Your suggestion has some merit and could be done, but posting it on this forum is not the way to make that happen. Talk to someone on the Landscaping committee, or better yet, attend the next meeting on May 15 at 7pm. At this point, the best chance for quick action is to prepare a brief paper on the problem and proposed actions, along with costs, and get the Landscape committee chair, the Armstrong Management, or a Board member to bring it before the next BoD meeting. Of course, if you feel strongly, about it, I recommend that you attend the BoD and voice your opinion.

Brad Hancock
"I reject your reality and substitute my own!"

OK - Once again I fall back on what I call Proactive Management, either the folks tasked to support the enviromental look of Montclair are asleep at the wheel, or they dont care - either one is a failure. Anyone driving down Waterway near the dam can look across the street from the dam and see nothing but trees full of the worms. Perhaps it is a natural infestation and not a darn thing we can do about it, not being a entomologist I defer that answer. I cut all of them off the trees in my yard just because I didnt want the trees totally defoliated once they get out of the bags.

Attending the BoD meeting is a nice thing, if you can do it, I can not. I would hope this avenue may allow those who do attend to toss this out, but when the next BoD meeting happens - I suspect all of the larva will have matured and the opportunity will have passed.

It would be my opinion that when the landscaping supervisor saw the problem a preplanned action plan would have kicked off - I guess my faith is too great.

Mike, as the newest member on the Landscape committee I can assure you it WAS discussed on April 17th. The recommendation to the staff was that a tree can take one year of being defoliated but not multiple years. The guidance was to break open the nests to allow the birds to feast on the worms. I will research the LEAST chemical methods to CONTROL the bag worms. I advised the staff to NOT burn them with kerosene soaked rags as that would "cook" the bark and kill the limb. You are correct that if the bag appears on a single limb you CAN prune off the single limb and drown the worms in soapy water in a bucket. If an entire tree is covered with nests it does NOT need to be cut down. It WILL survive the invasion and WILL grow another set of leaves after the life cycle of the worms end. I will keep you posted with the results of the MAY Landscape committee discussion about funding additonal controls next April. Terry Tallent

Many posts from this board have been forwarded on to the management company and board members. I know of several board members that contribute quite often. Community Members using this forum may allow the board members or even the management company to take some action without waiting for the monthly board meeting. It may allow for some background research on subjects so that if it does come up at the board meeting.. they can provide an informed opinion and not have to just keep tabling an item. Some people, like myself, may have lost faith that using the board of director meeting as a platform to get things changed/done in this community is NOT a worthwhile venue or good use of my time. Some may like to plant the seed and let someone else water it. I highly encourage people to continue to use this board as a method of getting the word over to the board of directors or the management company whenever they see something that could need some attention in this community. The other added bonus is that we may have some experts on a subject brought up on this board here in the community that can weigh in. Also provides me an avenue to vent in hopes of finding others with the same mindset.

Post it! And here IS the place to do it. Of course this is just my opinion and should be treated as such.

The Landscape and Facilities Management Committee did address this at our last meeting and asked that either Armstrong Management or the landscape contractor address the bagworms. I've looked at the landscape contractor's contract and this seems to be part of their contract, if the bagworms are in a common area that they maintain. Some of the problem lies in wooded areas that we do not actively maintain. For those of you with bagworms on trees on your property, one way to address it without using pesticides is just to tear the web/bag apart. This was a suggestion by one of our Committee members. Does anyone else have experience dealing with this problem?

That sounds like a very legitimate reason to contact the management and ask for an extension. Getting an extension is not difficult, but most people don't take the action to talk to the management, which causes problems.

Brad Hancock
"I reject your reality and substitute my own!"

Why should have this even happened? The inspector should have noticed the nest as active, they didnt need to look real hard. Then write the violation notice with the extension already applied.

Yes I understand they are busy, so am I - that excuse does not fly, either you have the ability to do your job or you do not - if the Management Company needs more inspectors to do the job properly, then they need to step up to the contract they signed and support the requirement.

Mike,

From your previous posts, I'm pretty certain that you won't agree with this, but here goes anyway.

The covenants staff is doing their job, which is to enforce the covenants. The contract does not allow them to make subjective judgments about the covenants. It does allow the covenants director to work with the home owners in scheduling timely fixes for violations.

If the inspector chose to ignore the nest or write a violation with an extended due date, then they are opening the management up to complaints about being subjective, unfair, and inconsistent (they get these all the time and don't need to add to the fire.) They must write up the violation in accordance with the community guidelines, which specify the time for the home owner to respond.

It takes very little effort on the home owner's part to make a phone call, drop off a note, send an e-mail, fax, or letter requesting an extension and the reason why. In fact, it is just as easy as writing a complaint on a web site.

Now, the opposite side of that coin is, why did the home owner allow the nest to be made in the first place? If owners complied with the guidelines, there would be no need for the inspectors and we could all save money and time.

Cheers,

Brad Hancock
"I reject your reality and substitute my own!"

I actually do agree with a part of your post Brad - unless the homeowner was away, each day when they pick up mail they should have noticed the nest being prepared and cleaned it out at the inception.

On the inspections being objective or subjective I believe they are exceptionally subjective, each home has to be inspected on its own merits, a set of rules are always interpretive - some people can interpret better than others. As you point out the covenants are called guidelines which is defined in my dictionary as "an official recommendation indicating how something should be done or what sort of action should be taken in a particular circumstance" Draconian enforcement should not be the norm, how does a mailbox that has sun faded a bit and become a shade of grey become such an issue that untold number of violations needed to written this year? Did my grey mailbox cause someone to loose their home sale?

Another case in point I have a front door that has been Robins Egg blue for the 15 years I have lived in my home. A couple of years back I received a violation for changed my door color with out getting permission - of course I was rather surprised at the notification of this violation, and I fired off a letter to the Covenants director asking for the proof that my door was any color other than the color it is now. The return answer was in essense a form letter that said a Front Door color can not be changed with out an approved PIR - nothing much else, but the action must have been tabled as I did not get a second letter nor has my home been sold by the Sheriff for ignoring MPOA!

You do not have to notify them, from my experience. My front steps sink every year about a 1/2 inch and of course every single year during the precinct inspections I get a notice to repair them. If I get the time and it is not raining (my notices are usually in April so we have lots of rain) I'll fix it as soon as it is possible and then just shoot an e-mail over to Armstrong covenants director. This year I didn't get it fixed until 3 days before the end of the 30 day time frame, so I didn't send a notification of a completion of repairs. I did however log in to Armstrong connect and saw that my violations had been closed. I think that as soon as you get something corrected, if you were to provide a courtesy notification via e-mail or a phone call to the management office, it might help them to better schedule the re-inspection. Say they are re-inspecting another on your street. It will provide them a chance to swing by and note the issue resolved. Otherwise, they will generally just wait for the 30 days and schedule a re-inspection. Last year when I got the notification and corrected it in a very timely manner, I logged in to Armstrong and saw that my tickets were already closed out, since I had notified them of the corrections that I made.

As far as covenants go... if you get in front of the issue, the management company AND the board of directors will work with you on it. Something such as a roof that needs to be re-shingled or other issues that could possibly take a few months to get on contractor schedules and work out insurance issues. As long as you are honest and forth coming, they will work with you. If you just ignore the issue or spend all your time and energy trying to point out the fact that your neighbors have the same violations but didn't receive a letter, you are just gumming up the system. If you get a violation... Just fix it. Plain and simple. If you can't fix it, work with the system. The sooner you get in touch with the Management company, the sooner a solution can be arranged. They will not tell you how to fix it, but they will understand that you are trying your best and can provide extensions if requested, once they have all of the facts.

Are you saying that your driveway had so many cracks it gave you tennis elbow and put you in a brace for a month? Wow, you should have redone the whole driveway if it was that bad!

Filling the cracks I hope to the Community’s satisfaction as you’re up keeping it to those guidelines and not the ‘board’s’ guidelines.