Town Crier Articles

As October 2024 begins, it’s time to prepare for a new year in the life of our New Town Residential Association. In the mid-November to mid-December time-frame NTRA Members also will be given the opportunity to vote on a potential change in the Village Walk Supplemental Declarations. In addition, the annual Board Elections are coming up - with voting on candidates after Thanksgiving and results to be announced at our annual meeting.

 

This year, two current Board members are completing their term of service. NTRA homeowners thus are encouraged to step up and consider becoming candidates for our two open positions. We hope many owners will seriously consider running since an election process is always better if there are more candidates than openings.

 

 

Candidates may come from any of our neighborhoods, but we cannot have more than two Board members from any one neighborhood. The three Board members who are halfway through their two-year terms are from Village Walk, Abbey Commons, and Savannah Square. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have a diverse board comprised of members from nearly all our neighborhoods?

 

• Time: A willingness to serve, and a sufficiently flexible schedule to allow for

• Commitment to taking seriously legal and fiduciary responsibilities associated with attending to the essential business of the community. Do you have sufficient commitment and ability to function as part of a team where members must value, respect, support, and collaborate with one another if the vital work is to get done? How about the self-management needed to keep confidential information confidential? Will you prioritize the Board’s legal responsibilities, and the best interests and welfare of the whole NTRA community, over personal agendas or loyalties to a limited group within the community?

• No Outstanding Violations: Candidates for the Board of Directors or any of our official committees cannot have uncleared or unaddressed violations or unpaid dues. If you think you would be willing to serve NTRA as a Board member — please, please, please! - clear your violations before you put your name forward.

 

Thoughtfully consider what may be involved in serving as a Board member. If you think you can handle the time commitments, the investments of self, and the responsibilities of an NTRA Board member, and are not in violation, you will be doing your New Town community a huge favor by becoming a candidate for our 2025-2026 Board!

 

Do this by sending an email by November 6, 2024 with your full contact information to NTRA.secretary@gmail.com, along with a picture of yourself and a brief biographical statement. The latter might include relevant vocational information, your special skills, or earned credentials, and your reasons for being willing to apply your particular gifts, skills, available time, and energies positively to serving your community in this way.

 

 

 

Join your neighbors for an old-fashioned fun-filled, FREE event in the Village Walk neighborhood on the corner of Casey and Settlers Market Boulevard.  

 

Everyone is invited, adults and children, family and friends. Guests will enjoy popcorn, Halloween cookies and other goodies. As an added treat, there will be drawings for a large pumpkins and gift certificates donated by the New Town Commercial Association

 

Activities include cake walks, pumpkin painting, and games including corn hole, and shark toss, races, pie face showdown, a kid’s obstacle course, croquet, and cornhole and more. Get there early for a Halloween “egg” hunt at 2:15 across the street from the main venue. Watch out there may also be mummies!

 

Come to participate or just share the good time and the music.  Also, we really need volunteers. Please contact Liz Fones-Wolf at efwolf@wvu.edu if you can lend a hand.  

 

 

Over the last several years, New Town's summer lifeguards have been undergraduate students who come from all over the world, recruited and trained by Continental Pools, our pool management company.  We have had quite a few lifeguards from Jamaica, Turkey and China.  Our main lifeguard this year was Deanjilee Robinson, who lives just outside the city of Kingston, Jamica, and is starting her senior year at the University of Technology, majoring in finance. This was Deanjilee ‘s second year at our pool and I met her last year.  I learned that to earn as much as possible, she works extra shifts and had not seen anything of the U.S. aside from the airports in Miami and Richmond. I offered to take her and one or more friends to Washington D.C. for a day of sightseeing.  

       

One early Tuesday morning in mid-July, the day each week our pool is closed, Deanjilee, her best friend Beyance Turner, a Finance major, who she recruited to also work as a lifeguard with Continental, and I headed to Washington.  As we drove, Deanjilee and I chatted about the differences between living in Jamaica and the United States. Jamaica is the third largest island in the Caribbean about the size of Connecticut with a population of just 2.1 million. It is known to Americans for its reggae music and as a tropical tourist destination.  She was fascinated as I tried to describe the sheer size and geographic diversity of the U.S.  While impressed with the speed of banking  (opening a bank account in Williamsburg took half-an-hour instead of an all-day ordeal in Kingston), she was appalled by how much processed food Americans eat and surprised that trees in New Town did not bear fruit.  

     

We dropped the car off at my son’s house in Alexandria and took the Metro to the Capitol South Station.  The Metro was a new experience for Deanjilee and Beyance since there are no trains or subways in Jamaica. Our first stop was the Capitol steps, where looking towards the Washington Monument, we took in the majestic view of the National Mall ringed by world-class museums of history, art, technology and the natural sciences. We then headed to the National Gallery of Art, starting with the East Building and its modern art collection. Both young women had visited the small National Gallery of Jamaica, which features two floors of Caribbean art, but were stunned by the magnitude of Smithsonian’s art collections.  Having read about and seen pictures of Picasso’s painting, they particularly enjoyed the impressionist galleries but also took delight in the works of Jackson Pollock and other modernists. We went through both tower galleries and at the rooftop terrace with its huge blue rooster, the young women took in an expansive view of Washington D.C. In the underground moving walkway  between the East and West Buildings, we experienced the “Multiverse,”  an amazing visual light display.  

       

We dashed through the National Gallery’s West Building, which holds master works from the 13th to 19th centuries and Deanjilee and Beyance were amazed by all the religious imagery.  Catching all of our eyes was a grisly 15th century painting on leather of David and Goliath by Andrea del Castagno of Florence. The painting was once attached to a battle shield. We then headed to the Smithsonian’s Natural History Museum, where they wanted to see the Hope Diamond and dinosaurs and also enjoyed an exhibit on human evolution. The White House was next on their agenda, and we marched a mile through the high heat and humidity to get a view.  

 

On the way back to the Metro to cool off, we stopped at the first floor America on the Move transportation exhibit at the Smithsonian’s Museum of American History.  The interactive and immersive experiences were their favorite experience of the trip. Most moving for Deanjilee and Beyance was sitting in a recreation of a 1927 segregated North Carolina train station and the experience of riding in a 1950s Chicago Transit Authority "I" train car, complete with sound and moving images. We arrived back in Williamsburg around 9:00 after an enjoyable if exhausting day, with Deanjilee and Beyance having learned more about the United States and me having learned more about Jamaica.

 

 

 

 

In case you missed it, on Saturday, September 21st, New Town residents held a community-wide garage sale. The goal of the community garage sale was to encourage participation from any and all residents, inspire community engagement amongst our residents (as well as with our broader Williamsburg community) and finally, if you were lucky, to lighten your load or pick up that treasure you just couldn’t pass up. While residential (seller) participation was on the lighter side, the traffic and interest along our New Town streets appeared steady and varied from both within and beyond New Town.

 

This inaugural community garage sale was a great start in what will hopefully become a more regular occurrence. The NTRA Board of Directors enthusiastically supported our ideas and graciously let us move out planning and advertising on a very compressed timeline in order to deconflict from other community events as well as take advantage of the warmer weather before fall arrives.

 

We hope the community enjoyed this event.  We learned several lessons to improve future events:

As a reminder, individual garage sales are not allowed under the NTRA rules. NTRA rules, Section II, Para 43, states: “Yard/garage sales are not permitted within the Properties, except that the Association may sponsor a community yard/garage sale at the discretion of the Board of Directors.” 

 

So this was your chance for 2024.  We hope you were able to participate in the community garage sale in a way that met your needs this time, and we look forward to future opportunities.

 

 

1. Places homeowners in the NTRA on nearly equal footing regarding maintenance and subject to the same requirements for Maintenance of Property as outlined in Article 7.2 of the NTRA Master Declaration.  Exceptions for Village Walk will be the post tension slab system, irrigation system, fire suppression system, and yearly termite management. These will remain with NTRA and be funded through the Village Walk neighborhood assessment.
2. Reduces confusion regarding the responsibility for various types of exterior maintenance.
3. Allows homeowners to select the contractor that performs maintenance work on their home and also to choose the scope of work, quality of materials, timing and pricing.
4. Allows the homeowner to supervise and approve the completed work.
5. Speeds and simplifies the repair process by removing the management company and Board of Directors from the repair process and eliminating the NTRA contracting requirements.
6. Will significantly lower quarterly assessments and bring them in line with others in NTRA with similar homes.
7. Removes the sharing of exterior maintenance expenses, i.e, Village Walk owners will no longer have to fund the maintenance needed on each other’s homes.
8. Eliminates the possibility of all NTRA members becoming financially responsible for the exterior maintenance of the homes in the Village Walk neighborhood.
9. Retains the marketability of Village Walk homes which could significantly degrade if the neighborhood has very high association dues and continual large additional assessments.
10. Eliminates major yearly increases in Village Walk assessments that will be required if the Association continues to provide exterior maintenance.

Two major events will take to our residential streets in October!

 

On Saturday, October 5, our streets and trails will be awash in pink as we welcome the Run for the Hills, hosted by Here for the Girls (H4TG.)  H4TG is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to improving the lives of young women affected by breast cancer. You can learn more about them at hereforthegirls.org .

 

This event consists of both a race and a health and wellness expo in Sullivan Square. The race offers a 1 mile fun run, a 5K run (a Colonial Road Runners Grand Prix Event), a 5K competitive walk and a virtual run.  New Town residents and businesses can use special promo code NT2024RUN for a discounted registration fee! Register at hereforthegirls.org/run .

 

The health and wellness expo in Sullivan Square is free and open to the public—all are welcome, and this is a stroller-friendly, dog-friendly venue! There will be nutrition and health demonstrations, fitness classes and activities, educational information, health screenings and wellness checks, kids’ activities and much more.

 

New Town residents are invited to show their support for this event! You can request a Cheer Package, which will consist of a ribbon or other decoration to place in front of your home, a route map, a list of designated cheer spots where residents can gather to cheer on the runners, health info and more. If you would like a Cheer Package, please email your name and street address to sommer3553@gmail.com by September 15.

 

We will be doing additional decorating along the race route! If you would like to volunteer to help “pink up” our streets and trails, please email sommer3553@gmail.com by September 15, and I will add you to the volunteer list.

 

On Saturday, October 26, we embrace purple, as we welcome the Walk to End Alzheimer’s, hosted by the Alzheimer’s Association. This is the world’s largest fundraiser for Alzheimer’s care, support and research.

 

This annual event begins and ends at the Gazebo on Main Street. The walk offers a 1 mile route and a 3 mile route. You can view details of the route here. If you would like to form a Walk team, you can register at the Walk's local website. Many of the neighborhoods in the area have Walk teams, and it would be great to see New Town represented!

 

The Walk could also use your help as a volunteer on the day of the event! Please sign up at https://signup.com/go/FKdadZT , where you will find a list of volunteer opportunities, times needed, and number of volunteers needed for each opportunity. 

 

NTRA residents are invited to show their support for this event! If you would like a yard sign or a purple ribbon to place in front of your home, please email your name and street address to sommer3553@gmail.com by September 30. The quantities of signs and ribbons are TBD, so you may get one or the other, or both!

 

We will be doing additional decorating along the Walk route! If you would like to volunteer to help “purple up” our streets, please email sommer3553@gmail.com by September 30, and I will add you to the volunteer list.

 

2024 is a Presidential election year and all citizens are encouraged to vote. 

 

New to James City County?  You can register to vote online, in person or by mail.  The last day to register is Tuesday, October 15, 2024. Here is the JCC website with all the details including links if you just need to update your name or local address: https://jamescitycountyva.gov/4015/Register-to-Vote-or-Update-Information

Early voting for the Presidential Election starts on Friday, September 20 and will end on Saturday, November 2. Early in-person voting will be held only at the Office of Elections/Vote Center: 4095 Ironbound Road located behind the JCC Courthouse.  

 

New Town’s precinct is Jamestown B and on November 5, Election Day from 6am to 7PM all New Town registered voters can vote at the JCC Recreation Center, 5301 Longhill Road.

 

All of James City County is located in US Congressional District 1.

 

For more voting information here is a link to Office of Elections.

 

Political Signs – As a reminder, the New Town Residential Association rules permit ONE sign per lot, “not more than 6 feet square expressing support or opposition to political candidates” or other ballot issues. Signs may be placed starting September 6th (60 days before the election) and “shall be removed within 2 days after such election”.  (NTRA Rules, Section II, 36c) 

Do you have a few extra hours to spare now that the kids are back in school?  Perhaps you are new to our community and want to meet more people. Volunteering with one of our various HOA Committees is the perfect way to be engaged with your neighbors. Owners in good standing and tenants are eligible to serve on most Committees.

 

Current critical needs include:

• COMMUNICATIONS COMMITTEE – HELP!!! Our website and newsletter are dependent on volunteers. Don't you want to know what is happening with your fees? There has not been an active Communications Committee for the past 2 years.  Instead, individuals have been contributing periodic articles for the monthly Town Crier. This Committee is an easy time commitment – just a few hours a month to brainstorm and write an article. We need to reinvigorate information sharing in our community and that means we need you!

• ARCHITECTURAL REVIEW COMMITTEE (ARC) – This Committee reviews all applications for changes to property.  Members serve 3-year terms, so to ensure continuity, the ARC uses an alternate member to learn the process and step in for votes when needed for a quorum.  The ARC currently is seeking an alternate member who will rotate into full status.

There are eight NTRA Committees – (the others are Activities, Asset Maintenance, Emergency Preparedness, Finance, Landscape Advisory and Pool). Surely one of these teams would appreciate your involvement, even on an intermittent basis.  The Board of Directors will have two vacancies in December and also will be seeking volunteers to run for these positions.

 

If you are curious but not sure, now is the time to reach out for more information, perhaps visit a Committee meeting and see whether you are a good fit for their work. All Committee meetings are published on the NTRA website calendar. 

 

Interested or want more information? Send a quick email to ntrawebsitecommittee@gmail.com to be put in touch with the Committee Chair.

For many of us in New Town, our porch may be a sunny place for potted plants, a dry place for Amazon deliveries, or a comfortable space to sit and relax.  Porches have been around for many years, but they started to really take off in the 19th century in America as a means of extending the inside of a house to the outside.  Porches contributed to the sense of community, as neighbors gathered together in the evenings, especially in the summer months to escape the indoor heat.

 

Not every residence in New Town is fortunate to have a porch large enough for socializing, but there is a role every resident can play in building a sense of community nevertheless.  On the second Saturday of each month, porches throughout New Town become the focal point for food donations.  Non-perishable food items are left on porches (by 9 AM) for volunteers to collect and deliver to local food pantries.  It’s a simple process that has a profound impact on addressing hunger in our greater Williamsburg community.

 

New Town is participating in these monthly food drives through PORCH Communities, a grass roots organization focusing on hunger relief.  The organization coordinates over 2,000 volunteers representing 550 communities, across 10 states.  In the two months since New Town joined PORCH, volunteers in green shirts have collected 1,243 pounds of food from New Town porches. This just proves that neighborhoods such as ours don’t need large, wrap-around covered porches to create a sense of community.

 

When you see the green PORCH signs go up each month, please remember the role porches have played in bringing people together in building community and help us put our porches to good use in bringing New Town together to fight hunger.

 

Mark your calendars, the next PORCH food drives will be September 14, October 12, November 9 and December 14.