Easter Party tomorrow
Friday April 225:30 – dark
Westwood Community Park
5:30pm: Food, Snacks, Drinks
6:00pm: Easter Egg Hunt
Everyone Welcome!!!
As always, thanks so much to Laura Stafford who is organizing and providing everything, and bringing the food!
Park Volunteer Days
Park Volunteer Days, last two Saturdays in April, 8am-Noon
April 23 and 30. Y’all come. The Westwood Board has established the last two Saturdays in April as “Park Volunteer Days.” Most Board Members will be there with tools and supplies to do various tasks. The hope is that it will be a fun event, with neighbors working side by side.
Their goal is to avoid having to hire people, which will allow the park to be maintained and maybe even be improved at low cost.
It has been a long standing policy, that if anyone wants something done in the Park and is willing to provide free labor the Association will almost always say “yes” and pay for any materials and any special tools and equipment needed.
However, over the last many years, except for Laura and Mike Stafford, who keep the trash and broken limbs picked up and for a guy who walks along Traditions Dr. now and then picking up trash, there have been no takers. Hopefully, the Park Volunteer Days will attract more people, so larger jobs can be done.
What follows is a list of work the Board has put together with a guesstimate of what it would cost to hire contractors to do them:
- Weeds: Remove from graveled playground area. $200
- Sidewalk: Fix 3’x50’ leading from Dewberry. $1000
- Paint wall: Seal 4’x60’ wood wall ( 5gal. @ $200 + labor ) = $300
- Paint bench: Power wash & seal 18”x200’ (15gal). $1000
- Vines: Remove from shrubs at Westwood Sign & trim. $200
- Dinosaur: Replace stolen dinosaur. $1500
- Or, build a wood seesaw on dinosaur spring platform. $300
- Sprinkler: Fix it for shrubs around canopy. $1000
- Trees: Fix watering system for trees. $300
- Sign: Replace “Rules” sign on Park bulletin board. $200
- Clear out growth for 3 picnic areas on hill. $300
- Tables: Buy and install three picnic tables for above. $800
- Trails: Trim 400’ nature trail that runs through trees on hill. $400
TOTAL $7200
See you at the Park April 23 and 30!
Recycling pick-up service
A resident who uses this service requested that they make a presentation to the board at our monthly meeting this past Thursday. Brazos Valley Trash Valet & Recycling offers:
- weekly pickup of recyclables from your home
- for Westwood Estates, the cost is $15.95 plus tax per month
- you use your own (clear) bags
- you can mix recyclables in the bags—glass bottles and jars (any color), tin, aluminum, metal, cardboard, white paper, and newspapers. They sort it for you later.
If you’re interested in signing up or learning more, here’s the rep who presented to us:
Ron Fox
979-777-8968
email: service@bvtrashvalet.com
web: www.bvtrashvalet.com
2011 Annual Meeting Report
The 2011 annual meeting was held Thursday, January 13, 2011 at at Mary Branch Elementary. 15 members attended along with 58 members represented by proxy.
At that time the following members were elected to the Westwood Estates Board of Directors:
- Andy Merritt
- Mike Stafford
- Walter Kamphoefner (re-elected for a second term)
Chris Galindo volunteered to be on the Architectural Control Committee, and Brad Brelsford took over as Block Captain of Dewberry.
Thanks to everyone who attended or signed a proxy, and particular thanks to Gene Savage whose proxies gave us the quorum to have the meeting.
Playground improvements considered
Sketch of the playground area.
Sketch of a proposed idea for covering the playground with a tent-style canopy.
For the last few months, the WWECIA Board has been discussing some upgrades to the playground area in the park. We’ve talked about replacing some of the equipment, changing out the pea gravel for a rubberized surface, and installing a cover/canopy over the area itself to shade the sun.
It’s the last idea that’s getting some traction as the first step to take. Clyde Garland presented the board with some diagrams (shown here) and a ballpark figure of $6K-$10K for the final cost.
Click the second diagram to see some detail of his proposed design. It would consist of six 10′ telephone poles (10′ above ground, buried 4-6′) with two 20′ (above ground) poles acting as the high points.
The board will probably be making a decision to move forward with this or a similar design at our next meeting on August 11. If you have any thoughts to add, or any questions, please contact a board member (you can email us all at westwoodestates.bryan.tx@gmail.com) and/or attend the Aug. 11 meeting.
Please see and/or add to further discussion in the comments to this post.
Low density polyethylene we hope to use for the playground canopy
Spring 2010 newsletter available
The April 2010 Newsletter of the Westwood Estates Community Improvement Association is available on the Newsletters page. Thanks to Clyde Garland for putting these newsletters together.
One difference in this publication is that the Board voted to suspend automatic mass distribution of the printed newsletter, choosing instead to create this web site and offer them online here. However, if you know of anyone in the neighborhood unable to get to the web site, or for whom it’s inconvenient to do so, please encourage them to contact their block captain or a Board member and one of us will be sure to print one off and bring it to them.
One of the new items in this newsletter is the introduction of a new email address that will forward to each of the Board members: westwoodestates.bryan.tx@gmail.com. A link to this address will stay in the “Links” section of this website.
Snow
Snow person on Westwood Main 2-23-10. Still snowing at 7:30.
The snow a few weeks ago was special, considering it was the third time this year, and the second year in a row we had snow. This time had the largest snowflakes I’ve ever seen, as far as I can remember.
Here are some nice links I saw of snow around our area:
- Snow on Kyle Field. Covering the field and all the stands. A wonderful large image.
- A great collection of snow pictures on MyBCS.com.
2010 Annual Meeting Report
The Westwood Estates 2010 Annual Meeting was held Thursday, Jan. 14. Though the technical requirements of a two-week minimum notice (see the Bylaws) were satisfied by an announcement in the Fall Newsletter, a scheduling mix up caused another reminder notice to not get out in time. 5 members attended with 8 votes, with one other attending briefly, who left his proxy. A total of 54 proxies (thanks to Clyde Garland for collecting these) added up to a total of 62 votes.
Elections for board members took place. Mark Coppock was re-elected to serve from 2010-2012, and long-time Westwood South Block Captain and Park Coordinator Nancy Coppock was elected as well to fill the other open spot from 2010-2012. See the Westwood Estates Board Members page for the full list.
However, the board will be losing its President, James Haliburton, who is moving out of the neighborhood. He has agreed to stay on the board until the first 2010 board meeting on Feb. 10, 8pm at Walter Kamphoefner’s home at 3209 Deer Trail. At that meeting, the board will decide who holds what office. The board has one volunteer so far to fill the position that will be opening up. See the Bylaws for information on the Board of Directors.
This website was introduced. Its purpose is to serve as a convenient resource for Westwood Estates residents, and whatever else we choose to make it. While one of the reasons the board originally thought to start this site was to reduce the cost of printing the newsletter twice a year, we were correctly reminded at the meeting that a website should never replace face-to-face communication between neighbors.
One suggestion made was that, in the future, each block captain might be responsible for determining who on their block prefers a paper copy of the newsletter be delivered to them and who would prefer simply reading their copy from the website and/or printing it themselves if they choose. The board will consider all residents’ suggestions in this matter. You may leave a comment on this post and/or attend any meeting to voice your opinion. Special ongoing thanks goes to Clyde Garland who assembles the newsletters for the association.
See the Meeting Minutes page, or download the minutes of this meeting directly.
The Westwood Estates Website
Upcoming events:
The Big Event, Saturday March 27, 2010 starting at 10am.
By Texas A&M students. See bigevent.tamu.edu. For those who want to get free labor for projects around their house, A&M students will provide it, for one day only, to the first 1000 who ask. They have been doing this since 1982 to show their gratitude to the towns that they call home. They are not allowed to use power tools, but muscle driven tools, with many provided by A&M, are used. Last year 11,000 A&M students volunteered.
Easter Party, Friday April 2, 2010 starting at 5:30pm
The Easter Party will be at Westwood Community Park.
Kids, bring a basket for the Easter egg hunt. Hotdogs, etc. will be served at 5:30pm and the hunt will begin at 6pm. There will be 150 plastic eggs with prizes to find. The hunt will be divided into three groups – Toddlers, Elementary and Middle. There will be two eggs in each group that will have a gift certificate — $5 for McDonald and $10 for Wal-Mart.
Laura Stafford (822-0559) will organize the Party and provide everything.She will bring the food, including the charcoal and meat and will cook it. They will bring the plastic eggs, stuff them with prizes and oversee hiding them.
Last year’s 2009 party had 50 adults and 30 kids.
The 2008 party had 40 adults and 20 kids.
Sign up for Nextdoor.com!
It's free, and makes it easy to keep up to date with your neighbors.
WestwoodEstates.org 