TWIN CREEKS TRIBUNE
Twin Creeks January 2017
TRIBUNE
Volume 11, Issue 1
Official Publication of the Twin Creeks Homeowner's Association
Message from the President
As I am writing this, I want to wish you and your family a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays; however, by the time you read it, another year will be in the rearview mirror and you will have survived the holidays once again. It’s been awhile since I’ve written an article and I wanted to give everyone an update on happenings in and around the neighborhood over the past year. HOA dues increase. While an unpleasant topic for many, I want to talk about it briefly. The reality is that the neighborhood is aging, we are taking care of more improvements, and there’s been some significant inflation since the last dues increase. Let me correct the last statement: there has never been a dues increase in the history of the neighborhood! In looking at our future budget(s) and the needed reserves per our reserves study, the Board voted unanimously to raise annual dues by 10 percent, effective in 2017. We don’t take this action lightly – we constantly discuss items that need addressing in the neighborhood and weigh the pros and cons of their costs vs. what we have budget for. This has only intensified due to the reasons given above. As always, anyone can examine our financials by inquiring to our management company, Goodwin Management. Landscaping. We changed landscapers around the beginning of the year because we just weren’t getting the service we were paying for. This included irrigation and trees. I’m not going to claim that our new landscaper has excelled for us in all aspects, but there is improved responsiveness. The board still wants our landscaper to take more proactive steps to prevent problems that have been seen over the past year, and the Board continuously examines the performance of our current providers: Centex, Taurus, and Chon, and will not hesitate to find better provider(s) should we think it is warranted. I expect us to conduct a thorough review of our contractors in 2017, examining whether we are truly satisfied with their performance on a whole per our contracts with them. Other general landscaping items that we need to look at are performing some refreshes / improvements of our landscaping in places where it is looking ragged, and more modernization of our irrigation systems. One improvement we have already done – you may have noticed some new trees near the main entrance, which was done to replace some of our Red Bud trees that were on the decline. Copyright © 2017 Peel, Inc.
The FoodBox convenience store. This development has finally been completed, after more than a year in construction. While I lament the green space that was taken away by both this development and the storage facility, the best we could do was to work with these developers to get the best outcome from our new neighbors. Many developmental / operational conditions were put forth as conditions so that the FoodBox developer could obtain water from the City, and after conducting many hours of reviews with the developer, I believe the developer has met or exceeded these conditions so far. Whether you agree with these developments, I hope that you will consider helping them to thrive and grow to be an asset rather than a detraction. I welcome feedback on any perceived problems / improvements and am happy to pass them along. The Reserve trail. While the trail has gotten a lot of use and praise, we have some persistent problems with steeper grades and washout. We have tried a couple of methods to prevent continuous washout of the trail where it meets our mail kiosk on Grand Oaks Loop (our biggest offender right now), but to no avail. Finally, after looking at examples of what some other communities have done, and consulting with various companies, we have decided that we will most likely install concrete, properly stained, on those select parts of the trail that have severe and continuous washout. At this time, the only area we see needing this is the aforementioned part of the trail. Line of sight issues at the main entrance. Many residents have been concerned about this, especially near Bindon Drive. We have started consulting with the City of Cedar Park to come into compliance and address these concerns. After consulting with the City, we bid out the job to several landscape architects and now have a plan to start addressing this. We immediately removed many bushes, improving the line of sight, but it was too late in the year to address re-vegetating these areas. You will see more activity around this when the Spring planting season arrives. Cleaning and maintenance of hardscape improvements. This includes the wall, monuments, arbors, kiosks, and signage. Unfortunately, we didn’t get around to a lot of this in 2016. There were several hindrances: an abundance of rain, an accurate survey (Continued on Page 3) Twin Creeks Homeowner's Association Newsletter - January 2017
1