AT&T U-verse Update

As I mentioned late last summer, AT&T technicians were prepping the hardware in our rear yards in advance of making their AT&T U-verse service available to residents of the Manors.

Several weeks ago their salespeople were here in the Manors going door-to-door offering introductory pricing to those who signed up for U-verse. A co-owner tells me that she signed up for the U-verse service and when the technician came out to begin the installation, he discovered that there was insufficient signal strength at the connection point in the rear yard. He said that the only way he could make a satisfactory installation would be to mount an amplifier on the exterior of the building and therefore the co-owner declined to have the service installed. She did not want to take a chance on getting a marginal signal plus she didn't want to have to prepare and submit an Alteration Modification Request for the amplifier installation.

I just now entered my address in the "Can I get U-verse?" box on this page and got the following answer (click to enlarge):

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.

Minutes of the Annual Meeting held on Jan. 19, 2011

Click here to read the unapproved minutes of the Annual Meeting.

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.