CPVA MEETING MINUTES

June 19, 2006

7:30 p.m.

Presiding:   Scott Singletary, Vice-President

Location:    Montgomery County Community College, Rm. A-102

Topic: General Meeting Issues

Board Attendance:

Absent:
Kevin Kastor
Ray Penton
Pam Harris
Gail Carney

President’s Report: Gail was out of town; Scott Singletary called the meeting to order at 7:30 p.m. 

Guest Speaker:  Lynne Aldrich, The Woodlands Parks Department.  Topic: Mosquito Control.  (details below)

Village Liaison Report, Alecia Klostermann: 

• Check for annexation updates on www.TheWoodlandsGovernance.org website.  
• National Night Out: August 1st, 5-8 p.m.
• National Night Out activities for College Park will be centered in the Harper’s Landing Pool Pavilion.  Harper’s Landing meetings have been so successful in the past years that they are being used as a model for other National Night Out gatherings across The Woodlands.
• H.L. party should have police, fire, community leaders, representatives of the recreation center and a balloon artist.
• Working to try to get the Child I.D. folks to attend again.

TWA Representative Report:
Ted Stanley offered his congratulations to the annexation committee for a valiant effort in trying to elect selected candidates to the Conroe City Council.  Their candidates lost the campaign but brought attention to issues facing the city of Conroe and the future of Harper’s Landing. 

• The temporary fire station behind Lowe’s had been delayed because of electricity service issues.  Those issues have been resolved; the fire station will celebrate a grand opening (of the temporary facility; permanent one is still in the design phase) later in June.

• Skate parks are being assessed.  Some of the parks may have older equipment that could be the source of safety concerns.  Harper’s Landing has a very, very new skate park with brand new equipment; safety of the equipment there is not in question.

• Reminder that The Woodlands will host the annual parade and fireworks show at the mall, July 4th.

Social News:  Parade float: Kevin and Jason are heading the Ideas and Decorating Committee for the float. Residents of Harmony Hollow cul-de-sac will be spearheading the decoration.  Theme of the parade: Hats Off to America.  Theme of the float: a giant hat.  Open request: any children wanting to ride on the float are welcome.  Main decorating day: Sunday, July 2nd.  Food will be brought to the cul-de-sac at 6 p.m. that day.

Astros game: 9/23.  Astros v. Cardinals, Saturday night start at 6:05.  Tickets are $11/pp and include transportation to and from the game.

Annexation: Ted Stanley has numbers from the TWA for 2005/2006, with projected changes if services in 2009 are to be provided by Conroe.  Please contact him for full details.  Assessment values for The Woodlands would be lowered to reflect service changes if Harper’s Landing is annexed.  The fees would eliminate The Woodlands Fire Department, solid waste, law enforcement and street lighting fees currently paid to The Woodlands.  Those fees would instead be paid to the City of Conroe – and would change.  Some will be higher, others lower.  Again, please contact Ted Stanley for more detail.

The committee has derived a number of ideas for improving the community using possible M.U.D. funds.  They would like input from the residents by October.  Mention of the annexation issue is supposed to be in the M.U.D. bills of July and September.  TWA has allotted funds for the polling of residents, generation/approach of improvement ideas and methods for petitioning the legislature to submit and pass targeted legislation dealing with this issue.

Board members and residents support a formal “vote” or poll to determine which way residents lean on the annexation issue.  If the majority of residents favor annexation, then we as a board will support that calling.  Just as we opposed the idea of 5 individuals on the Conroe board deciding our fate, we oppose the idea of 11 board members determining our community stance on the issue without receiving quantitative opinions from the residents of the community. 

Please contact Scott Singletary or resident Stan Fowler, heavily involved in the committee, for details on that poll.

Miscellaneous: The board voted to approve the minutes at each meeting and to request a hard copy be available at meetings in addition to the electronic copies sent each month by the Secretary.  Previous meeting minutes had been approved or asked for amendment via email, but the process wasn’t working smoothly.  Most board members weren’t voting.  Steve Reinmund noted that the May minutes were short.  The Secretary affirmed that they were indeed a bit shorter than in other months but that nothing had been left out.   Glen Bernstein asked if we should purchase a recorder for the meetings.  The current Secretary passionately asked that we don’t.  Notes are taken during the meetings.  To record the meeting and then ask the Secretary to review it in depth each month would require much, much more time than the job description detailed – and as with all other board positions, it is an unpaid position.  The current Secretary regrettably does not have the extra available time to listen repeatedly to a recorded version of a 2, 2½ hour meeting from which to garner the meeting minutes.

Suggestion for the website to change the format of Contact Us emails to follow a pre-established format rather than a free-flowing commentary.  That way the emails can be directed more easily to a specific party for answer and all information relevant to following up on the emails can be captured.  The board approved the idea.

Next meeting:
August 21, 7:30 p.m.
Rm. 102, Bldg. A    
Montgomery Community College

College Park Dr

*********  Guest Speaker/Topic Synopsis: Mosquito Control/West Nile:

The Woodlands/Conroe has stopped spraying for mosquitoes. 

They did intensive research, pulling guys in from Texas A&M, and found that the spraying service was killing less than one percent of the mosquitoes.  There are primarily two types of mosquitoes here in The Woodlands: Asian Tigers and members of the Culex genus.

The Asian Tigers are day fliers, they're striped, and they are almost 100% container bred.  They rarely fly more than 200 feet from their breeding site.  That means they are hatched in standing water in backyards, front yards, etc.  It doesn't take much water to breed mosquitoes.  These guys are the vicious ones.  You kill one and it seems as if 3 more come after you.  The best way to get rid of them is to empty out ANY standing water in your yard.  Check plants for sitting water.  Tropical plants and broad-leafed philodendrons really attract the little fellows.

If you find any in an area you can't dry out, such as a meter box, Lowe's and Home Depot carry larvacides that you can pop down in there and kill the larvae that way.  If you do find water, if you run your finger through it and find the larvae scatter around in a bit of an "S" shape or a totally unorganized fashion, you still have time to pop that larvacide in there.  If, however, they congeal into a "C" shape, you're too late.  They've reached the stage where they no longer eat (think of a caterpillar in the cocoon), and they'll hatch unless you completely dry out that bit of water.

Mosquito life cycle takes about 2 weeks.  The larvae are vulnerable the first 4-5 days to the larvacide; after that, no.

That's why you see a proliferation of the critters 10 days-2 weeks after a rain.

The Culex variety are the kind that carry West Nile.  They can fly up to a mile and don't really become active until night time.  The spray trucks weren't even touching them, by spraying in the day and spraying along roadsides. Even spraying at night would be ineffective, being that these guys don't really hang out near roadsides and can fly so far in search of a meal.

To combat the Culex, you need again to empty out any standing water.  Check hot tubs, especially covered ones, children's toys that might have gotten wet in the last monsoon, etc. DEET is an answer, though not everyone's favorite.  There's a new organic lotion, I believe, that's been developed, to serve as a repellant.  DEET, of course, isn't a repellant but a concoction of chemicals that masks the carbon dioxide smell and therefore makes us invisible to the mosquitoes. 

If you're outside for a party, set up fans.  The mosquitoes can't fly against breezes.  Some people say citronella works, some say it doesn't.  No studies have proven either way, to my knowledge.

The drainage ditch in front of the Harper's Landing pool, by the way, is not a problem.  That's the big one, under the bridge.  Fish live in that one, and eat the mosquito larvae.

Finally, you will see in the papers that West Nile virus has been found in The Woodlands.  It has.  It has also been found in Harper's Landing.  Most people don't know they've contracted it if they do get it, as it affects most people with minor cold/flu-like symptoms.  It, with everything else, really hits folks with impaired immune systems.  Those are the ones who MUST wear the DEET in the evenings.  Daytime -- the Culex are not out and are therefore not biting.  The papers often imply West Nile is not found in other parts of Montgomery County.  It is.  The Woodlands is much, much more intense on finding it and testing for it than other parts of the county.