Groundwater Sampling

Every three months Ford Motor Company has a subcontractor come on-site to take groundwater samples from the two monitoring wells that are located behind 50119 Lexington West.  The next such sampling is scheduled for Monday, July 27, 2015 and their subcontractor has requested and received permission from the Board to enter the premises.

Their subcontractor, Conestoga-Rovers & Associates (CRA), has recently merged with GHD Services Inc. and their corporate name has been changed to GHD.

Therefore beginning with the July 27th groundwater samplings, the crew's trucks, hard hats, etc. will be marked "GHD" instead of "CRA". 

Soil Sampling

Beginning on June 25, 2014, crews from McDowell and Associates will be occasionally on-site to perform soil analysis to confirm the limits of the previously-detected groundwater contamination near the northwest corner of our property.  They will be sampling at four different locations along the berm at points north of 49943 Lexington Ave. West and west of 6829 Lexington Ave. North.  Their work should be completed within two weeks. 

WOW infrastructure installation plan

WOW's installation contractor will be installing their underground infrastructure in four phases that correspond to the four sub-associations in Central Park.

MISSDIG is on-site today in the Manors to mark all of the existing underground utilities.  As soon as that is complete, the contractor will begin underground work within the Manors.  When the work in the Manors is nearly complete in a week or two, MISSDIG will begin marking the utilities in the Meadows and then the contractor will shift their underground work to that sub.  The same pattern will follow for the underground work in the Gardens and Kensington sub-associations.

Click here to read more about the WOW's Central Park infrastructure installation project.

Installation of WOW Internet, Cable & phone infrastructure

Brian Sommers of WOW Internet, Cable & Phone met with board members from Central Park yesterday morning to walk us through their construction plans.

Click here to read an outline summary of the information they provided.

Snow Removal

UPDATE: Trash pick-up will be delayed this week by one day due to the storm.  Set your trash and recyclables out on Tues night or very early on early Wed morning. 

Our snow removal contract specifies that snow removal from our streets, driveways, parking areas, porches, sidewalks, etc, shall commence within two hours of the time when the snowfall reaches a depth of 1.5 inches at our location.  The contract also states that for public safety reasons, priority must be given to opening and maintaining access to our site.   

The contract leaves the choice of de-icing and/or plowing our streets (which includes the access drives) to the discretion of the contractor. However it does state that when de-icing, the entrances and exits shall be double treated (salt is the specified de-icing material for our streets and either calcium chloride or potassium chloride must be used everywhere else).

Therefore, when we have a significant snowfall such as we are experiencing today, it follows that keeping the streets open is our contractor's top priority and may require repeated plowing, in which case the clearing of driveways and sidewalks have to be given secondary priority.

Depending on the severity of the storm, work on the driveways and sidewalks might not begin until the storm subsides. In the event the contractor is unable to to completely clean all of the specified areas in one day, the contract stipulates that follow-up service shall be performed the following morning no later than 12:00 Noon.

As an alternative to using snowblowers and/or snowshovels, our contract states that driveways shall be back-plowed so as to push snow out towards the street and that the snow closest to the garage doors shall be cleared manually so as to avoid plow damage to the doors.

Residents are expected to do their part to help the snow removal process by following the Association's  bylaws, rules and regulations.

Article VII, Section 1, paragraph (j) of our condominium bylaws addresses the parking and storage of vehicles and it states that residents shall park their vehicles in the garages that have been provided for that purpose.

Our parking rules and regulations state that  

Overnight parking is prohibited on all streets from November 1st through March 30th inclusive, unless a co-owner has received written approval from the Board of Directors.  The purpose of this regulation is to facilitate snow removal operations.  “Overnight” shall mean the period from Midnight until 6:00 AM. 

No written approvals have been requested or granted for overnight, on-street parking during the winter of 2013-2014. 

If a resident has more than two vehicles, they should be parked overnight in their driveway so that the street may be eventually cleared across its full width.  It's recommended that a third vehicle should be parked all the way to one side of the driveway to allow the contractor the option of back-plowing the other half of the driveway.  Otherwise, the contractor will manually clear the driveway areas surrounding the parked vehicle(s).  As soon as the street has been plowed across its full width, the vehicles may be moved from the driveway and parked on the street.

Your Board of Directors suggests that whenever you see or hear that local communities have issued a snow emergency, the neighborly thing to do is to park all of your vehicles in your garage and driveway until our streets have been cleared, regardless of the time of day.

Crosswalk Striping

The pedestrian crosswalk striping work will take place during the coming week of Oct. 1 (weather permitting).  Please be prepared to make temporary detours while the striping paint dries. These marked crosswalks will be located at both entrances to Central Park and at various points along the Central Park ring road. This work is the final phase of the asphalt seal-coating project that began in July.

Residents are reminded that, by law:
a) vehicular traffic shall yield the right-of-way to pedestrians and bicyclists lawfully within an intersection or crosswalk
b) pedestrians may not walk in the roadway if there are sidewalks present. If there are no sidewalks, they must walk on the left side, facing traffic. 

Furthermore, the speed limit is 25 MPH on all roadways within the Central Park planned unit development - including the Manors. If you are driving faster than that, you may not be able to stop in time if you come to a crosswalk with a pedestrian already in it.  We have already had one child hit by a car this year while within a crosswalk and we do not need to have a repeat.

Even though these are all private roads within the Central Park planned unit development, the Board of Directors has the ability to ask the Shelby Township Police Department to enforce our speed limits and traffic control devices.  Given the almost blatant disregard some of our residents display for the 25 MPH speed limit and our STOP signs, expect to see a lot of flashing blue and red lights around here in the very near future - just don't let them be seen flashing in your rear view mirror!

Notice of road closures

Last Updated on Aug. 3rd:

The seal coating portion of this project is now complete.  The only remaining work to be performed is the striping of the pedestrian crosswalks, which will not require any street closures or parking inconveniences.   Thank you for your cooperation.

 The Central Park Master Association is having a seal coat applied to the asphalt road surfaces of North, East, South and West Central Park Avenues during the week of July 16, 2012.  Sections of these roads and intersections will be closed while the work is performed. This work does not include the Manors private access drives that are parallel with North Central Park. On certain days the Van Dyke entrance to Central Park will be closed and on other days, the 22 Mile Rd. entrance will be closed. It will take six Work Days to complete this project.

Here is the full project plan along with an updated map, scheduled Work Days and locations of the road closures. A hard copy of the original plan was delivered to each home prior to Monday, July 16th.

If rain is forecast, the contractor will cancel that Work Day and move it to the next scheduled date, with the remaining schedule delayed accordingly. Below is the latest  Work Day schedule, which was revised to add Work Day 6 (to do the northerly portion of what had been planned for Work Day 2).  Check back here regularly to see the latest schedule.

• Work Day 1 was completed on Monday, July 16, 2012.
• Work Day 2 was completed on Friday, July 20th
• Work Day 3 was completed on Wednesday, July 25th
• Work Day 4 was completed on  Monday, July 30th - everyone must enter and leave via Van Dyke
• No seal coat work planned for Tuesday to avoid interference with the trash collection. 
• Work Day 5  was completed on  Wednesday, August 1st - everyone must enter and leave via 22 Mile Rd.
• Work Day 6  was completed on  Thursday, August 2nd.

This seal coating project is separate from the Manors asphalt paving project, which is being funded by the Special Assessment that was approved in April.  The Manors paving project will not begin until the Board knows that we will be able to pay the project invoice, which is due 30 days after the paving is complete. Since about half of the Special Assessment money will have been received as of Aug. 1st,  the paving will probably begin around Sept. 1st and the Board will pay the invoice by borrowing the remainder from our replacement reserve account.  The Board will repay the "loan" as the October and November Special Assessment payments are received.

Ask for contractor references

Recently, there have been several different contractors soliciting work within the Manors for things like replacement windows, interior painting, home security systems, deck maintenance, etc.  A favorite line is that "I'm in the vicinity doing a job for (insert name) and ......." or "I'm doing a job over on the next street and ...."

When they come to my door and give me that kind of line, I let them know that "I'm on the Board and I don't recognize that name" or I ask them the name of the street and their response is always, "I can't remember, but it's two streets over."  In most cases, that is the end of their solicitation and they just turn around and leave.

I also hear about other solicitations from co-owners who call me to tip me off about a suspicious salesperson or ask if the salesman's claim that they are recommended by the Board is true, etc.  I also often hear from both satisfied and unsatisfied co-owners about the performance of specific contractors who did work for them.

Please be very careful before you agree to have work done by any contractor.  Always ask for references and check them out. 

You can ask me or another Board member if the contractor has been doing work in here or if we know the name of a contractor that has performed satisfactory work for a Manors co-owner.   We can also put you in contact with a Manors co-owner if the contractor provides an address as a reference.

If you are satisfied with someone who has done a good job for you, let me know and I can add them to a section of this blog.

Brick repair work on 23 Units

Typical cracking in
mortar and bricks
(click to enlarge)

At the 2012 Annual Meeting of the Manors at Central Park Condominium Association, I mentioned that funds had been included in the 2012 Annual Budget to make repairs on cracked and failing brickwork above the garage door openings on 23 of our Units. A previous attempt in 2010 to fix this problem on Unit 80 by simply tuck-pointing failed to stop further cracking. 

In April 2011, the Board brought in a different contractor, Joe's Quality Home Improvements, to inspect the failing brickwork and offer their recommendations. They identified the root cause of these failures to be improperly-located flashing, which has caused weakening of the mortar bond between the adjacent courses of bricks, thus allowing stress cracks to be induced in both the mortar and the bricks themselves. The Board then asked the contractor to provide a cost estimate to repair the brickwork on those Units that they judged to be in the worst shape.

Rather than immediately perform the repairs on all 24 Units that were identified, the Board authorized them to repair one of the worst, which happened to be Unit 72.  They made the recommended repairs later that month and 10 months later there has been no further cracking observed on that Unit. Therefore, at the Feb. 22, 2012 meeting of the Association's Board of Directors, the Board authorized Joe's Quality Home Improvements to make repairs to the remaining 23 Units using their recommended methods.

UPDATE: On March 1, 2012, the Board authorized the addition of three more units to this project, which are indicated below with an asterisk (*).

Co-owners  of each affected Unit will receive a letter from our contractor with the next day or two, indicating whether the repairs on their Unit's brick work will take place during the week of March 5th or March 12th.  Until the repairs are completed on your Unit, please have your vehicles parked on the street by 7:00 AM each morning of your assigned week.

The Board realizes that this repair work will pose a temporary inconvenience and we appreciate your cooperation while our contractor makes these necessary repairs.

Below is a list of the Units that are scheduled to be repaired over the next two weeks. They were judged by the contractor to be those in the most immediate need of repair and they tend to be those with the arched sill. Please note that when the contractor is finished with this list, we will have repaired slightly more than half of all our garages with brick walls over the garage door.

Hopefully, next year we will be able to budget enough money to make the brick repairs on the remaining units.

Lexington Ave East
50098 - Unit 71
50078 - Unit 73
50030 - Unit 76
49966 - Unit 80 *
49950 - Unit 81
49981 - Unit 84
50109 - Unit 92
50125 - Unit 93
50141 - Unit 94

Lexington Ave North
6731 - Unit 61
6749 - Unit 62
6807 - Unit 65
6829 - Unit 66

North Central Park
6755 - Unit 32
6883 - Unit 24
6947 - Unit 20
6979 - Unit 18

Regent
49979 - Unit 139 *
50043 - Unit 143
50059 - Unit 144
50107 - Unit 147

Lexington Ave South
6980 - Unit 167
6892 - Unit 163
6876 - Unit 162
6828 - Unit 159

Watling
49960 - Unit 107 *

Phase 2 of the Exterior Paint Project is Set to Begin

U&S Painting will be starting work on Phase 2 of our exterior painting project sometime next week, weather permitting. Their first steps will be to powerwash the surfaces to be painted (update: this work started on May 7th), make necessary caulking repairs and replace and prime all dry-rotted trim boards. Then they will begin the painting of the exterior trim, garage doors and front doors. The painting work will probably take all month and perhaps into June. You will be notified in advance of when they plan to paint your front door. Per their advice, I am keeping with the same color for the front doors, since a lighter color will only lower the surface temperature by 10 or 15 degrees when the sun is shining directly on it through a storm door window.

As a reminder, your 2^nd and final payment for the exterior painting “Additional Assessment” is due on June 1, 2011. If you have not already done so, please remit your payment of $420 along with the 2^nd payment coupon you received a year ago.

If you are unable to find your 2^nd coupon, please remit your Additional Assessment payment as follows:

a) add the $420 to the regular $175 amount when you mail in your June 2011 monthly Condo Association dues. It will automatically be credited to your Additional Assessment.

b) If you’ve already sent in your June dues payment or if your dues is automatically withdrawn from your bank account, mail a check for $420 directly to Kramer-Triad’s office at 320 E. Big Beaver, Suite 190, Troy, MI 48083. Include a note listing your name, address and the words "Manors at Central Park Condo Association Additional Assessment payment" so that it will be properly credited.

Additional Assessment payments received after June 30, 2011 will be subject to a $25 late fee.

Click here to view a list of the Units that will be painted in Phase 2 (the units painted in last year's Phase 1 are listed here).

After the painting work is complete, we will have new mulch installed throughout the common elements.

Be on the lookout!

Skunks have been spotted in several different locations on the Manors grounds in recent weeks. The sightings have been around dusk in the rear yards between Lexington East and Watling and in the front yards along Regent. I don't know whether this is the same animal or different ones and in each case, the animal was walking out in the open.

I have spoken with the folks at "Critter Control" and for best results they need to know where the skunk's burrow is located so they can place their trap as close as possible to it. Otherwise, the trap is more likely to collect other harmless species such as rabbits.

If you spot a skunk on our grounds, please let me know when and where. Be particularly on the lookout for evidence of skunk activity, such as lawn damage where they have been searching for grubs and worms or holes under decks or near landscaping where they are creating shelter. Skunks are generally more active at night and retire to their den during the daylight hours, where the female raises her litter of kits that are typically born in the month of May.

Winter's finally over - I hope!

It's been a long, cold and snowy winter! Now that the weather has warmed up - somewhat - I've been out and about assessing some of the snow-removal damage which you may have also noticed.

• I've found (4) broken sprinkler heads that will need replacement. Let me know if you spot any other broken heads that are not already marked with a green flag.
• I also tried replacing many of the pieces of turf that had been peeled back by the snowplow blades. If they don't green-up, the patches will be either seeded or sodded once we have the irrigation system turned on for the season.
• One of the "no-parking" sign posts on Lexington South was hit by the snow removal equipment and will need to be replaced.
  
• Numerous garage doors were scraped and dented by their pick-up snowplow driver. Instead of manually clearing the strip in front of the garage door, apparently the driver tried to drop the blade right next to the door but didn't allow for the pivoting motion and as a result he scraped and dented many of our doors.
  

I personally prepared a list of all garage doors with damage and identified whether or not the doors had already been painted last summer. I also identified several doors that appear to have been damaged beyond repair and which will likely need to have the entire bottom panel replaced. I then held a meeting here last week with Grant Meldrum (the company owner) and Ryan Dorner of Kramer-Triad. We walked the property and inspected the damages. Grant will repair/replace everything I identified and at his expense. The only exceptions are:

• I agreed to replace the broken sprinkler heads so that I know the replacements will be the same brand as the others and that they will be installed slightly below grade so they won't be damaged again next year.
• I will provide him with the one-gallon can of exterior paint that our exterior painting contractor left with me last summer just for this sort of need. He will use it to paint the damaged/replaced portions of doors which were just painted last summer as part of the Phase 1 painting project. He will have all of the other doors repaired on Phase 2 units prior to the start of the Phase 2 exterior painting in May of this year.
  

Grant's personnel will begin working on the garage door repairs mid-month once the weather warms up. Co-owners will be notified in advance if they need to have access to the inside of your garage to perform the door repair/replacement.

Snow removal

Our snow removal contractor here at the Manors tells me that he will be making every effort to keep the roads and drives cleared during the snowstorms that are predicted for tonight, Tuesday evening and all day Wednesday, but that the sidewalks will likely not be cleared until the wind dies down (which from what I am reading might not be until sometime early Thursday). He said that his crew will be bringing in two front end loaders to clear and haul the snow to an empty lot area simultaneously, rather than first clearing it into piles and then hauling it away later.

Please avoid parking on our streets and private access drives until Friday so that the snow removal crews can freely operate their heavy equipment and efficiently clear off our roads and drives.

Lawn and landscaping maintenance

GM Prolawn has been awarded the contract to cut our lawns and maintain our landscaping for the upcoming growing season. Friday will be the regularly scheduled day of the week when they will be on-site. This is the same company which had our snow removal contract over the past winter.

Sewer Repairs

The faintly familiar sounds of heavy construction equipment echoed across the northwest portion of the Manors this afternoon. Unfortunately, it was not the welcome noise emanating from new construction work.

A sewer line owned by the Condo Association was blocked, causing the waste water from Units 55 & 56 to back up into their basements. Repeated attempts to open the sewer with a power auger were unsuccessful and a video inspection revealed that a section of the sewer lead pipe was completely separated. Kramer-Triad received approval from the Board of Directors to hire Paul C. Scott & Sons Plumbing to excavate and fix the line as soon as possible to alleviate the problem.

Once the sewer line was uncovered at the bottom of a 10 ft deep hole, the cause of the problem became evident. The contractor who made the tie-in to the sewer lead when the basement was originally excavated in 2004 must have hit the lead with their backhoe and pulled it out of the rubber friction boot on the 10 inch sewer main. This single 6 inch sewer lead services both units and it had been pulled out about 18 inches from the boot. The situation went unnoticed because that end of the sewer lead remained covered with backfill. Ever since the units were sold in 2005, all of the sanitary waste from Units 55 & 56 has had to flow through this 18 inch long tunnel in the sand in order to reach the sewer main. Eventually this tunnel collapsed and the sewer lead filled with sand. It's a wonder that this problem did not surface much sooner and that a sink hole never developed in the front lawn.


"Men at work" on Lexington North.


Workers excavated an 8 ft. x 15 ft. hole that was 10 ft. deep.


The worker in the hole is standing on top of where the sewer lead should have been connected to the sewer main; the manhole structure is at his side.



The section of sewer pipe between the two black Fernco flexible couplings is the permanent repair and it bridges the gap apparently created by the backhoe operator in 2004.

Snow piles

Based on the concern that was raised at the Annual Meeting about the size and locations of some of the large snow piles on our property, Ryan Dorner of Kramer-Triad contacted the owner of GM ProLawn (our snow removal contractor). As a result (and at no additional charge to the Association), they came in today and cut some of the snow piles down to size and dumped the excess snow on nearby vacant lots .

Snow Removal Contract Awarded

The Board has awarded the 2008-2009 snow removal contract to GM Landscaping. Their bid was less than United Lawnscape’s, who has cleared our snow in past years. Also, GM Landscaping has a good track record of clearing snow for other Associations within the Central Park community.

Our On-site Contractors

The following contractors are paid by the Association to perform various services for us and you can expect to see their trucks being regularly driven and parked on our streets:

• Allied Waste Services - collects refuse and recyclables using separate trucks every Tuesday
• Eradico Services - outdoor pest control, responds to service calls submitted to Kramer-Triad
• H2O Irrigation - sprinkler system maintenance, responds to service calls submitted to Kramer-Triad
• United Lawnscape - a work crew mows and edges the lawn every Monday from April to October, plus additional work as required.
  

Other commercial vehicles you can expect to see on our streets include UPS and Fedex delivery trucks (which should be stopping at occupied units) and those belonging to the builder's various contractors (which should be stopping at units that are under construction).

Please be observant for vehicles that appear to be cruising through our streets without a legitimate business purpose. They could be looking to illegally dump refuse on a vacant lot or into one of our contractor's rented dumpsters. Also, many local subdivisions have had their sprinkler system water meters and shut-off valves stolen from the meter boxes so they could be sold for scrap. Only H2O Irrigation Inc. and Trost Irrigation Inc. are authorized to open our beige meter boxes while working on our system.

If you see any suspicious activity, please try to get a description of the vehicle (and its license plate number if possible) and contact the appropriate authorities.