From the Editor/President

By Stephen Sapp

Although the weather has been all over the place since the calendar told us spring has arrived, we have had enough “classic” spring days to make us grateful to live in Lakeport, and several people have commented to me that the spring flowers have been especially impressive this year. Just as the amazing rainbow in the picture accompanying this issue’s Table of Contents symbolizes a new beginning and hope for better times to come, so the coming of spring signals the end of the dark and cold of winter. Let’s take advantage of this new season and enjoy the beauty of Lakeport Cluster and our surrounding area and make a special effort to get to know and interact with our neighbors; it is the friendliness of our residents and the sense of community it engenders that make our cluster such a wonderful place to live.

If you have comments about this Spring issue of Ripples and/or would like to submit an item for our Summer issue, you are welcome to email me at ssapp@miami.edu.

Moving now to matters of Lakeport governance, I am very happy report that Robin Kolko and Marcy Foster are the new co-chairs of the Social Committee! They were responsible for our very successful Lakeport Dock Party last month and have several more activities in the works, including the popular quarterly TGIFs (beginning with one on July 12). Keep your eyes open for announcements of these upcoming events (and if you would like host a TGIF, let Robin or Marcy know)!

Also, with deep gratitude to Paul Renard for years of faithful and effective service as chair of our Landscape Committee, we welcome Jonathan Hammer to that important position. Jonathan has already been doing yeoman’s work keeping our dock clean. Jonathan would love to hear from you if you want to lend a hand maintaining our Lakeport community!

As most of you are aware, we continue to have a goose problem, especially around our dock (and I have noticed that they seem to be roaming farther afield recently). We have explored many possible solutions, but we are limited in what we can do because Canada geese are federally protected by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 and because RA does not allow fences along the lake. At the end of May we made a first application of FlightControl, a goose control system recommended by Complete Landscaping. We are not sure yet of how effective it will be, though early reports are promising. If it works, we will continue to use it to gauge its long-term usefulness (see the article “Solving Problems with Canada Geese” elsewhere in this issue for more information on discouraging geese).

As you can read in the Landscape Committee report, we are also considering installing a pollinator garden in the open grass area to the south of the rose bushes along the RA path by our dock. In addition to serving the primary purpose indicated by its name, we are hoping it will provide a physical barrier to deter the geese further from grazing on the grassy hill above the path.

In the meantime, I want to thank Jonathan Hammer for keeping the dock clean and urge others of you to avail yourselves of the broom and poop-scooper behind Jonathan’s home (1939 Lakeport Way) to lend a hand whenever you see an accumulation of goose waste on the dock. Your help will be much appreciated.

Finally, a couple of requests:

• Please remember that common parking spaces are meant to be shared rather than treated as regular personal parking spaces. You should routinely use your own garage/carport and driveway for your vehicles and leave common spaces for guests and service vehicles. 

• I want to encourage you once again to set up Direct Deposit for your quarterly assessment payments, the next of which is due July 1 (see Reminders elsewhere in this issue for how to do this). The main advantage is that you never have to worry about being late and incurring extra fees, but you also save the hassle and expense of mailing a check (or being charged a fee for using a credit card online). I have heard from several people that they don’t like to use automated payments because they want to know how much their bills are, but unlike electricity or water, for example, you already do know exactly how much your quarterly assessment will be and when it will be deducted from your account! So please consider this time- and cost-saving way to pay your assessments.