October 14, 2020
Wanted to give you an update on Treasure State Acres events and news since we did not have an HOA meeting this spring due to the pandemic, and we’ve decided not to have one this fall. We don’t have anything particularly pressing, and we felt we can just fill folks in with emails, our web site and a Facebook note. Anyone who has questions can send them to myself or Terry Atwood and we’ll try to answer them as best we can.
A few folks have asked about payment of our annual dues of $25, which we remind people to pay when we send out meeting notices. We decided we would give TSA residents a one-year reprieve on the annual payment this year since so many people are feeling the financial squeeze due to a job layoff, and so on. Also, our TSA coffer has $12,000 in it, so we are not desperate for funds right now.
About 20 TSA families have paid their dues so far this year, and we will apply that money towards payment of their 2021 dues.
One TSA resident asked if we shouldn’t continue to seek payment of dues this year in order to build our fund for a possible future emergency. Our feeling is that, if we had an emergency along the lines of needing to pay for litigation, TSA residents would step up and answer our requests for additional donations, if we made a good case for the need. Also, if anyone wishes to make a “donation” rather than a dues payment this year, we won’t turn them down. Checks can be sent to Treasurer Terry Atwood at 4230 Wolverine, Helena, MT 59602. Or if you already paid this year and just want that to be a “donation,” let Terry know at terry@atwoodarts.com.
We haven’t spent much money in the past year from our HOA fund other than a few payments to our attorney, Abby St. Lawrence, who spent some time fine-tuning our proposed new covenants and a few other minor matters.
The last version of the new covenants was rejected by HOA voters last year (by a narrow margin) and we decided to try again earlier this year. That plan, however, was derailed by the pandemic. We are not yet sure when we will seek another vote on the new covenants. Much depends on how the pandemic plays out, as we may have to go door-to-door to collect ballots. We’ll keep you posted on those plans.
We were disappointed once again when our engineering firm didn’t get to our project to improve many of TSA’s French drains. We’ve planned for several years to add expansion tubes to many of our drains so they will have added capacity to cope with the heavy rain run-offs we sometimes get. The work is to be done on drains that have the worst problems in the subdivision. The engineers say they’ll get the project out for bid in the spring, so we’ll see. (Over to the right on this page, you can find a link to a copy of the plan for drain work.)
As some of you know, we’ve also had drain and flooding issues at the west end of Cayuse (across the street from the LDS Church) and at the northeast end of the subdivision, primarily on the north end of Cougar. At the west end of Cayuse, we’d usually get a pond of water after heavy rains or snowmelts because the pipe that carried water from the drain there was plugged with sediment and tree roots. This summer we hired a contractor who removed the old pipe and installed a new one, solving the problem.
We are also working with the county to clean out pipes and fix drainage issues along Cougar in order to stop flooding of yards, driveways and, in some cases, garages. This work, as well as the Cayuse work, is paid for out of our RID funds.
At some point, hopefully in the not-too-distant future, we will be doing more maintenance work on our roads, although they generally are in decent shape. However, we want to be sure we have our water issues resolved before we get to that work. We plan to drive through the subdivision this fall with county officials to assess our roads and prioritize the work to be done.
We also will have Mike and John Wieferich plowing our streets again this winter as we felt they did a much better job than the previous contractors. We join them in encouraging TSA residents to get vehicles, RVs, boats off the streets before the snow flies as it makes it easier and safer to plow. (BTW, John and Mike also do sprinkler system blowouts, if you have a need. Call them at 422-3724.)
One last thing: We’ll soon put in the order for candles and bags for the annual Christmas Eve luminarias display. Stay tuned for details on where and when you can pick those up. If you can help distribute or assemble luminarias, let us know. We have people who head up teams on many – but not all – TSA streets. And volunteers are often needed to assemble packages.
Report by HOA President Steve Shirley (sshirleymt@gmail.com) & Treasurer Terry Atwood (terry@atwoodarts.com