Homeowner fees are due on January 1
Christmas Tree Collection
Christmas trees will be removed on Wednesday, January 8th and January 15th and will be recycled. (Our trash service company sets the dates.) This service is free of charge. All tinsel and ornaments must be removed from the trees. Any trees that are not collected on these dates may be placed at the curb on a regular trash collection day after January 15th.
2003 Budget
The Board has approved the budget for the 2003 year. We are including a copy of the approved budget along with prior year financial information for comparison. As you can see, there will be no increase in dues for 2003. If you are interested in additional budget details, please contact Leona Taylor or Mohammed Umar.(To see the budget click here)
Volunteer Time (by Judy Currier)
At the last board meeting, the board starting looking toward the annual meeting and organized the beginning of a nomination committee. Al Sanford volunteered to chair that committee, as his term will be up this annual meeting. After serving 6 years on the board, Al wants to take a well deserved rest from board duties but has promised to remain active in the community. From serving with Al and watching him in action since I've gotten off the board, his leaving will leave a huge hole to be filled. Thanks, Al, for all you have done for Leewood! Obviously it is time for someone else to step up to the plate. We all should do our part to keep Leewood functioning smoothly; it is part of the obligation that comes from living in a community that has an association to guide it. What's in it for you? People serve for many different reasons. If you are interested in political science, it is a fascinating mini-democracy to try to make work. You gain great appreciation for politicians on both the local and national level after serving, and your knowledge of how the political process works is greatly expanded. For those that are interested solely in money, your house is a huge investment. To protect its value you should take an active interest in your community and help in its governance. For those that are interested in health, studies have shown that volunteers live longer. For those that are interested in helping others or making organizations function smoothly - that is one of the most rewarding aspects of board work. Think about it, I am sure that any member of the board will be happy to talk to you about serving as will I. If you want to chat about it, just give a call or send an email. You should be aware that no one is elected for a particular position. The board is elected by its members, then the officers are elected and duties assigned by the board itself. There are times in all of our lives that we just can't take on anything extra, that is a given. However, when things calm down, do reach out to your community. Is this the year that you have some time you can contribute? Search your schedule and heart, and then volunteer!
Free Prescription Cards (by Tony Mc Sorley)
With the large increases in prescription medicine in the last few years, many without prescription coverage have been looking for ways to cut these high costs. Available now are many FREE prescription drug cards offering a minimum of fifteen percent off but usually achieving twenty percent to forty percent. Income level for single must be below $28,000 - $38,8OO.
| MatoreRX.com |
1-8OO-511-1314 |
| TogetherRX.com |
1-8OO-865-7211 |
| AdvanceRX.com |
1-8UA-238-2623 |
Advance PCS Prescription Plan
Prescription drugs companies also have recently introduced cards which let members buy the company's medicine for $15 a month. Usually the cards have income restrictions ($18,OOO single-$24,000 couple) and members must have Medicare.
| PhizerForLiving.com1-8OO-717-6OO5 |
Phizer Share Card |
| Novartis.com1-866-974-2273 |
Novartis |
| LillyAnswers.com1-877-795-4559 |
Eli Lilly Answer Card |
| GSK.com1-888-672-6436 |
Glaxo Smith Kline Orange Card |
November 16 Enforcement of New Fairfax Tag (by tony mc sorley)
If you park your car at Leewood, you should have a new Fairfax county yellow tag for 2OO2-O3 on your car, except for temporary duty military here for six months or less. All vehicles owned by military personnel and garaged in Fairfax county must "display" county decals regardless of domicile. Purchasing a tag for military have certain requirements for exemption. For the rest of us civilians, October 5 was the deadline to pay your Fairfax personal property tax; based on the blue book value of your vehicle. The Fairfax county enforcement deadline for having the new yellow county sticker displayed on your car starts November 16. From Article XVlII Section 2 on parking restrictions at Leewood:"..UNREGISTERED VEHICLES SHALL NOT BE PARKED IN THE PARKING AREA FOR MORE THAN 24 HOURS."
Passwords for the Website? (Opinions by Judy Currier)
Although there are some legitimate reasons behind such a proposal, I have a question -- and that is "where does it all stop?". I don't particularly consider it a state secret that we have parking concerns here as I know of no association that does not have parking issues. Thus, I don't consider the mention of parking on the website anything that will send our property values plummeting. The thing that concerns me more is when there are personal attacks either on the message board or in the newsletter. I don't think that is nice to display to the world. But then, I don't think it is nice to display such attacks amongst ourselves either - it discourages people from participating. Perhaps the solution is for people to try to discuss ideas not personalities. Certainly what goes in the newsletter has been far more vitriolic at times than anything posted on the website, and we have already been through the fight for freedom of the press once in our existence. There is a lot to be said for a free and open website, just as there is for a free and open newsletter. Although there will always be some that abuse the privilege, the sum total of good that is provided by not having a Leewood censor probably far outweighs the negatives. I personally feel that the website is an asset to the community, not just for its members, but for prospective members. They can go there and find out that we are not just some flaky little association but have all our ducks in order. If people worry that reading what is posted in our newsletter or our message board would deter people from moving in, perhaps they should rethink what they write or post.Many of us who use the web a lot are inundated with passwords and sometimes just avoid sites entirely that make us go to our sheet of passwords. Many people did not make it into our old site when they wanted to due to password difficulties. I never figured out what was going on with some of them, but if we want the site accessible to our people, there is no question that password protection hinders that. And, just for the record, it is inconsistent to both state that the site should be exclusively for Leewood residents and then want a non-changing welcome message as the feature article. If it is mostly for residents, the lead article should change to encourage residents to look at it more often. In another vein, I personally think it is important for associations to share information. I have searched the web looking for how others handle parking problems, how they handle certain things in their ARC regulations, how their websites were organized and so forth. This helps us, I believe, and in turn we should help others. So far we have not listed our site with the Fairfax Community list out of "privacy concerns" but I think we should. I know that I think higher of those communities with attractive sites, interesting information, and an open policy concerning information. In total, I am for more civility in all of our communication with each other. If some just can't do that, I believe that people who read our newsletter or visit our site know that such people exist everywhere, and will discount the remarks accordingly.
Website (By Judy Currier)
We haven't moved the excellent article by Joe Strickland on updating his kitchen yet, so you still have a chance to easily find that. Probably what will happen when a new feature is put up is it will be moved to a new category under home repair. Meanwhile, Louise Perrini invited us into her kitchen, and soon (as they say in the movie theaters, upcoming attractions) there will be an article on that there. It is from a different perspective than Joe's article, and I think will be of interest to all. I have also lined up a couple of other remodeling articles, so if any of you have something of interest please contact me. I do think the web is a wonderful place for this type of article as we can have all sorts of colored pictures to show what is going on.
For those that checked out the site you saw that we did announce the lack of trash pickup on Thanksgiving there, and you might have noticed that we put up the McCormick color chart under the ARC section. I am not real pleased with how the color chart scanned in and have worked on it some more (to no avail). The colors seem to change a lot in the translation. It could just be my scanner. If anyone has experience with this, or would like to try your hand at getting a more accurate color chart in, please contact me. I would really appreciate the help! Thanks!
PAY FOR USE OF PARKING (Opinions by Tony Mc Sorley)
Many of the parking difficulties arise at Leewood on streets where one or more houses have an overabundance of vehicles either because its a rental unit or semi-rental with boarders or just one family group with grown children or just too many cars. These situation also tend to come and go at Leewood as new sales happen or the townhouse sales market is depressed, forcing homeowners who must move, to rent their units till a up tick in the market. No one knows when your street could be turned into a parking problem from too many cars at one or more houses. Everyones peace of mind is at risk; destroyed by a sudden influx of cars. Much of our yearly $540 assessment as Leewood homeowners goes to the reserve fund for maintaining our streets. We at Leewood should switch to a PAY FOR USE and in order to fairly allot the use of the nonreserve parking space, the Leewmod community should switch from the present assessments of $540 for each house to $540 for each parking space desired to rent yearly over their one reserve space. There is 401 spaces with 195 now reserved giving us 206 to rent at $540 each. Less those spaces strictly for temporary visitors in addition to the 50 to 60 or so public street spaces for visitors. Each homeowner would have an equal chance for a second space for $540. Any left from the second 195 spaces would be returned to the pool to be offered to those who need a third and fourth space with the "highest" bidder winning, minimum bid $540.
This new concept replacing assessment by house but charging for second or more parking spaces has many pluses to recommend it. Parking problems like abandoned cars, lack of proper county tags, inspection, or out of date plates, towing fall into the homeowner's business not the Leewood board. The Leewood board is removed from spending time on the unrewarding and time consuming parking problem tasks. Now, oil spills except in reserve spots are impossible to attribute to anyone. Under this new concept with the exception of visitor spaces the rest are reserved. Oil spills would be chargeable to a homeowner renting the reserve spot. No longer would homeowners wonder if they'd get home in time for that other space, wonder whose taking a spot by them, homeowner or day tripper, etc. Lastly, and most important, this change would put Leewood on a true business path of PAY FOR USE of our streets just like National parks, White House, New Jersey Turnpike, and the Delaware Memorial Bridge and remove many basic parking problems.
