Town Crier Articles

 

Let me begin with all things financial…

 

At this time the Board has received the draft December 2021 financial statements from our new management company, Chesapeake Bay Management.  These draft statements are under review.  Several factors contributed to their delay:

Most issues, except the 2020 audit adjustments, have been fully resolved. December 2021 and January 2022 statements are expected to be released by mid-March. Slowly but surely we are closing our books and converting to new recordkeeping.

 

The Board recently hired Adams Jenkins and Cheatham to again do the NTRA’s 2021 tax return and to prepare a financial statement compilation for 2021.

 

 

Spring landscaping is underway. Virginia Lawn and Landscape crews have methodically been working through each neighborhood. Mowing will begin this month.

 

For those who may still question the fenced yards landscaping decision, the Board is acting in the best interests of the entire community given our legal constraints.  The legal review of past practices initiated in response to owner comments on the 2021 budget resulted in 2 key guidance points

This “follow the documents” guidance was reinforced by the comments made by candidates during the search for a new managing agent, and by the consultant hired to assist the Board in addressing the turnover issues identified during 2021.

 

Solving this situation requires new Governing Documents, approved by 2/3rds of NTRA members.  At some future date the Board will return to the draft documents presented in 2021and update them based on comments and lessons learned in the managing agent transition.  Unless and until 2/3rds of owners agree to changes, the existing documents remain in effect.

 

Familiarize yourself with these current Governing Documents available on the NTRA website page, https://www.ntrawilliamsburg.org/governing-docs/.  (Use the links on the left side of the page.)

 

 

It is possible some Village Walk attics may need inspection as part of the engineering evaluation.  The Board requests your cooperation if you are contacted for attic access.

 

 

Hello NTRA Neighbors!

 

Warm weather is coming and the NTRA is getting ready for spring cleaning (and hoping you are too)!  Keeping all the homes beautiful makes us proud of New Town and the area in which we live and play.

 

This year, the Board of Directors has decided to baseline the condition of all homes in New Town (originally proposed in 2020 but delayed due to the Covid pandemic) under the NTRA’s Exterior Maintenance Inspection Policy. 

 

At its February 2022 meeting, the Board amended the original policy to place responsibility for exterior maintenance and covenant inspections solely with the NTRA’s managing agent. (See Board February 15, 2022 Resolution). Based on our experience in 2022, the Board can revisit the frequency and type of future year inspections. 

 

Chesapeake Bay Management Company, assisted by members of the NTRA Asset Maintenance Committee, will begin inspecting all home exteriors starting around April 18th in Chelsea Green. These inspections will proceed neighborhood by neighborhood to make sure all homes are up to standards reflected in the HOA Master Declaration and Rules and Regulations (available on the NTRA website). The goal is for all homes to be inspected no later than July 31, 2021.

 

Please review the areas we will be inspecting as shown in the 2022 Self-Checklist for Owner Inspection of Homes document so you can make any repairs necessary prior to the inspection.  While most exterior surfaces of Village Walk homes are the NTRA’s responsibility to maintain, there are items which are solely a homeowner responsibility. Consult the new Village Walk Maintenance Responsibilities Chart. 

 

 

 

For the past 2 years during the pandemic, a lot of us have been ordering more items online than in the past, which results in a lot of extra recycling, particularly cardboard.

 

Unlike trash which is contracted for by the New Town Residential Association, James City County controls the contract with our recycling company. All complaints are to be directed to their website. Please refer to this website if you have questions about what they recycle and options of how to dispose of items they do not pickup. The website also has a printable calendar of when pickup will occur, and when dates are changed due to holidays. 

 

A few reminders:

 

 

A note on recycling glass:

 

Glass will still be picked up curbside BUT the JCC Recycling Centers (closest one to New Town is at the end of Tewning Road past Godspeed Animal Hospital) have a new program for recycling glass. The bins are purple. Owens-Illinois (OI) has started a program where they will collect the glass and transport it, at no cost, to their manufacturing facility in Toano. It will be processed into cullet which is a material necessary for making new glass.  When glass gets mixed in with regular recycling, it breaks down and is difficult to separate. OI has been making glass in James City County for over 40 years and glass making first began in JCC in 1609, so a tradition will continue. Glass is the heaviest item in the recycling bins so to be able to remove some of the weight will cut the cost of recycling for the county.

 

 

 

Do you miss playing in the dirt?  Do you wish you knew more of your neighbors? Would you like to make our New Town neighborhoods more inviting with more color in our common areas?  Or would you just like to enjoy the outdoors and have some fun?  If you answered yes to any or all of these questions, then we have a new venture that you’re sure to love.  

 

Join a group of fun-loving nature enthusiasts who wish to create a sense of community through a variety of shared activities.   Beautifying our common areas with plantings is one goal, but other activities might include embarking on horticultural field trips, attending garden related educational events, or enjoying social outings, happy hours, or other forms of socialization and fun.  The “Garden” part of this initiative will focus initially on Gateway projects - focusing on high visibility locations around New Town that say “welcome” and can be enjoyed by all New Town residents. There is limited funding available from NTRA, but with volunteers supplying the energy, ideas, and labor, we can stretch those dollars.  The “Party” part will evolve in accordance with the wishes of the group and “Never Ending” refers to the notion that participants may change over time, but the Garden Party itself, once established, will continue from year to year as new projects and activities are planned.  

 

Participation is open to all residents of New Town and absolutely no gardening expertise is required, just the willingness to bring ideas, pitch in and have fun.  Interested?  Join us for an organizational meeting on March 8th, 2022 at 4:00PM. Please RSVP to neverendinggardenparty@gmail.com. Once we have an idea of the group size, we will announce a location.   Together we can make our New Town neighborhoods even more beautiful and our community more welcoming.  And please let us know if you are interested, even if you cannot attend the initial meeting. 

 

 

 

As you probably know by now, the purpose of this feature is to provide a bit of information on a special event or place one can get to in about an hour’s travel time. Well, we’re doing you one better in March, offering you two events that you could walk to if you were of a mind. (Our mind doesn’t lean in that direction).

 

From March 3-6 at the Kimball Theatre on Duke of Gloucester Street, the William & Mary Theater, Speech and Dance department presents “A Tempest.” An adaptation of Shakespeare’s “The Tempest,” Aime Cesaire’s work draws on contemporary Caribbean society, the African-American experience and African mythology to raise questions about colonialism, racism and their lasting effects.

Cesaire was a world-renowned poet, essayist and dramatist, the founding editor of Tropiques, which was instrumental in establishing the use of surrealism as a political weapon. He co-formulated the concept of “negritude,” which urges black Africans to reject assimilation and cultivate consciousness of their racial qualities and heritage. Césaire held several government positions in his native Martinique, including that of mayor of Fort-de-France. He died in 2008.

 

Then, from March 31 to April 3, also at the Kimball Theatre, is “An Evening of Dance.” This annual event showcases students and their exploration and development of original choreography, performed by their peers in the Orchesis Modern Dance Company.

 

Performance time for both productions is 7:30 weekdays, 2 p.m. on Sunday. Discounts are available to “An Evening of Dance.”

 

For tickets and more information, visit this website, or phone 757-221-2674.

 

 

 

James City County will be offering Community Emergency Response Team CERT) training for residents in March.  This training prepares individuals with information and skills needed to help themselves and others during and after hurricanes, tornados and other emergencies. While the training qualifies graduates to become members of the county CERT, there is no obligation to join the team after receiving the training.  Each of the sessions are well presented, interesting and include hands on activities.  Take advantage of this free, interesting, and informative training by signing up on the James City County website.

 

You will be glad that you did.

 

 

 

 

New Town Tunes is a FREE After Hours Concert Series coming to our neighborhood this spring! Mark your calendars to save the dates!

 

James City County Parks & Recreation, in partnership with CultureFix, presents a 3-Day FREE Spring After Hours Concert Series:

Dates: Wednesday, April 27th, May 4th & May 11th

Time: 5:30pm; Gates open at 5:00pm

Location: Sullivan Square

Cost: Nada, nothing, zero, this is a FREE Event

 

Line-up to be announced SOON! Stay tuned, more details to come!

You can always visit the NTCA events page to stay in the know about community events. 

 

 

 

Before we start thinking about springing forward on 2:00am Sunday, March 13th and dreaming about lounging by the New Town pool this summer, let’s take a moment to appreciate the beauty of our neighborhood blanketed by the snow. Thankfully, none of our snow events led to sustained ice or slush on our roads, thanks to the good ‘ole Virginia sun. 

 

March temperature highs in our area tend to range from the high 50s to mid 60s, with overcast skies almost half the month! While you may be donning rain boots instead of winter gear, don’t be tempted to head outside without your SPF… UV rays can penetrate clouds! 

 

Thank you to Alison Douglas, Mary Cheston, and Jim Ducibella for sharing their snaps with us!

 

 

 

New Town can be a confusing place if you have an issue or are trying to contact the responsible party for a street, sidewalk, BMP (best maintenance practices for storm water), or other public area. As a mixed use community, it is not always obvious why our homeowners association can’t fix something. 

For example, recently a homeowner asked why certain intersections around Settlers Market have no street signs. Good question, and we have reached out to James City County for an explanation. You see the Settlers Market area is controlled by CPT Settlers Market LLC including the two BMPs adjacent to Village Walk.  James City County requires street signage, and whether these intersections were included in the plans for the area is a JCC accountability issue.

 

David Carter, former LAC Chairman, has spent considerable time to outline who is responsible for the various areas around Village Walk. He notes that Village Walk’s BMPs are designed to capture, filter, and distribute rain runoff from Settlers Market shopping center and are essentially part of a larger storm water management system. So while they look like they are part of New Town, they are not.

 

The wooded areas along Casey Boulevard are another mixed accountability situation. Settlers Market owns a long stretch of the property along the hill with New Town Associates owning the lower area. The street and sidewalks are the responsibility of VDOT. So why do commercial and heavy industrial vehicles park along this stretch of Casey Boulevard? These are public roads subject to VDOT and James City County police jurisdiction. Cracked sidewalks on Casey Boulevard and elsewhere are similarly VDOT’s responsibility to maintain.

 

How can you find out who is the responsible party? Check the James City County property website for information on ownership of particular locations. As an example of what you can find through JCC, pictured below is information (courtesy of David Carter) on land on the West side of Casey Boulevard owned by CPT Settlers Market LLC. 

 

(Note: The Town Crier featured a story in May 2021 on the streets and sidewalks in New Town. See “I’ve Got a Sinking Feeling.”)

 

 

Raising the level of service for our community landscaping is a key goal for the Board and our new management company. Part of reaching that goal is for owners to also have realistic expectations – NTRA does not provide custom landscaping. An array of basic services are shared among all neighborhoods.

So what is coming this summer? The 2022 schedule for mowing has now been defined by Virginia Lawn and Landscape (VLL) as required by their contract’s turf maintenance scope of work. After discussion with our new community manager, VLL outlined the following frequencies per month:

Mowing season will begin in March and end in December at a height of 4 inches. During the heat of July and August, only 3 mows per month will be provided.  This should help to minimize lawn burn.

 

Given all the past turf damage issues with irrigation and rain, VLL will make an effort to notify Chesapeake Bay when it is too wet to mow an area. (Look for info on the website “Landscape News” feature box if have a question about possible delays in mowing.)

 

It is the homeowner’s responsibility to make sure that your property drains water including following prudent irrigation practices. Coordinate the timing of your waterings with your neighbor to minimize soaking adjacent side yards. Consider where your downspouts and condensation units are draining. If VLL experiences repeated issues with overwatering, an owner’s address may be reported to the Association for followup. Management will then contact the owner to let them know of these irrigation concerns so they can be addressed.

 

Leaf cleanup has been extended into December. (The prior statement of work called for leaf cleanups only in October and November.) Owners have complained that yards needed blowing prior to setting up their holiday seasonal decorations. So two leaf cleanups in December have been added.

 

These modifications are an effort to address community concerns and still provide quality service. If you experience an issue, submit a website ticket which goes directly to VLL as well as NTRA staff. Don’t forget paying compliments to the crew as well! Keeping staff during the pandemic has been a major challenge for most landscape companies.