagni. With no quorum, the board could not vote on anything.

Owners present: 2

Owner Open Forum: Owner asked about oak tree removal and what will replace them. She also asked about cleaning the mailbox area. We're getting bids on pressure washing all the buildings, because we've replaced the vendor who had done the cleaning.

Another owner asked about getting trees that have grown over units on Spencer Ridge trimmed back. She also expressed concern about people parking on the street sometimes making it impossible for her to back out of her driveway. Her other issue is cats that a neighbor feeds outside. The HOA can send a letter to the homeowner about the nuisance that the strays cause.

Finally, this same owner became the second one in as many months to complain about philodendron plants encroaching on walkways, and having branches reach toward her building. John Calcagni will direct our landscape vendor Patrick Brockus from Gulf Coast Outdoors to have his crews check for creeping philodendrons.

The security system at the pool is nearly installed. You can see the cameras up. A card key system has also gone in that will replace the physical key entry. This will give us the ability to restrict access to units that are current on their dues. The community documents permit stripping owners more than 90 days behind on their dues of the right to community amenities.

(Aside: If you're at the pool and someone shows up outside the gate without a key, please do NOT let them in. There's a reason that they don't have a key. We have had people who don't even live here use - and sometimes damage - our pool.)

Next step in the satellite dish and illegal deck plan is to send attorney letters to people who did not respond to the initial letter.

The engineering study of soundness of our buildings should get to us this week. This is the inspection of our buildings we commissioned to see if the water intrusion and other structural defects have come because KB Home did a poor job constructing them. If so, the next step is deciding how to get KB to pay to remedy the problems.

Our new janitorial vendor AIO Servces begins July 1. The board fired the previous one because of poor performance, lack of accountability, and bad customer relations. AIO has done work painting some of our buildings. Our community will get better cleaning of the dumpster areas.

We got a contract from a property manager to handle the renting of the units that the HOA has taken possession of through foreclosure. This happens if the HOA forecloses on a unit for lack of dues payment that a bank doesn't foreclose on.

Board member John McQuiston raised the persistent issue of the clogged gutters. John Calcagni put it near the top of his task list.

Adjournment: 7:57 p.m.

Next Meeting: July 22, 2014

Got Issues?

Not those kinds of issues. The monthly HOA meeting can't help you with those. But if you have a concern related to your community, River of Life Christian Center is the place to be tomorrow night at 7 p.m. It's on Krycul Ave, about a mile from St. Charles Place. See the map below, and maybe see you at the meeting!


View Larger Map

Meeting Last Night

First, apologies for forgetting to give you advance notice here of last night's HOA meeting. The board did post notice at the mailboxes, and had the signs out yesterday, but I will try to do better here.

Here is some of what you missed.

We still chip away slowly at the amount of delinquent dues, down 3 percent last month. Almost three-fourths of our delinquent dues come from our 17 largest in debt accounts. The board got reassurance from our property manager John Calcagni that we continue to do all that we can to collect what people owe the HOA. A lot of it we'll lose through foreclosures, and some to bankruptcy.

Speaking of foreclosures, we had 16 in May, two fewer than the previous month, so that situation continues to improve. But many of the units recently have sold to investors who rent them out, and that changes the character of the community.

In the open forum for owners, one had several questions. She asked about efforts to police the dumpsters, which have seen much more dumping, and general messiness from people unwilling, or unable (use smaller trash bags!) to get their trash into the dumpsters. The board has looked at, and still awaits prices for, a camera system that would keep watch on the dumpsters.

It also approved a new janitorial services contract that will bring cleaning crews here five days a week to clean up after us. That comes at double the cost of the previous contract, but the board judged that we can't live in a mess, and if we won't clean up after ourselves, we'll have to pay someone to do it.

On the cleaning front, John Calcagni expects a second bid on the pressure washing service that the board recognizes has gone neglected too long. It hopes to have a regular schedule of cleanings going again soon. Doors for the dumpster enclosure at the east end of Kensington Park have been removed for repair after someone apparently ran their car into it.

Finally, the inquisitive owner wondered about more steps the board can take to enforce parking restrictions in the community. We're not allowed to park on the streets here, but people still either do not know this, or do not care. She suggested painting curbs red to indicate no parking on the streets.

We still await installation of the new security system at the pool, approved by the board several months ago now. When that happens, the HOA will mail the new key cards to unit owners. They would have the task of getting the cards to their tenants, if they rent their properties. Only owners current on their dues will get key cards. The HOA can deny use of amenities for owners who do not pay their dues.

Violation notices went out to units that have either unapproved satellite dishes or rear patio/deck enhancements. Owners who want to alter their properties must fill out an ARC form. And the HOA must approve it. If you can't find it here, you can email John Calcagni or the board to get one. Those who bought a unit with an unapproved dish or addition still have responsibility for either requesting permission for its construction through the ARC process, or removing the unapproved device or addition.

The engineering company the HOA hired to inspect the soundness of our building construction has done its inspection. We await its report. We hired the company to see if the water intrusion and other building issues we've had (fortunately fewer than many) come from subpar construction by KB Home when it put up our buildings. If so, the board will try to work with Attorney General Pam Bondi's office, which has indicated that it is going after KB Home for shoddy construction in more than a dozen communities in Florida.

The board plans to move forward with removing oak trees that stand too close to our buildings. This is another gift from KB, which planted them when they were small because they would grow quickly as they tried to sell the units. Unfortunately for us, those trees will grow so large that they will tear up sidewalks and possible damage the foundations of our buildings, so we have to cut them down and replace them with something that won't cause such a problem.

Our next meeting is June 24 at River of Life Christian Center on Krycul Ave. I'll try to remember to post another notice here closer to the date.

NOTICE: Water Shutoff Monday

Maintenance requires workers to shut off water to the entire community Monday, April 14, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Our lift station will still work, so if you fill buckets with water in advance, you can still use the plumbing in your home, including the toilets.

NOTICE: Water Shutoff Thursday

IMPORTANT NOTICE: Repairs to our water system will require that the water to the ENTIRE COMMUNITY shut off Thursday, March 6 beteen 10 a.m. and 2 p.m.

HOA Meeting Tuesday

The next meeting of the St. Charles Place HOA happens Tuesday, February 25, 7 p.m. at River of Life Christian Center on Krycul Ave. Use the door in the rear of the building.

We Have Private Roads

At the end of this month, workers will install new street signs. We'll get blue ones that indicate that St. Charles Place has private roads. We have one already on Johanna Avenue at US 301. Our builder, KB Home, should have had blue ones throughout the community but did not.

Defining our roads better gives us more ability to enforce our rights. For instance, solicitors claim that the green signs give them the right walk our roads and knock on our doors, because green signs denote public streets. The blue signs, that also state "Private Road" on them, gives any resident something to point to to say, "you are trespassing on private property, and you need to leave."

This takes on more meaning when you consider a recent report by WFLA-TV about door-to-door magazine sellers. These are teenagers that a for-profit company has recruited to knock on your door and tell you that they're earning points for scholarships, or trying to help charities.

They're not. They're trying to sell you magazines, or gift baskets, or something else. A for-profit company has recruited kids to sell you things in what is basically an attempt to end-run non soliciting rules, and to put an innocent face on what is essentially a scam.

That's not the only one. People sell security systems (or say they do), cable and satellite TV, and any number of other things. Some merely aim to case possible targets for burglaries. It's a security issue. The blue private road signs don't do much by themselves. But they are more arrows in our quiver as we defend our community.

We're on Facebook

Just a reminder that you can stay up to date on news about your neighborhood by liking its Facebook page. Find it at facebook.com/StCharlesPlaceHOA.

No one monitors the page 24/7 so if you have questions, the best way to reach the board is its email address board@stcharlesplace.us, or our property manager, John Calcagni, at jcalcagni@lelandmanagement.com.

But two HOA board members post updates to the Facebook page regularly, and it's a great way to stay in touch with what's happening in the community.

Security Cameras Coming

One of the most persistent issues residents voice concerns crime and security. Either luck has favored us, or the efforts we've made to inform people about ways to safeguard themselves and their community have helped protect us, or some combination of the two. We have few reports of crime (knock on whatever wood-like stuff constitutes this table), with the most recent being cars broken into.

Still the board has looked for ways to improve security. Soon, you will see several new things meant to do that.

Our first security cameras will go up in the pool area. The pool is our primary amenity, and has been an occasional target of vandalism, and people from outside the community using the pool. The outsiders, usually kids, and the vandalism may have a connection. At least I hope that our residents have not used the recently bought chaise lounges as diving boards.

Cameras won't stop misdeeds by themselves. They will deter some people, and they will give us something to show police if someone damages our property.

The board has also discussed, but not decided on, putting up other cameras to monitor our trash dumpsters, where people -- residents and not -- dump trash, furniture, tires, grills, and other refuse outside the dumpsters, which costs a lot of money to clean.

The board, in varying degrees, remains open to using cameras in other places. Some did not want them pointed at any units, though board member John McQuiston (also your humble blog author) says, "you are welcome to point them at my house!"

The board also decided to install an electronic key fob system for the pool that will replace the simple keys we currently use. This will prevent copying, and also help the community better govern pool use. It might also help the HOA collect outstanding dues. According to our governing documents, those who fall behind in dues payments lose privileges to our amenities. If someone's account gets more than 90 days behind, the HOA can disable his or her pool fob.

The board has also gotten bids on the cost of hiring security patrols. Board members at a recent meeting did not offer much enthusiasm for the idea, and our property manager did not express confidence in their effectiveness for the cost. The board also discussed trying to establish a community watch program. Its consensus was that people don't want to volunteer the effort or the time to do it.

This does not close the door on efforts to keep criminals out of St. Charles Place. As I have written before, our best defense is curious and engaged residents who know their neighbors and make it a habit of saying hello to anyone they see.  If would-be criminals see that we notice things, they will look for easier targets where people don't look out for each other.