Less than 5 months to go for turnover and I don’t know anything more than when I moved in to Hampton Lakes 4 years ago! The biggest thing is how much is it going to cost us and what that bill is for each individual household?
So yes, I’d like to know what its going to cost me, but here are some things that I’d like to see done:
Pave the streets! Don’t give me any of this stuff about “we’re not going to pave the streets until construction is done.” Its been 20 years for cry’n out loud. You want us to wait another 20 years to get the streets paved? I don’t think so. They make it sound like the streets are going to crumble apart with the construction traffic. That’s crazy! We’re not building the Hoover Dam or the Empire State Building. Riverhall Parkway looks just fine and that street gets all the construction traffic on it for all 3 communities! The part of East Hampton Circle that was repaved because there were so many potholes on it looks just fine. Its been at least a year and a half since repaving and that section gets all the construction traffic for Hampton Lakes. Plus, listen up developer and builders, if you pave the streets and make the community look nice, YOU MIGHT SELL MORE HOUSES! You do all that external marketing to get people to show up and look at the development and the development looks like crap with all patched up streets and never ending potholes. Do the right thing and pave the streets.
A heated community pool would be nice. I remember hearing a few months ago that there was some extra money of ours laying around and if it was ok they’d use that to heat the pool. What happened? When I was on the heat the pool committee 2 years ago the developer wanted us to get a majority approval from both communities to use our money. The developer could have just used his money and billed us for it at turnover. It would have cost less than 100K at the time, but the developer’s lawyers nixed the whole thing.
I’d like everybody in the Amenity Center fired and replaced with its own HOA Manager and an assistant or two. No more connections to the golf course. We’d save hundreds of thousands of dollars and we may actually get some interesting events happening at the Amenity Center! Since we’ll save some money, maybe then we could budget a free hot dog or hamburger for the Fourth of July pool party instead of having to buy reheated food from the Caloosa Grill!
Once turnover is complete maybe we could put out a request for proposal to get some kind of food service operation in the Amenity Center. Or just let people bring their own food to the pool, which we’ve done in the past and could still do into the future. I don’t know why, but it seems like its illegal (against HOA rules) for groups of people to have parties and bring in food to share. Maybe its a liability thing. If some one brings in bad food and gets a bunch of people sick, somebody could get sued! Maybe just put some vending machines inside and a microwave. In any event, I don’t want the HOA to be the money sponsor a food service operation. I don’t want us to be restaurant operators. It would probably get out of hand and may become a money pit. Just get a restaurant to come in and pay us rent! Let someone else have the headaches!
I saw a damaged curb get fixed the other day. I thought the developer wasn’t going to fix the busted up curbs, but this one got fixed! How bout that!
Here’s a pic of East Hampton Circle where the potholes were so bad they decided to scrape off what was left of the asphalt and put down a new layer of asphalt. Keep in mind this is not the final layer, just the base layer. The pic was taken a year and a half after it was laid down and there’s no damage from construction! And NO POTHOLES ARE FORMING!
Just a little note…. I do a lot of walking around Hampton Lakes. A couple of weeks ago was the first time I walked on completed sidewalks in the whole community! No more having to go into the street to get around construction sites! Plus, I think there’s only one house being worked on on the east end of East Hampton Circle! They just started putting up the cinder block walls. Of course, the new section has a long way to go, but at least the original section is done, or almost done. If it takes another 20 years to build out the new section and we’re still waiting for finished streets, can you imagine if the developer then decides he wants to build more houses and they want to wait till those are finished!? It could be 60 years before this community will get finished streets. They could pave over me because I’ll be six feet under by then!
Hey, do me a favor. Share this with your neighbors and friends in the community. I’m being hassled by one of our Facebook admins that has some kind of vendetta against me and ends up deleting some of my posts. So I’m not going to post much on our community Facebook groups. I’m just sending this out to my email list for the people who signed up for my Substack. So everybody needs to sign up. Its free!
Thanks everybody! Have a good day! And don’t forget to comment about what you want to see, or if you have any questions.
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