October Annual Meeting / Proxies

The 2007 Annual Meeting of the Harrington Grove Community Association will be held on Thursday, October 25, 2007 at the St. Francis of Assisi Catholic Church, in the Founders Room of Anthony Hall, 11401 Leesville Rd.

The meeting will begin at 7:00PM and will include:

• Officer and committee reports
• A review of the 2007 financial report
• Election of Board of Directors – There are 2 board member positions available. Herb Hernandez and Chuck Pringle will be running again; If you would also like to run, see below. Each position has a three year term.
• Committee sign-ups
• Question and answer time
  

If you would like to nominate yourself or another HG homeowner for one of the Board positions, please call or email Matoka Snuggs with Charleston Management. Her phone is 847-3003 and email is matoka@charlestonmanagement. Nominations may also be made from the floor at the meeting.

In the event that you will not be able to attend, the Board solicits your proxy so that the necessary meeting quorum may be met and the expense of a second meeting will not be needed. You may fill out and return the postage paid proxy post card you received in the mail or you may give your proxy to a neighbor who will be attending the meeting. NOTE: It is important that we have enough votes to hold the election, so please be sure to send your proxy back to Charleston Management if you're unable to attend the meeting in person.

We have HOA meetings every month (except December) and all homeowners are invited to attend. They are held at St. Francis and begin at 7pm on the 4th Thursday of the month. See our calendar for more details.

Duke Power Update

I had a call last evening with a Business Development contact at Duke Energy who is responsible for our area. They have received several complaints about the power "blips" we've been encountering in HG, and wanted to let us know the steps they are taking to rectify the situation.

In short:

They believe they've determined the problem at one of the switching stations and are supposed to be out this morning making the necessary corrections. Approximately 253 customers may be out of power today or about 4 hours while this work is in progress.

They will then spend about two months walking the lines coming into HG and making any needed changes, such as repairing defective equipment, fixing poles, clearing out trees, etc. before the Winter arrives.

He was very apologetic about the recent quality of service and indicated they are committed to ensuring they exceed our expectations.

Morning Traffic Congestion

We've had a few questions/complaints about traffic congestion in the morning as residents are leaving Harrington Grove. Following is a summary of some information received from the City.

Update: The City is planning to widen Leesville Road from I-540 to New Leesville Boulevard to a four-lane median-divided section with curb and gutter, sidewalks, and streetlights. This project is planned to begin construction in 2011, with the design and public involvement process starting in 2009.

In the short term, we are looking to partner with Wake County Schools to extend the improvements that the school is making all the way down to I-540. These improvements would add an additional southbound lane from Norwood Road to the I-540 interchange, which will specifically benefit the morning rush hour. It wont fix your situation completely, but it should provide some substantial improvement.

I can tell you that the City is working with Wake County Public Schools to piggy back onto some road improvements associated with the elementary school that is being constructed. These improvements will result in two southbound lanes from the beginning of the school property down to the I-540 interchange. The remainder of the road is in the CIP (Capital Improvement Program) but I don’t believe it is funded in the next five years. It was a candidate project in the last bond issue but exorbitant increases construction prices severely impacted the number of projects that could be built with the Bond Funds. There has been mention of another Bond Referendum for next year and this would certainly be a candidate project if that happens. The CIP is available on the City’s Web Page (PDF).

It should be a significant improvement over the current situation. There will continue to be one lane northbound and two lanes southbound from the school down to the interchange. Northbound traffic will remain as it is today, one lane up to the existing New Leesville Boulevard, until the entire project is built. There should be no significant transition problems once the construction is complete but it will add significant capacity to the southbound traffic. Expediting this portion of the improvements was a “target of opportunity” that would allow traffic to take advantage of the improvements that the school system had to build anyway as a part of the school construction.

Additionally, one of our signal technicians will check the signal operation during the morning commute and school take-in times to make sure the signal is operating properly and to make adjustments to the timings if needed. Thank you for bringing your concern to our attention.