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As reported at the annual meeting in February, in 2016 we spent approximately 90% of the allocated landscape budget. Last year was primarily about ongoing maintenance. Three backflow valves were completely replaced. We cleaned out the significant area of deadwood south of Sunrise between Largo Salici and Paseo Otoño which was called out by the fire marshall and we removed several dead trees located on maintained common areas. We also completed a couple of small refresh projects (6) on Velazquez and Sempreverde. These projects involved fixing riprap and swales and adding granite at some of the small common areas. Packrat suppression continued in 2016 with approximately 50 packrat nests removed. Only about 50% of the packrat budget was spent which is in line with limiting our focus areas to those close to parking and housing. In October-December, we completed trimming of trees and this included palm trees at the south pool. Finally we completed one capital project which replaced irrigation lines with PVC.
In 2017 we are again primarily focused on maintenance. We have directed more of the budget to tree maintenance and reduced the spending on Packrats and Backflow valves. We hope that with most of the valves being replaced in the last 2 years we will get some relief from needing expensive replacement valves. We also reduced what we will spend on landscape refreshes. With this in mind, in January and February we spent about 75% of our tree trimming budget on trees in dire need of maintenance (thinning and mistletoe). We tried out several different vendors in order to stretch our dollars. We will continue to use a variety of vendors in order to make the best use of the dollars we’ve allocated to tree maintenance. We have many additional trees in need of maintenance but expect only to do a small portion of the remainder late in the year. (We don’t trim trees in March-September as this is being bird nesting season). Trees are costly to maintain but do bring value to the neighborhood (Bartlett indicated our trees add approximately 400k of value to our property).
We do have one refresh that is planned after Paseo Otoño and Sempreverde roads are repaved. That will be to refresh the north side of Sempreverde across from the pool. This will complete the refresh of entrance and pool area.
In 2017 we will be notifying homeowners more frequently of problems with weedy yards. I have been receiving more complaints about the state of some yards with concerns raised around impacting property value of nearby homes. Please remember that it is your responsibility to keep your yard weed free and looking well maintained even if you are gone for the summer per the Yard Rules and Regulations. You can be fined up to 10$ a day if you fail to bring your yard into compliance after receiving notification of a problem. Note that removing weeds isn’t the only requirement. A well maintained yard also has adequate granite covering, and vegetation (including trees) is neat (remove dead vegetation, keep trees maintained, if things are overgrown consider replanting). These things are all spelled out in our Yard Rules and Regulations .
I again want to thank the homeowners who have notified us of water leaks. The faster we address these the less it will impact our water bills. Please don’t hesitate to call or email me if you notice a leak and it is helpful if you specify the time/day you spotted the leak.