Spring Garage Sale - Saturday, March 29
The Neighborhood garage sale is Saturday, March 29! If you are planning on doing some spring cleaning, mark the date and set up your sale for 3/29. This affords you more buyer traffic as they see the signs and plan to shop several yard sales in one morning.
Winter Newsletter
SANTA IN THE PARK DEC 15
The Santa in the Park party will be held Sunday, Dec 15 from 12:30 to 3:30PM at Kay Redden Park. Last year’s party was a big event, don’t miss it! More here.
Assessment increase for 2025
Annual Assessment due Jan 1 2025 will increases $20 to $380. This reflects a 5.5% increase, and only the second increase in 20 years. We have been doing well managing finances, but have not been consistently setting aside funds — the recommendation from the new Reserve Study (on TownSq) we are following will set aside the increase ($35K) to meet vendor cost increases and unplanned expenses (e.g. ice storm cleanup and repair) as well as major reserve maintenance like the Lakeline Pool replastering this year.
If you had setup automatic payments, please change the amount to reflect the increase. Look out for the invoice in your mail later in the year.
UPDATE ON LAKELINE LANDSCAPING
We are working with the City of Cedar Park to upgrade irrigation on Lakeline between Buttercup Creek and Zach Russell. We hope to start planting trees on that section of the road before the end of the year as part of a multi-year master plan for replanting along Lakeline.
NEW LEASING RULE
The Board has approved a new Leasing Rule to restrict short term rentals. The document has been officially recorded with Williamson County as of Sept 10 2024. In general, the rule states a minimum lease term of 30 days, and requires lease documentation to be submitted to the Association. The Board will be pursuing an amendment to the CCRs in 2025 for a minimum 12-month lease term, and welcomes your support to help gather signatures.
NATIONAL NIGHT OUT
There was a good show of support from our Cedar Park government, police, animal control, firefighters, and others at the October National Night Out event at Kay Redden Park. Plenty of pizza, drinks, face painting, and snow cones! It was a good time to talk with our mayor and mayor pro tem, the chief of police and others in the department, finishing the night with a light show and demonstration by Quint 2!
Homeowner 101 - KNOW YOUR SHUTOFFS
Introducing a new series of tips for the homeowner. Our first installment is on how to locate and shut off water, gas, and electric to your home in case of emergency. Good idea to look around your property to locate these before there is a crisis!
Water
Water meter, cutoff valve, and irrigation valve in green.
Cutoff valve uncovered.
Locate your water meter, which is likely toward the front of your property in the utility easement. Note the meter box is City use only. The cutoff valve is located near it, conveniently labeled ‘Property Owner Cutoff’. Note your meter may be next to your neighbor’s, but should be closer to your house. Other items you may notice nearby are irrigation valve boxes (green cover in the photo above) and sewer cleanouts (the white PVC cap you have likely run over with the mower).
To shut off water, reach in and turn ‘righty tighty’. If you cannot locate the valve, or find it doesn’t move, contact Cedar Park. When you turn it back on, open one faucet in the highest floor of the house to bleed the air—start slowly (quarter turn) to avoid overpressure.
Electric
Main electric panel and meter (telephone line as well)
Conveniently labeled main breaker
GAS
Gas meter and valve
Note you should never need to shut off your gas, and if you do, you will need to contact Atmos to turn it back on as there are safety steps to follow to prevent problems. And if you are having work done, your plumber will know the proper procedures and permits.
If you smell gas (the ‘rotten egg’ smell of mercaptan added to odorless natural gas) leave the property immediately and call 911 from a safe distance. Don’t try to diagnose it yourself.
However, in the case of emergency—earthquakes (not common here, for now), wildfire, tornado, poor judgement DIYs—it is good to be familiar with the equipment. There are 2 valves circled on the photo, one from the ground before the regulator, and one after the meter to the house. You need a crescent wrench to turn one of these perpendicular to the line—so the holes line up (this is where the gas co. would put a padlock when service is discontinued). Note there may be other levers on the lines that turn off gas to different appliances or parts of the house.
If you have other suggestions or questions about your house, please contact us.
Summer Newsletter
Dive-In Movie this Saturday 8/10/24 at Kay Redden Pool.
Please join us for ‘Back to the Future’ at Kay Redden pool this weekend! Movie starts at 8:30. Snacks and drinks will be provided. Bring your key tag to get in as normal or ask nicely at the gate!
Board meeting Tuesday 8/13 at 7PM
Join us for the August WBCHOA board meeting this coming Tuesday at 7PM. We had to cancel the July meeting thanks to the statewide internet outage, and couldn’t reschedule to meet vacation schedules and TX meeting notice rules. The meeting will again be on Zoom, you will get an email notice to direct you to TownSq for the agenda and Zoom password. If you can’t access TownSq, contact us. You can change email notification settings through your TownSq profile.
Lakeline Shared Use Path
The City of Cedar Park approved a design and engineering services contract for a 4 mile, 10’ wide shared use path on the east side of Lakeline Blvd to connect Little Elm Dr. and New Hope Dr, as part of the City’s Mobility Master Plan. You can view the City Council discussion (jump to agenda item H2) from their July 25th meeting. Note this is design, not build approval.
The board has been in contact with the City staff, as we have our own Lakeline landscape master plan scoped out earlier this year to replace drought and storm damaged trees and provide other landscape improvements, sharing cost with the City per our license agreement. This announcement essentially places all landscape improvements on hold, at least east side of Lakeline, until we understand how the design will affect our HOA common property. The first phase of our plan, evaluating the irrigation lines north of Buttercup Creek, was accomplished earlier this summer but will need to wait until we learn more about the design, which could accommodate some of our desired improvements.
Modifications and other committee volunteers
Thank you for your patience if you have been waiting for Modifications approvals. We also thank our hard-working Modifications Committee volunteers who have been stretched with the reviews. We are again soliciting for volunteer homeowners who would like to support our community on the Modifications committee, social, communication, or anything you would like to do to get involved (landscape planning? organizing? writing a newsletter?)
May Music Bingo party
Music Bingo from May
Hope you were there at the Adult Night: Music Bingo in May. Prizes were won! Drinks were drunk, snacks were snacked! It was a lot of fun and we hope to do it again. Thanks to our social committee Michelle B. and Cheryl S. for planning, and the team at Goodwin & Co for putting it on.
Spring Newsletter
New decorative fencing at Lakeline and Buttercup
Pool Opening Date
At the March meeting, the board approved an April 19th opening date for the pools. Swimming is at your own risk, lifeguards will be staffing later in the year around school year ending. The Lakeline pool has been newly re-plastered, and improvements have been made to both pools. If you do not have keytag access, please contact Goodwin Management and review the rules on the pool page.
Lakeline pool replastering in progress
Neighborhood Yard Sale March 23
This Saturday we are planning for neighborhood-wide yard sales — you may have seen the signs around the neighborhood. You are on your own to sell your own items in your yard, with the increased interest and traffic from buyers. Feel free to announce on your social media; NextDoor, Reddit, Facebook, etc.
Speaking of Yards…
It is spring time, likely no late freeze, so time to get outside and enjoy it before the oppressive heat comes (pools are open soon!)… and time to pay some attention to your landscape. I just did my first mow/leaf bag/fertilize of the year last weekend. If your trees and shrubs haven’t come back from the 2023 ice storm by now, they are gone…time to replace. If you are doing major changes to your landscape, please complete the modification form, now online.
We ask y’all to keep your yard neat and tidy. We have some tips and expectations in this article, which will help avoid violations: https://www.westsidehoa.org/2024/3/19/landscape-tips-for-spring
2-3 volunteers needed for Modifications Committee
Speaking of modifications, if you have submitted one recently and are waiting for a reply, you know first hand that we need support for our current hard working volunteer modifications committee. We are looking for 2-3 volunteers who can serve on the committee for 4-6 months to help our homeowners get a quick turnaround on their requests.
The time commitment is perhaps an hour a week, to review requests as they come in and vote to approve or deny based on the community standards and CCRs. We will provide support and training on the Smartwebs system that tracks requests.
Board members are prevented from serving on the modifications committee by Texas law. If we cannot get volunteers to serve—which is our main goal of having our community maintain community standards—we do have the option of appointing Goodwin Management to manage modification requests for a fee of around $65 per request.
Please contact the board and/or Jim Smitherman if you can help out!
If you are interested in being a board member we are also looking for volunteers.
Your social Calendar 2024
Our social committee is planning on four events this year. More details will come, but here is an outline:
Adult night with music trivia - May
Pool party and swim-in movie night - July
Neighborhood Night Out - October
Winter Festival & Santa in the Park - December (yes to the snow machines and cocoa!)
Reserve study and master landscape plan
The Association has received two major plans regarding upkeep of our common areas. The first is a Reserve Study, which looks at our cash in the bank and lists what we will expect to fix in the next 30 years, recommending both how much we should be setting aside and when to repair association assets such as pools, pool houses, playgrounds, parking lots, and fencing.
The second document is a master landscape plan from our landscape vendor Sunscapes. We asked Sunscapes for a phased proposal for replanting trees along Lakeline, many of which died from the years of drought (especially the cypress) and freeze. The planting will rely a lot on the weather, and lake levels, as watering restrictions will halt any progress. We will start to test and improve the irrigation lines to prepare for the first phase of tree planting in the fall if all goes well. We are also working on a cost sharing with the City of Cedar Park for part of the plan, the section of Lakeline north of Buttercup Creek which they maintain.
These documents show that although our association is in good financial condition now with $1.5M in the bank, we need to grow our reserve fund to meet these contingencies. Case in point, last year we spent $40K on tree cleanup after the ice storm, and $75K on replastering the Lakeline pool. The board will likely increase 2025 assessments 6% to $382 to build the reserve and make planned improvements. Budgeting will start in September, please contact the board if you have questions.
The Reserve Study can be found on TownSq.
The Landscape Master Plan can be found on TownSq.
Landscape Tips for Spring
Some basic tips for lawn maintenance, now that spring has begun:
Perform routine lawn maintenance, as needed. Proper lawn maintenance includes:
Mowing, trimming, edging along all hard surfaces & removing weeds from the lawn. The frequency of lawn mowing will vary depending on how often it is watered or rains, how many weeds are in the lawn, etc. Some lawns may require lawn maintenance as often as once a week to stay in compliance.
Remove grass and weeds from all flower/landscape/rock beds.
Remove all dead branches from trees and shrubs. Prune shrubs.
Replace the sod in all bare or dead grass areas of your front yard.
Remove and replace dead shrubs and trees.
Trim up tree canopies over the sidewalk to a minimum of 8’ and over the street to a minimum of 14’. Note: City of Cedar Park may do this for you if they see an issue, and it might not be aesthetically pleasing as you’d like.
Trim shrubs so the address sign is visible from the street. This is especially critical in the event of an emergency. The Police/EMS or the Fire Department may not be able to find your home, so trimming your overgrown shrubs could save a life!
It is also time to reposition potted plants from your driveway staging area to their locations in your landscape.