Beginning in October the Center Pool was heated for the first two months. December and January will see the East and West pool heated, then back to the Center pool for February and March, finishing with the East and West pool for April and May if needed.
Spas at all pools will continue to be heated year-round.
From the HOA board’s landscape subcommittee:
September and the end of summer is at hand, at least calendar-wise, and our snowbirds are setting their sights on getting back to the desert for “the season.” Our landscape maintenance personnel are also making plans that might interest our year-round residents as well as part-timers.
During September, each week will see a dialing back of irrigation to as little as two minutes per application (Monday thru Saturday). The decrease will help the Bermuda grass go dormant, so some increased browning-out will be apparent. In concert with water reduction will be a mowing schedule that removes an additional 1/2 inch or so of the lawn thickness each week. By the end of September, we will be ready for an easy scalping of the lawn areas in preparation for over-seeding in early October.
The water that we have saved in September will be used to germinate and nourish the annual ryegrass that will be sown during early October.
Our bottle brush trees have grown unfettered for two years now so the time has come to prune them to prevent storm damage this winter. These are weak and brittle trees full of sucker-growth resulting from having been “poodled” during their early years of growth. Our landscaper rescued them from the poodle shape but the damage had been done. The bottle brush pruning will start at the east pool and move west from there.
Our citrus trees will be pruned in November and the old fruit removed long before then.
— Carl Toland
The HOA board posts the minutes of the open sessions of its meetings, which any homeowner can attend. You can read the minutes on the homeowners-only HOA Information page from any internet-connected computer, tablet or mobile phone that can open PDF files. Because these documents are for homeowners only, you must type in a password, which you can look up in any meeting notification email and newsletter sent by the HOA Board to its mailing list. Click DOCUMENTS AND FORMS above to see other documents, such as Rules and Regulations, that can be shared with tenants and contractors.
Join us for the social highlight of the year! Meet your neighbors, including your HOA board of directors. Bring your favorite appetizer to share with one another. Each year brings out super-delicious new items and old favorites. And the bingo, a dollar a card, so bring lots of singles. Five games will be played.
BYOB, no glass allowed at pool. Bar area provided outside the pool area. Ice, soft drinks and water provided.
For more information or any questions, please call Brian.
Report from Rosanne Kumins
At this time, we have seen only two months of spending in the operating budget of the current fiscal year, and we are on target with the budget. Thus, I am hopeful that our expenditures during the next 10 months will be in line with our full-year budget.
One of the larger annual expenditures in the operating budget is for earthquake insurance. Some good news this year is that this premium did not increase. However, on the opposite side of the ledger, we are hearing some public discussion about a sharp rise in the cost of water and other utilities, all of which may impact our budget, but it is too early to make any predictions.
Canyon South 1 HOA also has a budget for long term asset replacements called the reserve fund. Dollars are set aside each month for items such as asphalt, stucco, painting, pools and equipment, roof repair, and other related infrastructure items. Each month $7,624 or approximately 27% of your monthly homeowner maintenance fees are contributed to this reserve. The concept behind this reserve fund, is to make possible major improvements without special assessments. This year for example, the east pool and spa were completely resurfaced. Each year the Board of Directors conducts a review, with the assistance of a reserve specialist, to determine the adequacy of the fund. A summary of the study is then included with the annual packet of HOA materials distributed to homeowners every June.
Report from Carl Toland:
Desertscape and Pyracantha Hedges
The good news is that our desertscape plants have survived another very hot summer and most seem to be thriving as they are being properly irrigated. The bad news is that some pyracantha hedges on Caliente have died due to inadequate irrigation. Our landscaper will be augmenting the irrigation systems that serve these hedges and will plant new plants in November to replace the dead ones that have been removed.
Fire Ant Infestations
Fire ant infestations have been treated by the landscapers in between vector control applications, the last of which was virtually ineffective. Ant poisons in granular, powder and liquid form have been used but a new powerful insecticide is currently being sprayed and injected into the nests. This treatment kills thousands of ants and appears to kill the winged ants … hopefully the queens also. The granular poison was a good control, but nests just moved a few feet away or came back in a week or so.
Pool Heating Schedule
Beginning in October the Center Pool was heated for the first two months. December and January will see the East and West pool heated, then back to the Center pool for February and March, finishing with the East and West pool for April and May if needed.
Spas at all pools will continue to be heated year-round.
Scalping and Reseeding
Desert Water Agency reduced its water savings guidelines from 35% in 2015 to 10-to-13% in 2016. Canyon South 1 continued with the Monday-Wednesday-Friday nighttime watering schedule this year and thus the water savings continued from last year. However, when it became apparent that most complexes would over-seed this fall and that Desert Water Agency was going to permit daytime watering for this purpose, your Board voted to scalp and over-seed along with the rest. After the new lawn is established, normal nighttime irrigation on M-W-F will resume.
Annuals and Tree Pruning
Landscape staff is busy planting geraniums and lobelia in the beds near our pools and in one or two other areas. Our valuable Bougainvillea shrubs blend with and form a backdrop for the annuals. We have not “poodled” our Olive trees for two seasons so they could sprout some trunk-shading branches that will help prevent sunburn of the bark in the future. This photo illustrates the kind of pruning that we will do with our Olive trees. The citrus trees will be pruned in November and a contractor will prune the large pine trees and other trees that must be professionally climbed for that purpose.
Architectural Variance Reviews
Owners have been very good in submitting helpful, detailed architectural review requests for the Board’s consideration. These have covered landscape upgrades, patio surface work & installation of windows and air conditioners. Download these forms here.
Pool and Spa Re-plastering
East Spa ready for new plaster, drains and tile.Rammell Construction was again awarded the bid to re-plaster the East Pool and Spa. They drained the pool and spa on September 28th, began demolishing the plaster and tile the next day and finished the plaster and tile on October 13, 2016. There was no delay in construction this year while waiting for the Health Department inspection. New drains were installed to help us further comply with the Virginia Graeme Baker safety codes. Auto-fill devices were installed
East Pool with plaster and tile removed, without handrailon pool and spa and a ‘to-code’ handrail was added at the pool. Other handrails of this kind may need to be installed if code enforcement becomes very strict at our pools and spas.
East Spa ready to fill with water
East Pool with new plaster, tile and handrailThe November 2016 newsletter is in the mail to residents, but here is a news preview for our website visitors:
A sad note to report. Connie Buckley, our property manager at PPM passed away after a brief illness. We will miss her cheerful help and assistance. Our condolences go out to her family and friends.
PPM has assigned David Schuknecht as our new property manager, so the contact forms on this website now connect to him.
The communications committee has collected email addresses for almost all owners and will send a group email later this year to test the accuracy of the list so it can be used for notifications. Meanwhile you can update yours with us anytime by clicking here. Please direct any questions to Roseanne Kumins, the HOA treasurer.
Our long time postman, Jerry, will be retiring December 1st. If you wish to say thanks and wish him well, there are only a few days left to make contact.
Neighborhood security is again called to our attention. A bicycle was stolen, in the middle of the day, from a Canyon South 1 garage.
The central pool spa heater stopped working after many years of service, and is being replaced. The east and west spas are heated.
The annual roof/gutter cleaning will be done in late November. When the exact dates are scheduled with our contractor, Castro Roofing, the dates will be posted here and at mailboxes. Also, ongoing work will be done on stucco, painting touch up, fascia and trim improvements, and failing window trims and sills. Work on these projects will be organized in quadrants and will progress over the winter months. When work is scheduled at, or near your address, notices will be posted. All of this work is to the exterior of the buildings, so no entry to the house is necessary.
The Board established a Communications Working Group this spring composed of Rosanne Kumins, Bob Ericksen, Howard Goldberg, Roy Landon, Michael Pagliaro and Dennis Turrone.
We have two main issues: setting up a more user-friendly website and getting information to our members via email. As you can see, the new website is up and running, and will contain HOA rules and regulations, our current and future budget, newsletters, minutes and more to come. We were lucky to have Howard Goldberg, who works with digital content, take on the project.
We currently have email addresses for 50 members of our community. However, we aren’t certain which are current and which are owners and renters. We would like to be able to reach all homeowners by email so we can get current information out in a timely manner; for instance news of break-ins can be communicated as well as notices of Board meetings, gardening issues, pool issues, etc.
We would appreciate if you would send your email address to treasurer Rosanne Kumins and community manager David Schuknecht by using the contact form on this website. Obviously this will be used only for Canyon South #1 communications and will not be shared with anyone else.
Formal communications will continue to be by mail from PPM, but other information can be by email. It is hoped that there will be a savings on postage as well.
If you have comments or questions, please let Rosanne or any other member of the group know.
— Rosanne Kumins
A work group, chaired by Board member David Burgess, has held an initial meeting to review HOA rules and regulations regarding vehicle parking.
Misunderstanding about current rules and limited parking combine to create disagreements and controversy within our community.
Current HOA rules allow for one vehicle inside the homeowner’s garage and one additional vehicle in the public area. Current rules do not designate individual parking spots per household, though common sense would suggest that the parking area would be adjacent to the homeowner property. Currently, there are no dedicated parking places within our complex thus no one can say “this is my parking place.” This had led to some confusion and conflict.
Initial suggestions presented to the work group include: creating a dedicated parking space for each homeowner; and creating dedicated space for guests only. The work group is looking for additional options and creative ways to address this important parking issue. Your thoughts and comments are welcome.
For those who were not here to experience last summer’s heat and humidity, it was a bad one.
Our desertscape had just been installed last year as summer arrived. Plants in the desertscape did pretty well, but we have lost some pyracantha hedge plants due to lack of irrigation quantity. When our landscaper realized that there was too little irrigation to the pyracantha hedges and one large pine tree, he got busy adding emitter hose to both sides of the hedges. Five Red Yucca were planted in the exterior desertscape where ocotillo of the original planting did not take root and live. The five pyracantha were used to fill in hedges where plants died over the hot summer. One entire L-shaped hedge was replaced this fall as the existing one was old and declining.
Over the years, Canyon South 1 has had a history of repairing sagging patio ceilings. Our investigation this past fall, determined that one unit had priority for repair. A trusted contractor was consulted for a cheaper and less invasive solution to this repair — plus two board members put their best engineering thinking to work. Their suggestions were not followed — for the better we’re sure. This repair went well, looks very good and is affordable, so other patio ceilings will be repaired in this manner at a rate of one or two a year on priority units.
We return to our normal pool heating this next season, beginning in October when the Center Pool will be heated first for two months. December and January will see the East and West pools heated, then back to the Center pool for February and March, finishing with the East and West pools for April and May.
Spas at all pools will continue to be heated year-round.
New waterline tile at Center PoolThe East Pool and Spa are our only remaining pools to be re-plastered in this cycle and they are planned for updating this fall. New tile, plaster and auto-fill devices will be installed, probably September and October.
Jackhammering out the old plasterRammell Construction was awarded the bid to re-plaster the Center pool. Work began on Sept. 10, 2015, and they finished the startup for that pool as of Wednesday, Oct. 14, 2015. Other items of construction remained to be done, but the pool was open for use. There was a 3-week delay in construction while waiting for the Health Department inspection.
About 3 years ago, Canyon South 1 installed seven new LED pool and spa lights as they were supposed to be longer-lived and use less electricity. These fixtures began failing about a year and a half after installation and thus far four have failed. Two of our contractors, JSR Pools and Horizon Electric lobbied the supplier/manufacturer of these fixtures so that we have been able to replace them for only the labor to install. In the future we will take better care to manage these fixtures during pool and spa re-plastering.
In keeping with state and local water agencies’ rules and recommendations and bowing to the general consensus in the Valley, CS1 Board decided to forgo the normal overseeding with annual ryegrass this fall. Therefore we went through the winter season complying with the irrigation schedule of Mon-Wed-Fri only and only during nighttime hours, morning and night. The Bermuda grass did its biological thing and went dormant – no one died because of it! Without the competition from the annual ryegrass, various weed species acquired a strong foothold in the dormant Bermuda. This required us to apply pre-emergence and post-emergence weed killer to combat these weeds.
Palm pruning is on schedule to begin during the first two weeks of June this late spring, 2016.
— Carl Toland