Did you know that our annual budget for Maintenance and Repair is $3K, with last year’s water bill just a bit over $7K?  Our system has 5 separate controllers with more than 500 heads keeping our common areas alive.  John Caldwell has played dodge car for many years in keeping as many of the heads working as possible with weekly walk throughs and manually adjusting the controllers each time it looks like we might have rain (THANK YOU!!!).  With the new plants in place this last week, it was a big enough job that we brought in help to repair 4 main lines and fix 40+ spray heads.  We now have everything working for the moment except a few zones on north Coit.  We used an independent Luis Reyna and his very experienced team of 4 people over two days to get it all working again.   Should you need help with your system, Luis works weekends and evenings and is available at 469.245.3317. 

Make a Donation: you can register and pay as a member by clicking here and selecting Beautification in addition to your membership.  Or you can make a direct donation to beautification via ZELLE to treasurer@efchoa.com.  Remember that donations are tax deductible.

Mow and Blow: If you don’t mow yourself, please make your yard service is aware that they need to pick up leaves and debris and haul away what they might blow into the street or up onto the islands. It sometimes builds up in the base of many of our plants and becomes a home for insects and rots the plant.  We will make sure to not do the same on the care of the islands as well.  On this last cleanup we made 5 trips to the dump and last year there were 120+ bags picked up.

Water Conservation: If you see a sprinkler head acting wonky or see a geyser, please text Paul McKinney (972.345.3779) immediately so we can repair it.  Most of these heads are fed by a 2” line (4X the size of most of those in your yard), so we can lose a lot of water fast.

Trees:  Anything in the common areas over 8’ tall is maintained by the city at no direct cost to us.  You just need to let us know if there is something that needs attention. 

• City Grants- Last December board member, Ranneh Kayfan, championed the application for a program that the city offers to help with new beautification.  We’ve made it through the first couple of hurdles.  This is another time that’s it’s great to be a volunteer organization because we get a much larger fund matching from the city.  More to come in future updates. 
• Applying mulch will be done at least once a year. It looks nicer and keeps the weeds down.
• Much of our grass areas are no longer grass (mostly clover/weeds).  We will be doing some organic fertilizer and looking to replace some of this.
• Sprinklers – there’s more to do to improve the design. 
• Pressure wash the bridge and signage at the entrances.
• There's an entire bed of monkey grass plowed under on the 3rd island. We believe that we might save it if we act now.  If we can generate an additional $700 in donations, Alberto will clean up the beds and save as many of the 300 plants as possible, apply mulch and over the next couple of months return these to health. 
• Continue Sprinkler maintenance and determine if there’s a way to replace controllers with something networked and more automated to conserve water and make us aware of leaks.  
• Benches – we are going to replace and consider some additional locations.

Estates of Forest Creek HOA

PO Box 251271

Plano TX 75025-1271