OBligation

When the residents of North Shore developed the Neighborhood Plan they agreed to maintain the islands. That means the lanscaping, the light bulbs and washing or painting the monuments. This was the agreement between the city and North Shore. The agreement is for life. After all, the city, through many projects up and beyond the original Neighborhood Plan, have spent well over $500,000 in improvements alone in our neighborhood. This figure does not include all of the staff time the city has given to us. The staff time costs would probably be another one or two hundred thousand dollars. Easy!

So, I think North Shore got quite a good deal for the sake of pulling a few weeds.

Don't you agree?

By Steven D. Lange

plan

Thank you for your reply. No quarrell here with the city or anyone else. Just too bad that such a long term committment was made about the weeds because the people who made the committment don't seem to be living up to it anymore (whoever they were). I hope that the Assoc. will be cautious in the future about such time intensive committments that involve future residents and even generations. The painting is once every few years but weeding down here in Florida seems to be a year around trial of monumental proportions (pun unintended).

By Ann W.

Weeds

The membership and the elected leadership of the North Shore Neighborhood Association, together, discussed, agreed and voted to provide the weeding servics and monument upkeep as part of our matching grant. The association obligated itself because it wanted those other improvements. Remember, North Shore was the first neighborhood to receive $337,000 (plus or minus) of city funds. No other neighborhood association had ever received such funds before. Funds which were specifically earmarked for neighborhood projects that the neighbors and residents said they wanted. So, since everyone was required to step up to the plate as it were, North Shore accepted weeding and maintanence obligations when the city offered it to us as something we could do in lieu of cold hard cash, of which we had very little. This was done as part of our committment. The other portion of our committment was the $35.00 per property, one time tax we imposed upon ourselves. Together, these two things tallied up the majority of our matching funds. There were other smaller items, but these were the two largest ones.

By Steven D. Lange

solution?

Thank you for the further explanation but you did not address my concern about the perpetual obligation. Those leaders/members at that time did not think about those of us to follow and I hope that the current leadership/membership does not make similar agreements which would be binding on future generations.

By Ann W.