League City dog park project revived

Galveston County Daily News reports (paywalled) that the League City dog park is back under consideration after several years of dormancy.  This is important for us in Centerpointe because the location, as I currently understand it, is the same as was originally proposed - the tract of land that is sandwiched between us and the new police station.

This drawing is very preliminary and subject to change.  No specific design has been proposed yet by League City, as I understand it.  

This idea gained a lot of traction several years ago, before my family moved to Centerpointe.

A number of groups were dedicated to making it happen, including this blog site, whose current homepage I screengrabbed above.  They were associated with the local group Bark9.  

However, the movement was reportedly overturned by citizen objection.  By word of mouth, I was told that most of that objection came from within Centerpointe.  I have no details other than that.

Bearing in mind that this blog is not affiliated with Centerpointe POA, I personally am not opposed to a dog park at the stated location in principle.  I have not yet researched the issue, but I see no a priori reason to assume that it would be an automatically bad development (and I am one of the residents who is on the far northeast side of the subdivision, within spitting distance of the tract in question).  As I noted on Galveston Daily News, the area in question is already used daily by people with dogs (including my family), especially the Interurban Easement.  The utility companies don't need to mow that thing.  The path down the center of it is perpetually beaten flat by the constant foot traffic of local people walking their dogs.

We all need to see more detail on this thing before we can make up our minds whether we're ultimately "for" or "against".  On this go-round, League City plans to poll people as to whether they want it to happen.  I will reserve additional comment for the moment, but will post more on this as it develops and as I'm able to do further research.

Centerpointe children overwhelmed my temporarily-free-running dog with affection in this popular post from late 2012 where I spoofed the helicopter-style over-concern with dog safety and child safety.

According to GCDN, Councilman Becker adamantly opposes a dog park in League City for safety reasons, but to me, B doesn't follow A on that logic.  If you look at the number of dog-related injuries to humans vs. the circumstances of those injuries, I rather doubt that dog parks are strongly correlated with increased risk.  It's analogous to any other form of abuse - the primary source of concern is not "stranger danger" but rather conditions within a person's immediate environment.  The very recent pit bull attack on a League City toddler took place within that family's private residence, consistent with that idea.       

Challenging chelonian

There's a story behind this one and I really wish I had the time to track it down (oh, to be a real journalist), because it has a high probability of being absolutely hilarious.

Can you imagine cruising down Centerpointe Drive and seeing the likes of this hoofing through the grass beside you? 

Image courtesy Centerpointe POA, which probably got it from somebody else. 

Did anybody not look at the POA's email blast and yell, "HOLY SH*T"?  This thing is bigger than Dallas! You could saddle it up and ride it home!  "Take me to your leader - yah, giddy-up!!!"
:-)

Anyway, it's just another day in paradise, obviously.  Here's hoping that the traveling terrapin is reunited with its humans. 

NNOtice

Tomorrow is the annual National Night Out (NNO) get-together which is really quite a big deal in Centerpointe.

This is a tap-able reproduction of the POA announcement.  Screengrabbed from this site. 

That NNOtice doesn't say what time it starts, although it mentions a prize drawing at 8 p.m. (LCPD says it's 6 pm - 9 pm). 

Unfortunately, as is the general way of life in suburbia, there are also some "mission critical" meetings happening at Clear Creek High School tomorrow evening, and so I may not make it.  But I highly recommend it for the people-chatting even if you're not much into a carnival atmosphere.  A lot of interesting folks live in Centerpointe, and I've never failed to meet new ones at previous NNO events. 

Centerpointe drainage, Part 2

Going back to the POA email blast from August 31, and following up on my initial post of September 5, I'm going to expound on the advisory issued by the POA regarding our subdivision sewage system. 

That may not seem like a very delectable blog topic to you, but in the event of a sewage system failure, trust me - you are going to become really interested in how it functions, really quickly.  In fact, at any such future point where you've been forced to live without a toilet for X amount of time, it would become your ONLY topic of concern (lack of a/c would be a distant second). 

Before I start, remember, I am not an engineer and I am not a POA member and this blog is not an instrument of the POA.  But I can take the POA's information and attempt to translate it using pictures so that it's easier for non-technical residents to understand, which is what I'm going to do here.  Because when people understand underlying issues, they tend to make more appropriate behavioral decisions. 

So let's start with what was emailed on August 31, emphasis mine: 

Also good to note is that in the event of power loss - our sewer/waste lift/pump station will not pump waste out of the sewer lines. Thus as I mentioned above- the [sewage] that was flowing to the lift station will now flow back to Cypress/White Oak Pointes. If we [lose] power for any extended amount of time - residents are urged not only by the city and county to fill your bathtubs for cooking needs and refrain from flushing your toilets until instructed to do so, but I would think that all neighbors EAST of Lilac Pointe would insist on it!

OK, it doesn't get more ominous-sounding than that, but what the heck does it all mean?!

SHORT VERSION:  We're all in this subdivision thing together.  If you receive a text or email blast instructing you not to generate wastewater during any particular emergency situation, take it very seriously because they're not kidding.  Even if we still have good water pressure, we might not have sewage transfer capability, because the two are not directly related.  Don't assume that just because we have one, we also have the other. 

LONG VERSION:  In order to begin understanding sewage management, all you need to do is remember that immortal adage, "Sh*t rolls downhill."  That's what's happening from each of your houses and the rest of what happens is mostly a consequence of that. 

Let's start from the very beginning, because many residents didn't witness the construction of their own houses, and of those who did, many didn't understand what they were seeing.

Inside your slab are numerous PVC lines which connect your sinks, showers, and toilets to the sewer service line which leads from your house.  This is a picture of an early phase of construction where the lines have been laid but the concrete slab is not yet poured.  The tradesmen put temporary caps on all the lines so that they could test for water-tightness and also so that no soil would get accidentally pushed into the open ends. 

Somebody correct me if I'm wrong, but I suspect that all adjacent pairs of houses share sewer clean-out lines in Centerpointe, rather than each house having its own clean-out.  The sewer clean-out is that baby blue pipe in the center (that particular one got busted by a backhoe and had to be replaced before this area was backfilled).  You can see white lines leading from each house and converging where this vertical pipe is situated. 

This is what the finished, capped sewer clean-out line looks like in your front yard.  Many people paint them brown or green so that they will be less noticeable. 

And this is a simplified diagram showing the corresponding line arrangement.  In this example, the house has a basement, so the clean-out is situated in the basement rather than in its front yard. 

Notice that the sewer service line from the house connects to a sewer main under the street.  That "sewer main" is actually a "gravity sewer".  It is sloped to drain passively toward a piece of wastewater management infrastructure called a "lift station". 

In other words, stuff really does roll downhill.  There is no mechanical apparatus that pumps sewage away from your home.  It simply follows the engineered slope downward.  And if there's a slope, there must be a lowest point somewhere in the general equation.  That point would be the lift station. 

This is not a diagram of Centerpointe - I don't have one specific to our subdivision.  But this is an example of a residential area where you can see gravity sewers in green, and they are engineered to drain toward a lift station.

To my knowledge, Centerpointe has only one lift station.  It looks like this:

It's near Centerpointe Drive and the eastern Boxelder cul-de-sac.  There's not much to see above ground because the guts of it are in a deep shaft. 

Screengrabbed from Googlemaps. 

 

This is approximately what the inside of the deep shaft looks like.  All of those gravity sewers feed into mains which, in turn, feed into a deep concrete-lined hole like this.  It has to be deep because Centerpointe is about one mile across.  Obviously if individual sewer mains are gravity-draining by virtue of their slopes, by the time they get all the way from (for instance) Azalea Pointe near Calder to the lift station, their slope trajectories have put them far underground. 

But a deep line is not necessary to convey all that collected waste material to the League City wastewater treatment plant, and deep lines are expensive to construct, so at that point, the waste is "lifted" by a pump back up to what's called a "force main" which is situated at a shallower depth (the white pipe exiting to the right in the diagram above).  The flow in a force main is via mechanical transfer, thus the word "force" to distinguish it from "gravity".  The sewage travels in the force main to its eventual destination which is the treatment plant. 

So now you can start to visualize what the POA was talking about regarding the issue of a possible power failure due to hurricane or whatever.  The wastewater from 438 homes collects in this lift station.  If there's no power to run the pump that is necessary for it to continue on its way, that deep shaft might entirely fill up with untreated sewage.  If the level rises too high, it will start back-flowing up the gravity mains, because it has to go somewhere.  And if it completely fills any given gravity main, then it's got no choice but to back up into individual service lines.  And then this might happen: 

Scenes like this are rare but absolutely devastating, obviously.  This is backed-up sewage spewing forth from a commode.  When stuff is blocked from rolling downhill, it will enthusiastically start rolling uphill. 

The reason why it's so actively flowing in this example is probably because other users in the system are still trying to add wastewater to the gravity sewer system, not realizing that it can no longer physically accept any more wastewater. 

Screengrabbed from this source. 

If I'm understanding correctly, the POA was calling attention to the fact that some areas of Centerpointe are lower in relative elevation than other areas.  So some areas might be more susceptible to the consequences of a system failure.  If I'm understanding correctly, this is what prompted the comment  "...refrain from flushing your toilets until instructed to do so, but I would think that all neighbors EAST of Lilac Pointe would insist on it." 

From this, I interpret that people east of Lilac Pointe might be more at risk of getting the proverbial sh*tty end of the stick in more than just the idiomatic sense. 

There are two pieces of good news in all of this:

1. Toilets ejecting raw sewage upward with a force exceeding 1G are not, I repeat NOT, in the interest of public health, and governments know it.  Recent hurricanes including Ike and Dolly five years ago underscored the need for emergency generators to supply power at lift stations, after stories like this one became common (here's another reference).  These days, wastewater operators need to keep emergency generators on hand for the duration of hurricane season in order to prevent exactly that type of septic scenario depicted above.  I don't know how those rules affect League City, but I assume that the city is subject to some requirements of this type.  This is good news but it is also a contingency we can't absolutely rely on.  Emergency generators need fuel, and we know what happened to the fuel supply chain during Hurricane Rita (for those of you who weren't here, it collapsed).
2. Yesterday was SciGuy Day, the September calendar date after which the chances of a hurricane become very low for the upper Texas coast.  Hurricane season doesn't officially end until November 30, but prevailing autumn weather patterns tend to be very protective of our area after September 24 (that's certainly the date after which I begin re-stocking my mega-freezer, which we "eat down" over the summer in case we get a hurricane that kills electricity and thus ruins its very expensive home-made organic contents).  So if there ever comes a point where I need to refer you back to this post so that you can review why you shouldn't flush your commode, it almost certainly won't be until a future year (whew!).

Until that day, happy flushing!!

Screengrabbed from this source. 

I can't seem to embed this, but here's a link to this video from KPRC and a screengrab from it below if you'd like more info on the significance of the September 24 date.

 

Centerpointe drainage, Part 1

There were a couple of excellent points made by one of the POA board members in a recent email blast and I'd like to explain those here, with pictures, because pictures always help, especially if they're humorous. 

The member had witnessed a resident dumping a large quantity of grass clippings down one of our storm drains, and wanted to alert everyone to the danger that this kind of activity poses.

He's absolutely correct.  This type of thing is a dangerous practice, and in my usual long-winded form, I will attempt to illustrate exactly why. 

But before I do that, here's the short version, which was best summed up by our subdivision's developer several years ago after one of our annual meetings.  He said (paraphrased), "If you folks ever allow those storm drains to get plugged up, you're going to get one hell of an awful surprise."

Short version or long version, that is the take-away: Don't plug the drains.  Ever.  Not even partially. 

Let me elaborate as best I can. 

On the issue of public education where subdivision flooding potential is concerned, we have three factors that are currently conspiring against us in a proverbial triple whammy: 

(1)  Greater Houston (irrespective of the rest of Texas) has been in drought for five years now.  For this reason, what our area can throw at us in the way of flash floods is a distant memory for many people.  And people whose memories fall into the "distant" category tend to be bad decision-makers. 


A picture tells a thousand words, especially if some of those words are humorous.  In this case, the picture was screengrabbed from Above the Aether which, in turn, apparently annotated it from their own Houston Chronicle grab (original URL no longer available, which is why bloggers tend to screen-grab commercial content for the purposes of commentary... it's because that content tends to annoyingly disappear). 

(2)  Five years is half the age of Centerpointe.  Many of our homeowners, particularly those who moved here from other countries and other parts of America, have never witnessed what greater Houston is capable of throwing at us in the way of flash flooding.  Sure, there have been minor events in the intervening time.  But many people who live in Centerpointe now have never experienced a full-blown Houston toad-floater of the type that goes on for days and just gets worse and worse. 

One of the aforementioned minor intervening events.  News 92 FM source here. 

Cypress??  The type of scene shown above is in no way restricted to more distal areas of greater Houston. 

On this memorable day in recent history, it flooded so badly that we got trapped for six hours inside a for-sale house that we had gone to view prior to signing our Centerpointe build contract.  Fortunately we were able to get our realtor's car above the rising waters before it was destroyed, whereas many of the street-parking neighbors were not so fortunate. 

Needless to say, this shocking experience rather soured us on that particular subdivision.  I'll say more about this incident a bit further down in this post. 

(3)  EPA's recently-published RiskMap6 may give Centerpointers a false sense of security.  This new flood hazard map has gotten a lot of press because the proposed insurance premium rate hikes for 100-year flood zone areas are unprecedented to the point where, even if the hikes are delayed, this stuff is going to change real estate as we know it. 

Screengrabbed from this Houston Chronicle article.  But before you proceed to faint dead away, read on. 

However, that same scary map confirms what almost all of us* already know from our house purchasing adventures (*Centerpointe does include some renters who may not be aware of this stuff): Our subdivision appears to have been mapped as being outside the 100-year flood zone. 

There we are near the bottom right corner.  Most of the action is predictably happening near the top and top left corner, near Clear Creek. 

I'm using some worm words in this description because these maps are annoyingly complex to the point where I doubt my own ability to comprehend them correctly.  There are multiple overlapping stipple patterns depending on which layers you activate.

...but if I'm viewing this correctly, I think what they're saying is that we started out being Zone X...

...and we're going to remain Zone X after the new updates are finalized...

But even Zone X is not without certain caveats.  Screengrabbed from this FEMA site. 

BUT GUESS WHAT, DUDES?!  Meadows does not appear to be in the 100-year flood zone either, and yet look again at my photo from 2009 (Meadows is located near the center of this screengrab).   

Screengrabs from RiskMap6 for Galveston County as it was presented in early September 2013.   

Meadows appears to have been mapped in the 500 year flood zone.  Small consolation for the folks who had to make flood claims just four years ago. 

What's the moral of this story?  Why did Meadows flood in 2009?  Why did floodwaters within Meadows take hours to recede after the rain had stopped? 

Once again, the internet irritates me because I can't link to a ready answer.  At the time, there were allegations of plugged drainage conveyances, including one or more downstream conveyances that maybe were supposed to have been maintained by the City of League City.  But the URLs have decayed to the point where I cannot find them now.  As usual, citizen journalists persist where commercial journalists evaporate.  You can watch raw footage of the flooding here, but I can't find the corresponding news reports. 

The moral of that story is that EVERY greater Houston subdivision, without regard to FEMA designation, has the potential to flood IF there is a conspiracy of conditions that thwart the engineered drainage system within or downstream of the subdivision.  And plugged drainage conveyances represent the worst possible scenario. 

To further emphasize the potential we have here in Centerpointe, let's review a blog post I published in May of 2012, in which I humorously documented the fate of our two trash cans during an overnight rainstorm.  Remember that both of these cans were full of trash and recyclables (i.e., heavy) at the time these images were captured, but they still proved to be no match for rising water: 

That wasn't anywhere near the worst rainfall that we might have had, and look what it did!  If you can look at those images above and still conclude that you don't need to voluntarily purchase flood insurance simply because FEMA says you've been mapped in Zone X, you need your head examined!!

Think about it.  That particular heavy rainstorm hit on trash day.  What would have happened if enough of our collective trash had gotten dumped out when rising water tipped over many peoples' cans?  What if it had plugged up our drainage system?  We all got VERY lucky on May 12, 2012, in that we stopped short of that conspiracy of circumstances that could easily have led to more extensive subdivision flooding. 

Here is my best personal-opinion-based advice:  Do not allow yourself to be without flood insurance anywhere on the upper Texas coast, regardless of what your property's official flood risk rating is. 

Do not put grass clippings or any other solid material into our storm sewers, please.  And maybe think about placing your trash cans in your driveway above the curb line if it looks like we might get overnight rain. 

The drought-resistant landscaping bill: What it means for us

Did I mention that I think the commercial news media sucks?!  Texas legislative bill SB 198 potentially affects about 8 million single family homes in this state (estimated using 2010 Census data) and yet, as of this morning, I can't find a single commercial news reference to the fact that it was finally signed into law last Friday. 

Excerpt from the 83(R) tracking site.  For crying out loud, I now get much of my news from Facebook, of all places.  In this case, it was the Harris County Master Gardeners who announced the bill passage by linking to this special interests site. 

This is the bill that clears the way for Texas homeowners to install drought-resistant landscaping irrespective of whatever is written in their Homeowner Association documents or municipal ordinances, including restrictive covenants / deed restrictions.  It doesn't require any homeowner to take such steps, but it allows them. 

What might it mean for those of us in Centerpointe? 

Well, it means a number of things, and I'm speaking here as a resident who is personally interpreting what I'm reading.  I am not speaking as a representative of the POA with which I am not affiliated, and neither am I speaking in the capacity of a legal advisor or attorney. 

First of all,  this new law does not mean you can simply let your existing St. Augustine lawn go to hell in a hand basket.  It does not relieve you of your duty to keep your subdivision property in an appropriately-maintained condition - it just curtails the restrictions that the POA can legally impose upon your choice of landscaping styles. You'll still have to have landscaping plans approved by the architectural control committee, but you'll have significantly more choice in what your front yard looks like.   

Grass be gone:  an example of full xeriscaping, where all turf grass has been removed and replaced with drought-tolerant plants plus mulch and rock to prevent soil erosion. 

Screengrabbed from the website of the Colorado business known as Blooming Idiot Lawn Care (love the name!). 

Partial xeriscaping where a drought-tolerant area has been incorporated into turf grass.

Screengrabbed from Keep Abilene Beautiful. 

Second of all, the new law will probably require a re-write or at least careful interpretation of certain sections of our deed restrictions. 

I'm not an attorney, but the new law appears to mean bye-bye to the "completely sodded with St. Augustine grass" part.  This is fairly standard boilerplate language which appears to have been adopted by the POA rather than originating with them or with our developer.  I've seen the same type of language in the deed restriction documents of other subdivisions. 

Screengrabbed from our deed restrictions as they are presently uploaded to the community website. 

Our architectural control committee will have to remain creative and well-versed on the issue of xeriscaping (as a subdivision resident who knows about landscaping and gardening, it is not difficult for me to foresee questions landing in my inbox). 

Here's one of the biggest challenges I see for Centerpointe residents who would aspire to reduce their front yard turf grass:


The problem is what to do with this danged tree requirement, which is also boilerplate.  This thing was already threatening to become a thorn in the side of the POA because many Centerpointe front yards are simply not large enough to accommodate two mature trees.  Some of them, especially the pie-shaped cul-de-sac lots, can't even accommodate one mature tree.  A small ornamental tree, yes, but each and every one of us got sprigged with live oak saplings by our builders, and live oaks grow to be massive. 

Screengrabbed from our deed restrictions.

As well as being a space issue, front-yard trees can be problematic for xeriscaping because most low-water species are adapted to grow in full sunlight.  Low-water landscapes tend to be treeless by definition... think Big Bend. 

I meant the ranch, not the national park.  Here is a photo of nature's most fabulous xeriscape, screengrabbed from the TPWD park website. 

Therefore, if you attempt to develop a low-water landscaping plan while maintaining your builder-installed live oaks, you could end up with a hot mess in your front yard if you're not careful.  That's the kind of mis-step that no decent professional landscaper would make, of course, but many homeowners are DIYers who don't hire expensive outside services. 

From the angle of the photo, it's difficult for me to tell whether this intrepid soul left his trees in place as he was building his personal cactus empire. 

Screengrabbed from The Dallas Morning News. 

In the face of the new law, enforcement of the tree requirement seems a bit questionable to me.  But personally, I think most tract homes don't look complete without trees in the front yard because they become too stark and barren.  Xeriscaping can be achieved with trees still in place, if done properly.  I'm planning to address the potentially-excessive shade issue by eventually pruning our front-yard live oaks in the style frequently seen in Austin. 

In a previous post, I mentioned moving to Austin for a few years a long time ago.  After I bought my house, my new neighbors asked me (paraphrased), "Are you planning to trim your trees?  Because people who move here from Houston never trim their trees, and we don't understand this."

In this screengrab from an active Austin Home Search listing, you can see what is often meant in Austin by "trimming trees".  The "skirt" is raised to an extent that only a small amount of canopy remains and it barely casts a shadow.  This magnitude of trimming allows unobstructed views of the house and it creates better conditions for healthy plant growth underneath the trees. 



Another example, but with no xeriscaping or bed installation surrounding the trees.  The canopy has been thinned out to such a degree that it doesn't impede full-sun growth of the lawn.  Rather than serving as dense shade umbrellas, these trees are trained to be more like sculptural elements in the landscaping. 

And another example showing partial xeriscaping around the base of the trees, while an area of turf grass lawn is retained in front of it. 

All screengrabs from http://www.austinhomesearch.com/.

Anyway, I'm sure there'll be additional guidance developed by the various property management companies and consortia.  I'll link to those as they become available here in our brave new suburban landscaping world. 

Annual POA meeting, Part 3: Traffic issues

An interesting story on the front page of this morning's Houston Chronicle provides a great lead-in for this next topic which was covered during Centerpointe POA's annual public meeting on March 26, 2013, because we are up against this same issue of dangerous driving (as is every subdivision in greater Houston).

According to the internet, this nonprofit group represents a slew of subdivisions and businesses in the Copperfield area.  Screengrab of text from Houston Chronicle. 

I find it a amazing that so many people are so passionate about traffic violations and yet at the same time, a significant majority of people are so passionately opposed to the idea of automated traffic enforcement.  I'm not sure if we're dealing with different sub-populations or what, but B doesn't always seem to follow A. Part of me wanted to stand up in that POA meeting and ask, "How many of y'all voted against red light cameras, now?  Can we have a show of hands?  And yet here we are having a detailed discussion on how to improve traffic compliance?!" 

But I didn't do that because I didn't want to distract from the specific solve-able issues that people were raising. 

Anyway, as the story was reported by Chron, the president of that nonprofit watchdog got into some kind of suburban road rage incident with one alleged sign runner.  This led to vehicle damage and an arrest.

If we wanted to make a meaningful dent in the number of stop sign runners within Centerpointe, I estimate that it would require at least six people working full time - either that, or a computerized camera system that issues tickets automatically - duh!! 

The fact is, people run stop signs here more often than not.  Recall this random dash cam video segment that I first embedded in a post back in March of 2011: 

That was just two sequential vehicles chosen at random - and they both barely slowed down for their respective stop signs.  This is entirely typical of what happens here. 

As of right now, Centerpointe doesn't have a formal group that performs a similar function as the Copperfield Coalition. 

We do have one vocal dash-cammer in the form of yours truly, and a couple of other residents began voicing specific concerns to League City's Assistant Chief of Police in the POA meeting.

A few of those issues I'm not going to comment on yet, because we need to advance the progress of those issues before I have a more complete story to convey.

However, one resident's complaint is worth talking about in terms of the work-arounds and countermeasures that are and are not feasible. 

Reportedly, there's a teenaged driver wreaking havoc with dangerous driving on his or her particular street segment, where many small children play outdoors.  None of the opposition mustered by the impacted residents has abated this behavior to date.  What fell out of the resulting discussion with LCPD is the following:

• It's not lawful for citizens to put their own cones or other traffic impediment devices in the public right-of-way for the purposes of traffic control. 
• It's not lawful for citizens to park their vehicles in such a way as to intentionally restrict traffic on a public street.  However, if there is a perceived situational need for residents to be parking their cars directly opposite each other on the street... as long as it's not done for traffic control purposes, that's another matter, because it is legal to park on our public streets.  Both sides thereof. 

Do you get the picture on that second point?  It's extremely difficult for motorists to proceed with excessive speed between two opposing cars, because our subdivision streets are not that wide.  It's usually necessary to slow down in order to pass between two opposing vehicles safely. 

The LCPD representative encouraged contacting the police where dangerous driving is perceived to occur.  That's what the police are there for.  Your tax dollars at work. 

Anyway, I'll have more later on the other traffic issues that were raised.

How often do you see this happen within Centerpointe - a 25 mph motorist?
Very rarely, in my observation. 

Annual POA meeting, Part 1: In general

Centerpointe POA's annual meeting was last night, and was well-attended, with both a quorum of residents and a special guest (the League City Assistant Chief of Police) in attendance.

438 families.
One POA.
One unaffiliated blogger.
An out-sized local presence. 

Screengrab from Googlemaps. 

I'll have a series of upcoming posts that cover some interesting highlights of that meeting, which are too numerous for one blog post. 

In the meantime, I'd like to re-emphasize two points as follows:

(1) Centerpointe Communicator is not an instrument of the Centerpointe POA.  The blog merely incorporated the geographic place name in its title because your friendly neighborhood blogger lives here and is concerned about issues that directly and indirectly impact this area.  Last night, one resident asked why the POA cannot be more involved with certain "issues" that affect us.  The answer is that some of that potential involvement clearly would be beyond their authority.  The POA is an incorporated entity responsible for the administration and maintenance of this subdivision.  To expand that presence beyond its legally-mandated role would expose it to liability.  The POA cannot editorialize.  The POA cannot even provide a web link to this blog for fear that it would be construed as endorsing certain political positions for which it might then be liable.  Certain "issues" are therefore the purview of other independent groups including (but not limited to) this blog, rather than the POA. 

Last night, someone offered the perspective that the POA is "for the subdivision" whereas the blog is "for the residents".  I had never conceived of the distinction as succinctly as that, but I like it. 

This is also the reason why your blogger can't serve on the POA.  I've been asked to do that by a number of residents in the past, but it would clearly represent an unacceptable conflict of interest. 

(2) Thanks to everyone who feeds me tidbits of information.  Because the POA and the blog are unrelated and unaffiliated, we "run in different circles", so to speak.  As a result of this, we occasionally get exposed to the same rumors originating from different sources.

Two entities hearing the same information from different sources can help with the truth triangulation process. 

Microsoft clip art.

I've learned over the past few years that bloggers are defined as much by what they don't say out loud as by what they do transmit in the form of blog posts.  There are a number of pending local issues right now - a number of them - about which I haven't spoken because, at this early point, it wouldn't do anyone any good to go there.  I need to see which way those cookies start crumbling before I issue any alerts or voice any opinions on them.  But being tipped off in advance helps keep my mental satellite dish pointed in the directions from which further signals will most likely originate. 

So thanks, and thanks, and stay tuned for more. 

The newsletter discontinuance issue

I'm not sure how many of you noticed this, but there was an announcement in the last subdivision newsletter that the newsletter is going to be discontinued within a few months. 



Excerpt screengrabbed from the POA website section that posts up newsletters.  Note that it directs readers to the new POA website in lieu of future newsletters. 

This is noteworthy because the newsletter has been the primary means by which subdivision cohesion has been achieved over the past six years. 

The significant limitations I see with the proposed website-as-information-alternative are as follows:

1. The website is a vehicle of the POA and the POA is a legal entity.  The POA is the first layer of our comprehensive American system of governance (and those of you who have tried to gain permission for various property modifications are probably painfully aware of their authority).   For this reason, there are many relevant neighborhood issues into which the POA may simply not want to insert itself simply because it's neither the POA's legal mandate nor is it necessarily in anybody's best interest for the POA to try to play that role. 
2. Frankly, I don't find this new POA website to be very useful at all.  It's just another largely-static compilation of information much like any other generic POA website out there (and arguably, that is how it should be).  The POA website contains no visible means of networking residents.  I can see no obvious method by which it could effectively share information and feedback quickly in real time.  If you have any issues to raise, the only route to inquiry is through the property management company.  This is simply subdivision boilerplate, as it arguably should be.

The whole business of the newsletter's existence gets a little dicey because it was started as a purely-social connectivity mechanism by a resident who only later became an elected member of the POA.  I've been asked in the past if I plan to run for the POA and I've said no, definitely not, because I cannot - it would be a conflict of interest.  I'm running a blog in which I'm intentionally raising questions and stating positions that might not be consistent with what the POA endorses.  Therefore there's too much potential for residents to get confused between what originates with the POA and what originates on the blog.  It would not be proper to confound things via my participation on the POA. 

Anyway, the bottom line regarding the newsletter is that I offered to take over the distribution of it.  In doing that, my idea was to alter the distribution of it in a way that clarified the following:

1. Things that were clearly POA matters could be efficiently routed to the POA (for example, residents complaining about violations of deed restrictions).
2. Things that were not-so-clearly POA matters could instead be efficiently routed to the blog and hashed out here (for example, concerns about people coming through the neighborhood driving either their own personal junk-collection jalopies or maybe even ice cream trucks). 

My offer to take over management of these two communication vectors was declined because the newsletter publisher previously promised all of the Centerpointe residents that she would not share their emails with any third parties, and I represent a third party.  The newsletter is therefore scheduled to be discontinued with no alternative networking device to pick up the connectivity slack (other than this blog which many Centerpointe residents aren't yet aware of).

I'm not sure what should be done in light of this, but if any of you have suggestions, I'd like to hear them.

This discontinuance is coming at a bad time.  It's coming right at the time when development pressures are increasing substantially in our area and so I worry about how information is going to make its way to residents in a timely manner - timely enough for us to collaborate and weigh in on it, if such an action proves to be appropriate.  Nobody can stop the coming development on our remaining adjacent private property parcels, but sometimes design modifications can be negotiated that minimize impacts on Centerpointe homeowners.  Additionally, sometimes private property development plans are approved at the municipal level with errors in them that can then impact surrounding properties.  Residents of the following streets are potentially at quality-of-life risk because they are located near to undeveloped tracts that are currently for sale:

• Arlington Pointe
• Harvard Pointe
• Walnut Pointe (the most vulnerable, as I see it)
• southern portions of Azalea Pointe
• southern portions of Elm Pointe

We need to know quickly and in real time when real estate transactions transpire, and we need to be able to spread that information among residents in order to gauge whether anyone has legitimate concerns.  I'm not sure of the best way to do that. 

The POA didn't seem to pay any attention whatsoever to the fact that the new "public safety building"  (note that this term is nothing but a polite euphemism - it's a police station and jail, just like it says on its design documents) got approved to be built right next to us.  Here they were worrying about pickers when in fact we're due to have what appears to be substantially more incarceration-related traffic on our flanking arterial, which is West Walker Street.  Does that strike anyone besides me as a little bit odd in terms of priorities??  Who is more likely to be scoping Centerpointe out for nefarious purposes?  Random junk collectors or people who have proven themselves as criminals, plus the associates of such people who will be driving through our area during the process of bailing those people out? 

Maybe upon comprehending the police station / jail issue thoroughly, maybe we would have decided that we are not opposed to it.  But the fact is, we never got the chance to get that information and to have that conversation amongst ourselves.  The "public safety building" doesn't seem to be as jail-intensive as originally planned, but I still haven't found any documentation that reveals HOW MANY jail cells are due to be included in this new building.  I don't even know what the project entails (other than an obvious lack of sidewalk) and it's already underway.  This is not the way things should be.

And while we're asking such questions, what about that other tract that is not included with this facility now under construction?  What, for instance, if League City with or without the participation of Galveston County, decided to expand the jail facilities in the future to include the other tract?

The "public safety building" will only occupy approximately the left-most half of the total available land.  What will be built on the other half?  When will Centerpointers find out about that, and by what method?  Will there be time and opportunity for us to evaluate the impacts on us?

I think that we ought to be able to communicate efficiently with Oaks of Clear Creek as well as our other surrounding neighborhoods (Wilshire Place and Patton) on some of these issues as well.  Does Oaks of Clear Creek realize that they're scheduled to have a large blinking radio tower built just off the north side of their subdivision?  I sent them a feeler, but only to their POA, and I don't know if they have a resident networking mechanism of any kind in place.

Your comments are always welcome.  Even if I don't manage to respond right away, I'm always reading them and taking them into consideration, whether they are private emails or blog comments.  Thanks for your input. 

On the issue of subdivision gates

The following comment was included verbatim in the last neighborhood newsletter:

"I have asked several neighbors what their thoughts were about our neighborhood adding gated access for a one-time assessment fee.  I would feel much safer, and I think it would go a long way towards property value retention as well.   Is there a way to petition interest?  Those asked were all for it."

This is where I invite folks from the blogosphere to comment if they have specialized knowledge regarding this issue.  When I try to search for applicable regulations on the internet, what I get is too much legal detail and not enough 30,000-foot view (as some of the screengrabs below will illustrate), so the statements below might not be correct or complete. 

That being said, from the information I have been able to assemble, subdivision gates appear to be a non-starter for Centerpointe.  There's no use petitioning to see if there's support because even if 100% of residents express a preference for them, we lack the legal basis to install them even if by some miracle we could collectively afford the cost. 

Centerpointe's streets were originally platted (and remain) as public rights-of-way.   As such, it would seem that they cannot be impeded or restricted without major legal action which would probably involve vacating them AS public rights-of-way and getting them declared as private property instead.  After that point, our little POA (rather than the City of League City) would then be responsible for maintaining both the streets and the gates in perpetuity, with the streets being to a standard of quality equal to or better than similar public rights-of-way.  

(Not only that, if you start researching what it takes to administratively and functionally maintain gates, your hair might fall out from the enormity of it.) 

An anecdotal report seems to support the private property basis described above.  We have some friends in the well-known Sugar Creek subdivision in Sugar Land.   If you look at the entrance to Sugar Creek, you can see a curious thing:

What's wrong with this picture?!
Why would you have a shack in a location such as this?
So you can simply watch as cars zoom by?
Screengrab from the Googlemaps little highway man.

There's a rather fancy entrance shack upon which a lot of money was obviously spent, but no corresponding gates are present.  Rumor has it that gates WERE installed at one time, but were removed because someone sued the subdivision for barricading a public right-of-way.  It's not legal to do that, and so the gates had to be removed.

I haven't been able to verify for certain that this did, in fact, happen, but if I look at the anecdotal references on the internet, they unilaterally support this notion that only private streets can be gated. 

For instance, the City of Colleyville's municipal code discusses gating regulations at length, and while that content is strictly applicable only to that city, is is undoubtedly consistent with state law precedents.

Note the immediate distinction between public and private streets.
URL here. 

Similarly, guidance for subdivisions platted in County-controlled areas also makes reference to the issue of private property.  For example:

Excerpted from Hunt County, Texas subdivision guidance.
URL here. 

Well, heck, that's all well and fine, but what does League City itself say?!

League City's Code of Ordinances is maintained on the Municode platform.  Again, it's a lot of detail and less of the 30,000-foot view, but these passages are instructive:

Again we see the public-private distinction,
and Centerpointe's streets are public.

There is a large passage detailing the technical standards that apply to gates, but again, the emphasis is on the streets being private, not public.
URL here. 

So there you have what appear to be the facts of this matter: legally we couldn't install gates even if we wanted to.  But if a sufficient number of residents express a desire to investigate this issue further, by all means, get together and approach City Council in order to feel them out on the likelihood of the City's approving a request to vacate our streets, and by all means, derive some supportable estimates of the corresponding costs, and I'll publish them here for initial contemplation. 

UPDATE 2:12 pm:
Here are a few comments from the property management company on the subject of gates:

• Initial costs of up to $50,000 to install gates can be expected (not sure if that's per-entrance or per the three entrances).
• From that point forward, homeowners must pay the subdivision's electrical bills (streetlights) and all repairs to lights and streets (resulting in a signficant increase in annual property assessments). 
• Telephone lines would also have to be added to each gate and paid for monthly.
• Monthly maintenance on gates is expected to be $500 - $8,000 (they are very subject to damage from motorists) - again, these costs would be added to everyone's assessments. 
• Would require insurance policy rate increase - another monthly expense.
• Remote control devices are $20 - $35 apiece, paid for by homeowners. 
• Police would no longer patrol the subdivision or respond to calls regarding offenses such as automobile speeding, because the streets would be private property.

That last one kinda clinches it for me.  At this time I cannot foresee any net benefit to discontinuing police patrols in here.