Westside at Buttercup Creek
Westside news Volume 3, Number 7
Official Newsletter of the Westside at Buttercup Creek HOA
July 2012
By Phil Crochet, Neighborhood Watch Committee Chair Two board positions are up for election this year. As a member of the HOA board, you will have the opportunity to meet with the other board members once a month to discuss the matters of the HOA. The election takes place at the annual meeting which will be on October 8th if we have at least 40% of our HOA members attend in person or by proxy, or November 5th if there were not enough attending the October meeting. Any homeowner in the HOA can run for a board position. If you would like to run for a board position, you must submit your info (a short write up about yourself and why you want to be on the board) to Kathy at Goodwin Management (kathy.taylor@goodwintx. com) and to the Westside News Editor (westsidenewseditor@yahoo.com) no later than August 10th so that it can be included in the September and October newsletters. At the annual meeting the candidates will have a few minutes to present themselves before voting.
Copyright © 2012 Peel, Inc.
There has been a rash of vehicle burglaries in the Westside Preserve in the past few weeks. Although we live in a safe community, we should expect property crimes to continue to plague us and we will have the occasional spree as we did recently. We live in a very safe neighborhood; however, we do have, and will continue to have, property crime. We can keep our exposure to a minimum by engaging in a few simple practices. Let me begin by asking you a question: If you were a burglar, where would you want to break into homes and cars? Would you want to steal in the impoverished areas of town or would you prefer middle- and upper-class areas? Yes, it was a rhetorical question as the answer is obvious. Car burglars will drive to an area of town such as ours (or take the free Capital Metro bus) and look for good items to steal. There are two general areas that are attractive to vehicle burglars depending upon the time of day during which they are plying their trade. During the daytime the majority of car burglaries occur in business parks and malls. The “why” is pretty obvious: cars are densely parked in those areas during the daytime. During the nighttime car burglars prefer to steal from cars parked in neighborhoods, again for the obvious reason. Universal among car thieves is the way they choose their victims. They walk from one car to the next simply looking for something good to steal. A car burglar will seldom break into a car if he or she cannot see anything worth stealing. By now you probably know where I am heading. We are lucky enough to live in a community in which each and every home has a garage. In my 23 years in law enforcement, I have worked only two cases in which a car was broken into while it was in a private garage. In both cases the homes were burglarized and the cars were a secondary target. Protecting yourself from being a victim of a car burglary can really be as simple as parking your car in your garage. If you absolutely cannot park in your garage, at least remove all your valuables from your car anytime you leave it parked and unattended. We are fortunate enough to live in a wonderful community and many of us have lots of neat gadgets and toys. Global positioning systems, compact disc players, cell phones, briefcases, purses, wallets, laptop computers, and many other items that can easily be converted into cash by the professional thief, who is usually not deterred by a car alarm. Take the time to protect your property and help keep our community safe.
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