April 5th Weekly Update
By Jim Hilker, Caribbean Village HOA President
Some Family Time Off
I want to publicly thank Karen, Ramona, Joan, and Dave for stepping up and covering for me while I took a week off to spend with family visiting from Ithaca NY. What a blessing it is to have such amazing partners in this volunteer business management endeavor.
Liz and I had a full week of fun and excursions with our son, daughter-in-law, and their six children. On their last evening here, we all went to Sharky’s Beach for the sunset, where Liz got the most amazing photo of them which I have shared with you all at the bottom of this page.
New Landscaping Company
This past week marked the start of our new landscaping service by Mint Condition Services. This company is significantly different than any we’ve had in the past. They are not a large corporation like others have been. Mint Condition is a small “mom and pop” locally-owned and operated firm. In fact, Trey Brocke (owner) is actually operating one of the mowers along side his crew most of the time, while his wife manages the administration of the company from their home office. Also, Caribbean Village is their single largest customer / account. I talk with Trey nearly every day of the week, and sometimes more than once per day. He is scheduling to have a real lawn fertilizing done in the next few weeks, as Brightview did an absolutely horrible effort at it recently, skipping many, perhaps most rear lawns, as they were exiting Caribbean Village permanently.
Mint Condition was fortunate to be able to acquire Justin “Sprinkle” (not his actual last name) from Brightview to continue doing our irrigation service.
I have setup a work order system for Caribbean Village on this website. If you have any landscaping or irrigation issues on your property that needs attention, please fill out and submit the web form located on our “Work Order” page linked below. You’ll soon after see a marker on the Google map on that page listing your submitted work order. This Google map what Trey and Justin use each week to manage needs on individual properties. You’ll also find this Work Orders button on the home page of the website as well as in the Header navigation at the top of the pages.
Venice Ave Gate
Yes, the Venice Ave gate has been goofed up for too long. I apologize for that. It has been super-frustrating for us as it just gets disabled by our vendor’s careless services over and over. There are not many gate service vendors in the area to choose from. We’re exploring making a switch, but the only other company we could locate which has interest in taking on a new client charge are more than double our current vendor pricing, which is over our budget line-item for gate service and maintenance. At this time, we’re scheduled to get the gate functioning again as early as possible within this coming week.
For the not-to-distant we’re going to examine cost and feasibility of adding a license plate reader and lift-arm added to the access options. More on that later.
Family Fun Planning
Today, the Chair of the Social & Events Committee, Liz Hilker, is meeting with our residents that are younger families with children at home, to plan some family-based events for the near future. It is vital that ALL residents of Caribbean Village are included in everything here, especially since our younger families are the future of Caribbean Village! I’m looking forward to hearing about the ideas and plans they come up with. If anyone would like to get involved with events for our community families and children, please reach out to Liz and she’ll add you to the list of volunteers.
Traffic Management
We have heard on a number of occasions recently of vehicles that drive quite fast down some of our streets, and ignore some of our stop signs. It has been requested that we explore installing speed bumps in order to get this under control. This is a topic that will be discussed by the Board at the next HOA Meeting scheduled for Monday April 7th at 5:30 PM.
Beautification and Upkeep
Some of the folks on this committee have recently met with Mint Condition Services to discuss options for cleaning up our planting beds at the community entrances and other common area needs. These plans will be fine-tuned over the next few weeks and a budget will be set, and then a phased-in project to make Caribbean Village beautiful again will begin, probably in mid May.
Enjoy your weekend!!
