Last night your Board held a meeting to discuss the community's landscaping for our entrance and along our border with Route 54. We had instructed our Director of Landscaping and Maintenance (Landscaping Director) to obtain quotes from service providers who could perform a variety of cutting, pruning and clearing work.
Having duly executed on that task, and armed with quotes with expiration dates, the Landscaping Director asked for a session to discuss the quotes and secure a winner so that work could be started. That was last night's meeting.
You might ask why it was even necessary to give the instruction in the first place. Let's look at that:
We recently learned something that might have been forgotten over time; that Fairway Springs property extends from the Baptist Church to just before Ellington Place along Route 54 and that we have an obligation to maintain that parcel of land. It is a parcel that falls outside of homeowner responsibility in that corridor.
Upon inspection, and with prompting from long term residents, we recognized that the plants, trees, bushes and land is in a bad way:
Aesthetically, it does not look pleasing
Invasive species of plants have taken up residence and are choking out the deliberately planted and native plants
Plants that should be regularly pruned for thick, luscious greenery have not been maintained and now require extreme cutting to encourage healthy growth.
Beyond this, the Board recently approved expenditure to remove the 6 dead pine trees behind the front signage of our community. (That's our money - you and I) This means that we have a heightened awareness of the financial impacts of greenery under our care.
Back to the meeting. The discussion touched on a variety of different topics, far removed from the simple "which vendor's quote is best for our community?". The four primary topics of debate were:
Noise - If we cut back and thin out the foliage, the noise from 54 will more easily permeate our idyllic community.
Safety - Visibility from the stop sign, when leaving our neighborhood, is currently low as a result of overgrowth at the corner. It requires drivers to pull forward from the legal stop line in order to see more clearly prior to pulling out.
Aesthetics - At one time in Fairway Springs history, our perimeter plantings and our entranceway were considered picture postcard perfect and many vacationers, homeowners and visitors would stop at the entrance to take photos of our beautiful bottle brush trees, pines, palms and viburnums, among others. That beauty has long since been buried or taken over, although some of the plants remain.
Budget - do we have the money allocated for such work?
Here's the kicker and the reason for writing today. The Board, your Board is 100% empowered to act as we see fit. Of course that action should always be taken with the best interests of the community at heart - we have sworn to that objective, but act we can. We 9 members of your board (that's 9 people out of 406 houses in our neighborhood) act and make decisions for all of you, frequently. Last night we chose not to act immediately. We chose to reach out to you, the community members at large, to educate you on the issues and gauge the feeling in the neighborhood.
We still need to take action and 9 people will still cast their votes, but we would like to hear from you first.
If we cut and thin and clear, the noise reaching from 54 into the neighborhood increases and the homeowners closest to 54 will experience the worst of that increase in noise pollution. If we don't, native plants die out and invasive species prosper and cause unknown and potentially bigger problems for the future. (Remember our 3 days without power after hurricane Irma? - That was our overgrowth that hit the powerlines.) If we don't, safety at our entrance declines further.
There will be an imbalance of sentiment from within the neighborhood. Those closest to 54 will have very different opinions to those at the back of the community, furthest from the noise. Safety should likely unite everyone but beauty and appearance will only matter to some and the spending of money is always hotly contested.
9 people on your board will make this decision. Remember that. When we cast our votes and make decisions we impact everybody, not always in the same way, but everybody, nonetheless.
One of the best suggestions of the night, in my opinion, came from the floor, from an engaged homeowner who suggested that even though the work might have an inevitability to it, that we give the homeowners along 54 enough time, to do their own plantings to mitigate for the increase in noise.
If, during your reading of this, you get a sense of inevitability, you are probably right - we do need to cut and thin and clear. But we should also consider planting and filling in and maintaining.
In case you are unaware, when you manage plant cutting and pruning, even back to "three buds"
or fewer - you are actually encouraging the plant to grow. It comes back fuller, richer, healthier. When you cut it's top (maintain it's height) it fills out and provides a great sound barrier. It just takes time. When you plant certain combinations of plants together, they help pollinate one another stimulating faster growth and when planned, plantings can look beautiful and be functional.
Last night, we gave ourselves time to gather input on here and we will go door to door to those closest homes to 54 and explain the situation but on October 19th at the next Board Meeting, we will bring this agenda item back up and vote on motions bought forth by the Board.
Assuming that everybody agrees that safety should always be an uppermost concern, I've created this poll here to gather your input on this topic.
How do you feel about our border with 54?
- Safety only
- Safety and Beauty - ignore noise, it'll pass
- I want all 3: Safety, Peace and Beauty
- Ignore it all - don't spend our money
Most of your Board Members will also be at the Open House tonight and we are happy to discuss this or anything else you wish to talk about too. You know we'd love to see you.
Please also, attend as many Board meeting's as you can. Get educated, get involved, choose your Board, join the Board, fight the Board. Engagement in the community, it's issues and how its money is spent is important to all of us.
As always, to stay up to date on everything going on at Fairway Springs please use the variety of channels here.
Become a member of our Fairway-Springs.com Website here.
You can sign up with Sentry Management to receive emails here.
Subscribe to get automatic notifications of these articles here.
or
Download the Fairway Springs Mobile App from Wix Spaces, here