Shelby Twp. water rates to rise - again

According to this article in yesterday's Macomb Daily, the Shelby Twp. Board of Trustees voted on Tuesday night to raise the rates they charge us for water and sewer service by almost 10%%.

This is the second consecutive year that the Board has given their residents this kind of a "Christmas present". Last year at their Dec. 15, 2009 meeting the Board approved a 9% increase that went into effect on Jan. 1, 2010.

Tuesday night's vote means that the Shelby Twp. water rates will rise from $2.873/100 cu.ft. to $3.157/ 100 cu. ft. - an increase of 9.9% that will go into effect on January 1, 2011 [details here on pages 110 and 111].

What is driving the latest 9.9% water rate increase here in Shelby Twp? By comparing the information provided by the Shelby Twp. DPW to justify the 2010 and 2011 rate increases, it appears to me that the cost of water purchased from Detroit is anticipated to rise only about 5.7% in 2011. However, revenues associated with new construction are estimated to be down by about 14.9% in 2011 and must be made up by the existing water customers to help cover the fixed operational costs of the Shelby Twp. water department.

With this latest increase, Shelby Twp. residents will be paying a water rate that is 1.65 times higher than their neighbors in Macomb Twp. [source].

This is the second consecutive year that I failed to anticipate a last-minute water rate increase when I prepared the annual budget for the Manors ("fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me").

What this rate increase means to our Association's budget is that in 2011 (as in 2010), we will again spend about $3,000 more on water for lawn irrigation than we would have otherwise spent and will therefore have to find offsets elsewhere in the budget to cover any overage in the budget's water line item.

Annual Meeting set for Jan. 19, 2011

You should have received a letter in today's mail from our property management company, Associa Kramer-Triad, announcing details of the upcoming 2011 Annual Meeting of Co-owners.

The 2011 Annual Meeting will be held on Wednesday evening, Jan. 19, 2011 at the Shelby Township Municipal Building. Sign-in begins at 6:00PM and the meeting will begin at 7:00PM. Compared to the meeting room at Utica HS that we have used in the past, this venue is much larger and is available without charge.

It is critically important that we have at least 35% of the Manors units represented at the meeting (at least 59 of the 166 units), either by proxy or in-person. We struggled to meet that requirement for last year's meeting. If you are the least bit unsure of your ability to physically attend the meeting, please sign and return the General Proxy form that will arrive in the mail in early January. You can always change your mind later and attend the meeting in person (your signed General Proxy will be returned to you at the sign-in). Call me at 586-726-0317 if you have any questions about filling out the General Proxy or if you would like me to pick it up from you and take it to the meeting on your behalf. If you prefer to attend the meeting but need a ride, please contact me and I will try to arrange for someone to get you there and back.

As you may have noticed in the letter you received, we will be electing only one person to the Board of Directors at this Annual Meeting. If nominated, I will run for another one-year term as your representative on the Board. It is my hope that the two Board members representing the Carpenters Pension Trust Fund will see fit to hold the Transition Meeting later in 2011, at which time we would elect additional co-owners to the Board and take full control of our Association.

In the meantime, I have submitted a proposed 2011 budget to the other Board members for their feedback and approval. My proposed 2011 budget maintains the 2010 revenue and spending levels. For Units 16-167, the monthly Association fee would remain at $175 and there is another $420 Additional Assessment to pay for Phase 2 of the exterior painting project. The monthly fee for Units 1-14 would remain at $60.

Pay your Association fees on-line

The Associa Kramer-Triad Management Group has launched a new and secure credit card portal that Manors Co-owners can use when paying their condo association fees.

If you are interested in using your credit card to make your payments on-line, click here and follow the instructions.

Letter from Great Lakes Geophysical, Inc.

If you have recently received a letter from Great Lakes Geophysical, Inc., you may safely ignore it. That letter should have been sent to the Association Board of Directors instead of to selected individual co-owners. Your Board of Directors will respond on behalf of all co-owners.

For those who did not receive the letter, Great Lakes Geophysical is requesting permission to enter our property for the purpose of conducting a survey in search of underground natural gas deposits. The survey process involves setting up some equipment and sensors that are linked by cables. The equipment is portable and all work is conducted on foot, so there should be little inconvenience to residents and no possibility of damage to the common elements or individual condominium units.

If you have any questions, please contact me and I will do my best to answer them.

AT&T U-verse

You may have noticed the presence of several AT&T workers in and around the Manors over the past few days. I spoke with one of them today and he says that they are making minor changes in the telephone wiring terminal boxes in our rear yards that are needed to support the expansion of their U-verse Cable and Internet service to our area. U-verse uses the Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) architecture to provide high-speed Internet access and high-definition television signals to their residential customers. Their network uses fiber optic cables that terminate at large digital multiplexer boxes that must be installed within 3,000 to 5,000 feet of the customers each box will serve. AT&T's existing telephone service copper wires are the final link in the network they use to deliver the U-verse programming to their subscriber's homes. The AT&T worker I spoke with indicated that they plan to very soon install a digital multiplexer box that will be close enough to serve the units at the Manors.

Shrub trimming and replacements

UPDATE: Shrub Trimming was completed as scheduled. The dead and dying shrubs will be replaced on or about August 30th.

Our landscape contractor plans to trim our shrubs during the week of August 23rd.

I have submitted a work order to replace dead and dying shrubs at the following locations:

Globe-shaped evergreens
(1) at 6995 Central Park North
(1) at 6803 Central Park North
(1) at 6557 Lexington Ave North
(1) at 49960 Watling Ave

Creeping evergreens
(1) at 6731 Lexington Ave North
(3) at 50008-50024 Watling Ave.

We also plan to remove the dying short evergreen hedge that was installed in front of the arborvitae at the irrigation well near Regent and Lexington North. The arborvitae behind them are surviving despite the deer damage from the winter of 2008-2009. We intend to replace the removed hedge with a planting of boxwood evergreens (deer do not like the smell of boxwood).

Found Cockatiel

Did you lose your cockatiel? If so, one of the Manors co-owners has found it. Contact me at the phone number on the right sidebar and I will put you in touch with the person who is caring for it.

Rainfall

Since I measure the rainfall we receive here at the Manors with my rain gauge and track it with a spreadsheet, it is very easy for me to graph the daily rainfall amounts for the season and post it to the Internet. Click on the image above to enlarge the graph, which was current through 10:00 AM, July 20th.

UPDATED Oct. 1, 2010

I've continued to update this graph on a regular basis and you can view the latest version by clicking here.

Rainfall totals by month:

May 2010 - 4.5 inches
June 2010 - 4.0 inches
July 2010 - 4.85 inches
August 2010 - 0.45 inch
Sept. 2010 - 4.37 inches

WOW Cable & Internet Service

I'm sorry to report that my efforts to bring WOW Cable & Internet Service into the Manors have been in vain. Easement agreements were drawn up but the Board of Directors for the Meadows Homeowners Association have so far declined to sign the documents. Therefore, I've just been informed by WOW's Director of Operations for SE Michigan that we have lost our place in their queue of 2010 expansion projects.

Without the Meadows easement agreements, WOW is unable to bring their cable infrastructure into the Manors. Even if the Meadows Board changed their mind tomorrow, it would be 2013 at the earliest before WOW could have us inserted into their expansion plans.

If you decide to switch from Comcast to a satellite television service, please note that you must submit an Alteration/Modification Request prior to having your satellite dish antenna installed and that there are restrictions on where your antenna may be mounted. Please read Article III of this document for more details.

Sprinkler System Changes

Today I read all of our irrigation water meters and revised all of the sprinkler system settings. A second watering cycle was added in the middle of the day and all of the overnight cycle start times were moved earlier (some as early as 9:30 PM) so they all finish before 6:00 AM when the pressure in the Shelby Twp. system begins to drop. To view the revised sprinkler system settings, click here.

Between April 21st and today, all of the meters feeding the sprinkler system have delivered 3,678 units of water (367,800 cubic feet). At $2.873 per unit, that comes to $10,576 worth of water, which is about one-third of our 2010 budgeted amount for municipal water. Over those 75 days the system actually watered about 51 times, due to the rain sensors, a couple of weeks of every other day watering, etc. So basically, it costs the Association about $207 ($10,576 divided by 51) each time we run all of the zones in the Manors. With a second watering cycle, our daily cost becomes about $400.

Based on our water consumption to date, I did some calculations to determine how many days we can afford a second watering cycle:

$33,000 - 2010 Budget line item for municipal water
($10,567) - spent to date (one cycle per day)
$22,433 - line item balance
($12,740) - projected spending through Sept. 30 (one cycle per day)
$9,693 - available for second daily watering cycle

$9,693 will fund 47 actual days with a second daily watering cycle, so we should have enough budget to water twice a day for the next 6 to 7 weeks, if necessary.

In 2009, we watered for 20 weeks (May 21st through Oct. 7th) at a cost of $33,000. On Jan. 1, 2010, Shelby Twp. increased our water rate by 9%. To make matters worse, this year we had to start watering on April 21st because of the warm and dry spring. But with careful monitoring and some stingy watering during the past 10 weeks, it looks like we can afford to water 23 weeks this year (up to the traditional Sept. 30th shut-down date) with the more expensive water and still come in at the same total cost as last year.

I'm sure you've noticed lately that the Shelby Twp. water pressure has been very low between the hours of 6 to 9 AM and from 6 to 10 PM. The heads on our sprinkler system requires a minimum water pressure of 35 PSI to operate properly and provide sufficient overlap.

UPDATE: Using a pressure gauge to measure the actual pressure being maintained by the Shelby Twp. water system, I observed that it was below the 35 PSI minimum from 8:00 PM through 10:30 PM on July 6th, bottoming out at 27 PSI around 9:00 PM. At 6:15 AM on the 7th, the water pressure was even lower at 20 PSI and it didn't reach 35 PSI until 9:00 AM. It reached the normal pressure range of 50+ PSI at noon.

With the revised watering schedules I have tried to avoid watering during those low pressure time periods, but it is impossible to do so on Controllers 1 and 2 (serving addresses on Lexington South and Central Park North). That is due to the fact that all zones on these two controllers are hooked up to the same water meter and must run sequentially for 13.5 hours to complete one cycle.

June 2010 Newsletter

Co-owners should have received their June 2010 newsletter in this past week's mail. Click here to read a scanned version of it:

• Front Page
• Back Page

I wish it would rain!

"I Wish it Would Rain!" was a 1967 hit by Detroit's Temptations and I've been humming that melody a lot lately.

Because of the abnormally dry spring, this year we had to start watering the lawns on April 20th, which was a full month earlier than 2009. Since then, we have received 9.3 inches of rainfall in my backyard rain gauge, 60% of which fell over four separate dates: May 2, 11, 13 and June 5 (click on the chart above for a better view of all of the rainfall I've measured from April 20th through July 3rd).

Lately, the rainstorms seem to pass either to our north or south, leaving us with hardly enough rain to skip a watering cycle. The National Weather Service records at their Detroit Metro Airport location show an official rainfall total over that period of 11.6 inches, 2.3 inches more than we've received here in Shelby Township.

Because of the early start this spring and Shelby Township's recent 9% increase in water rates, I've been closely regulating our watering frequency and lengths to keep us within budget. As of July 2nd, I have increased the watering duration by 20% on all zones to get us through the current and forecasted hot and dry spell. I also moved the starting times earlier so that the last zones will finish by 6:00 AM, which is when the water pressure begins to drop.

I am hoping to avoid adding a second watering cycle for as long as I can, particularly since the Township has asked everyone to voluntarily avoid watering their lawns between the hours of 6:00 AM and 9:00 PM. UPDATE: second watering cycle was added July 5th (read this post for more information).