Steering minutes: 2005-06-26

Minutes:

26JN2005 Steering [[Meeting]]

Present: Becky (CH), [[Jenny]] (Buildings), Willie, Katie ([[Meals]]), Tim (Grounds), Jillian (Process), Ted (Construction), Jim G. (F&L), Adi (Work), Heather (Membership)
Convener: Katie
Minutes: [[Jenny]]

Agenda:

* CDC Business:
o As-Built Drawings
o Sloped area between Touchstone and Great Oak parking lots
o Other CDC business
* Misc. GO business
* Urgent business go-round
* Roundtable

As-Built Drawings: From as-built drawings, sewer and water is very deep (~12' ?); should not be an issue for any trees, etc. Gas lines are another matter. Sunward hit a gas line within 2/3 of a tree-spade depth (~3' ?) of the surface, even after Miss Dig came out and labeled "everything".

Important to still call Miss Dig - that way, if we accidentally hit something that was not labeled, our liability is significantly less.

GO/Touchstone Tours: Tour of Touchstones ongoing, every 2nd or 3rd week. JD is no longer on go-talk, but Adi says he can still send mail to talk (the moderator just has to approve it). There will be a C-unit equivalent "model home" with painted walls, flooring, a deck, etc. (Need translation from Sunward to GO to Touchstone unit names!)

JD will be hanging out all day at the PFC event next Saturday, July 2.

When will the first move-ins be? Probably August 2005. Flooring should all be done, because Phoenix is doing it all. Lots of bamboo. (Bamboo flooring prices have dropped.) Detroit-Edison holding things up some. Trenching is required for electrical between GO and Touchstone, will roughly follow the storm sewer between the two communities. This will likely take place soon (as soon as possible). Some concerns raised about the safety of the community garden. (Note: Subsequent to this discussion, JD confirmed with John Visger of Phoenix that the electrical trenching for TS would go around the GO community garden.)

Touchstone sales activity: Sales have been great the last couple of weeks. Twenty-four units are sold; several more are in progress.

Touchstone colors will be blue, rust, dark brown, sage, and grey. Some colors will be repeated. Not sure what color their Common House will be. The fifth building should show up in early August.

The intended "stand-in" Common House is a J-unit, a.k.a. GO D-unit. Some folks are interested in purchasing this unit, however. They'll work something out.

Parking lot issue(s):

(1) Stabilizing the slope. The median slope issue is urgent, to prevent the soil from sliding out in a heavy rain. At a minimum, JD suggests we put landscape fabric down immediately. He has investigated several options. The grapefruit rock concept has proved unpopular among Goers, although JD assures us it would be more appealing than a bunch of egg rock. Price estimate for grapefruit rock is $1750. Scope of project only included price of landscape fabric. Wanted solution that was relatively maintenance-free (i.e., would be a hard slope to mow). Margolis would be happy to seed for wildflower, with a straw blanket on top. This is a cheaper solution than grapefruit rock. We will have to taek responsibility for watering whatever ends up getting planted there. (Touchstone's water is not yet turned on. Water availability is still an unknown.) This appears to be the only drawback, except that Kathy S. suggested native grasses (little bluestem and something else). JD thinks that this is the mix that Margolis quoted. Native grasses have deeper roots than wildflowers and will be hardier and more drought-resistant. This is not as certain an erosion control as the landscape fabric + grapefruit rock (JD describes this as "bombproof").

Why is Touchstone parking lot higher than GO parking lot? Ghost of Scio Twp. Utilities director. We got hot boxes; Touchstone got a taller parking lot. The former STU director required a certain clearance to existing utilities, and then there were some storm sewer issues; this caused him to require their parking lot to be taller. Their parking lot needed to drain in a certain direction. Basically, in a 100-year rain the water needs to flow from the Touchstone retention ponds into our retention ponds. To meet all of the requirements, Touchstone's parking lot ended up where it is.

Some discussion about snow removal. JD voiced concern that any plant in the median between the two parking lots would suffer salt damage from parking lot snow being piled up on top of it in the winter. GOers explained that we do not plow the snow in the parking spaces, and that if we did we would pull it out of the space rather than push it in. JD said that we would have to convince TS to do the same thing. A GOer pointed out that if the TS folks plow the snow forward, it will be pushed onto the GO cars on the low end of the slope, and also that if they try and push the snow forward too much, they will find that they are losing parking splost as they are filled with snow. Overall, GOers were not too worried about the risks from salt to any plantings on the slope.

Why does there need to be such a steep slope to the median between the parking lots, in back of units #31-33? Tim observed that the curb is quite deep; couldn't we just take some of the soil out and lower the grade of the slope? JD will ask this question. He suspects that either officially or unofficially we could probably do this, but he will look into it and let us know.

Why does Touchstone's curb extend beyond last garage? (Grade issue will come into play in the plans for the workshop.) JD doesn't think this should be the case and will look into it. Final details regarding the workshop have not been ironed out. JD has $70,000 in the Touchstone budget for this, but will not have access to this cash until more Touchstone units have been sold.

[[Garages]] designed to be back-to-back, but this will likely require additional roofing over our garages (the short explanation - need a single roof over both banks, so that the water will shed). Obviously, many issues still need to be resolved over the next 4-5 months.

(2) Headlights issue Is less urgent, but still a concern among affected Goers. Lights will shine directly into Willie & Katie's units, and somewhat into Nancy's, Jim & Gail's, and Hope's units. JD is willing to put some money toward a common-sense approach of solving this problem. This is ~100 lineal feet. Range starts at chain-link fence at $6/lf to treated-wood fencing at $20/lf, to $100/lf for a concrete wall, to $150-200/lf for a double-sided stone wall. Price range would be ~$600 for the chain-link fence, ~$2000 for ACQ, and about $20,000 for the concrete wall. CDC is willing to pay for a "reasonable" fence, in light of the fact that we are saving money by rejecting his grapefruit rock solution.

[[Rod]] notes that Touchstone's dumpster is in this same area. Will this need an enclosure? Yes, will have an enclosure like ours. Touchstone's garbage dumpster location has moved closer to ours; this will not work. Still, only a few of the spaces will really be problematic to GO households.

Is this in the area of the walk-through between Touchstone and Great Oak? Yes; not clear how this will be implemented.

Sounds like it's fairly unanimous to pursue the ACQ wood fencing. This is on Great Oak property, too. Should Touchstone be responsible for their side of the fence, and we should be responsible for our side? Who gets the finished side? Which side do the posts go in? Maybe we should work these details out later. If we plant in front of the fence, it doesn't matter so much who gets the "good" side.

Sounds like we are proposing that we pursue a drought-resistant wildflower/native grasses seed mix with a straw blanket to stabilize the slope and worry about the fence part of the solution later. We will take the responsibility of watering this until it gets established.

JD will email out the exact mix of the wildflower/native grasses mix to Grounds and will further flesh out an ACQ wood fence proposal to discuss with us.

Common House Hot Tub Wiring: Should be two hot wires, a neutral, and a ground, with a 50Amp capacity, with a 50GFCI breaker. We don't have that. JD is trying to figure out whether "hot tub wiring" per se was communicated to K&F, in which case, they should take care of and pay for it. If in fact what was communicated to them was to put in a 220V outlet, they did in fact do that. This will have to be resolved some other way in that case. JD is encouraging Ted to see if Linda can do the work, and JD will pay her directly. Need to be cautious about a solution that doesn't involve going through the roof; e.g., exterior conduit through the attic on the west side of the dining room.

JD is committed to making it right, but we shouldn't expect to have a working hot tub any time soon. (We don't.)

Final CofO Status: Has JD heard back from Scio Twp. regarding the final CofO? JD believes that we should have the final CofO any day now. The finances are still in question between CDC and Scio Twp. There was money left in escrow that Scio Twp. Had forgotten about. Either CDC owes Scio $12,000, or Scio owes CDC $6,000-8,000. JD sent a check for $500 as a show of good faith, which was verbally agreed to with the new Scio Twp. Utilities (Scott Martin, former YCUA (Ypsilanti County Utilities Authority) director). Dollar figures will be sorted out later. JD thinks the worst-case scenario is that GODC will owe Scio Twp. $3,000-$4,000. (JD does point out that he forgot to sign the $500 check; this has been fixed and re-sent. JD guesses they will start processing our final site and Common House CofO paperwork once they get his signed check.)

Having our final CofO should free us to make any modifications we want, including some (like the hot tub) that we have been holding off on. Are we violating zoning laws by having chickens? Probably. However, we should remember that until Touchstone has its final CofO, there will be inspectors around on a regular basis, so we can still get "red-tagged."

Roundtable:

Buildings:
Hot Tub Wiring: Linda can't do the hot tub wiring for another four months. Hopefully K&F will be able to correct the problem.

Play Field Grading: Verdeterre has not yet gotten back to Tim on a revised estimate for re-grading the play field.

Basement Window Report: Mark Stranahan indicated in his report that what Royal has done with the basement windows is a suboptimal solution. Ted feels we will need to have a meeting with Phoenix to discuss this issue at greater length. We were not very involved in the final discussions with Royal and it has been mostly frustrating from our perspective. Kirk maintains that our non-buried basement windows will require regular maintenance to stay leak-free; Ted surmises that this means that the buried basement windows will also need regular maintenance - which is unfortunately a much more difficult proposition. Ted will talk to Jeff about some other possible solutions. The problem is that if any of the buried windows leak, the entire window needs to be dug out in order to fix the problem. Decks, gardens, etc., will only complicate the issue.

Who needs to be in the room? Someone with bigger guns than us. Mark Stranahan has agreed to be in the room with us. He has the technical expertise to go toe-to-toe with Kirk when engineering solutions are proposed. Does anyone else from Great Oak need to be involved? [[Elph]] is pretty quick on his feet; maybe he could participate. Jeff or Keith? Dale? Maybe. Ted will consider this. The main thing is to have Stranahan there in order to catch it if someone is not providing straight information. Ted will talk to [[Elph]]. Kirk can be sort of a bulldozer; we need someone who is willing to be a bulldozer for our side.

Should we be ready with our proposal? Ted has responses to most of Kirk's excuses. Should we go in with a written proposal for what we expect them to do? The problem is that Ted doesn't have the expertise to propose the best solution. We are hoping that Stranahan can provide this. What Stranahan did tell us is that normally you don't bury the frame of a window in the ground. With our installation, the joint is buried and there is no place for the water to go. The solution really is to un-bury the window frame, which is complex because we currently have the widest window well that's made of the brand of window well we have. Supposedly, the materials that were used are very durable, but they're buried. Phoenix is looking at this from the perspective that the windows don't leak right now; we are trying to make the case that if the windows leak, their installation makes even routine maintenance difficult (to impossible).

We obviously need to pursue this aggressively with Phoenix.

Warranty Items:

Ted will look into the status of dry wall repairs for Katie & Willie's shower enclosure.

Membership: The big picnic is next Saturday, July 2. Be there! There will be many fun things to do.

Monkey Check:

Jillian asked JD about the status of our final site and CH CofOs. Done.
Katie will communicate this new information to the community.
F&L has monkeyed itself to provide budget reports to individual committees. No progress yet.
Tim has been working to determine how much dirt we need to fix the play field grading.

New Monkeys:

JD will email out the exact mix of the wildflower/native grasses mix to Grounds and will further flesh out an ACQ wood fence proposal to discuss with us.

Next meeting: Sunday, July 17
Next minute taker: Becky (for CH)