Attending: William Earnhardt, Pamela Howe, J. G. DePoy, JoAn Purvis, and Erin Loftus. The meeting was called to order at 7:10 p.m.
April’s meeting minutes were read and accepted into the record.
Budget documents were not reviewed at this meeting. Our assets currently total $16,739.40 ($6078.99 checking; $10,661.41 Money Market savings), an increase of about $1000.00 since the previous meeting. The possibility of offering PayPal as a means to pay dues was discussed further. William will look into PayPal’s terms of service, to find out whether we can do this without paying fees ourselves, since we are a non-profit.
We discussed placing past meeting minutes on the CVHOA Website-Google Drive. Erin has digital copies for 2016 and 2017; anything prior exists on paper and would have to be scanned. It was generally agreed that the most recent minutes (past 2 years) would be useful to have online (Erin will email the documents to William).
Pam will get the new membership/dues flyers out by June 25th. We set August 19th as the date for the ice cream social, which will be combined with a pond maintenance workday and the annual membership meeting. Pond cleanup would be from 8 to 10 a.m.; the ice cream social and meeting would start at 3:30 p.m. We discussed holding a vote on a new name for the CVHOA at the general meeting.
Pond Maintenance: Matt has acquired a mower and has done one mowing already; it took an hour and a half to do the entire property. Pam reported that two people have volunteered to assist Matt with mowing. This will save us a lot of money over time if we’re able to keep up with most or all of the mowing ourselves. Jay mentioned that we need clean fill dirt, if anyone has or knows of a source where we can get it for free. Matt has been monitoring the holes near the beaver den; no further animal activity has been noted. Matt suggests filling in the holes in that area with crushed rock, to mitigate safety hazards such as a potential collapse of the den. We should be able to pay for this with funds we’re saving by doing our own mowing.
There was some discussion of the recent 8–inch rain that caused a backup of water in culverts around the pond. Pam said she had spoken to a Town of Cary official about this on one occasion. We need to discuss this with the Town again.
Pam presented a draft of the grant request to be submitted to the Town of Cary for our shoreline restoration/beautification project. As currently calculated, the project should cost CVHOA a maximum of about $350.00, once the Town reimburses us for our volunteer man-hours. The grant includes replacement of the broken swinging bench (adjacent to 406 Warren Ave.) with a new stationary bench to be built by a volunteer; planting of shoreline and marsh plants in designated areas, with temporary protective fencing to keep geese away from the plants until they’re established (6 months to a year); and additional signage (optional), in case we want to update or replace any existing signs. William suggested that we need an inventory of existing signage (how many, where they are, and what they say). Erin voiced support for additional “Please Respect All Wildlife” signage. Pam also reported that the reconstruction of the vandalized kiosk unfortunately does not qualify for the grant, which excludes repair of existing structures. We will put the kiosk on our summer agenda. William has all the surviving parts of the original kiosk and needs to get new bolts and posts. This will be a heavy job and will require a number of volunteers to assist.
Regarding goose-flock mitigation, we again discussed the floating LED lights that geese hate so much. William said it’s unclear whether these lights continue to deter geese long-term or whether the geese get used to them and then ignore them. Erin again cautioned that we need to find out whether blue herons, kingfishers, merganser ducks, mallards, and other birds also hate them. We don’t want to drive away our wildlife.
With business concluded, the meeting was adjourned at 8:10 p.m.
The next board meeting will be held on Wednesday, July 12, at 7 p.m.