In This Issue - August 2007
2008 Budget at September 18th Meeting
Welcome to Cypress Isles!
President's Message
Cypress Isles Traffic Committee Update
Park-In-The-Street Night
Cypress Isles Contact List
Three Months of WLCA Business
Who Ya Gonna Call?
Neighborhood Watch
A note from your friendly ARC
CIN Publication Schedule
Dateworthy Notes
Who Dunnit?

2008 Budget at September 18th Meeting
Next year's budget and homeowner fees are on the September Board meeting agenda.
Even though it's only August, the Board is starting to work on the budget for Cypress Isles, including homeowner fees for 2008. The current plan is to present the budget for approval at the September 18th Board meeting, in plenty of time to print and mail coupon books to homeowners in December.
If budgets are your thing, you are welcome to attend the September 18th meeting at 6:30 at Exit Real Estate, 11555 Lake Underhill Road. If you haven't been to a meeting in a while, everyone is asked to abide by the following rules of conduct.

1. Since homeowner participation has become a more integral part of the Association Board meetings, the former "Open Forum" segment of the agenda will be discontinued. Any homeowner or Board member may address the attendants at any point during the meeting after first requesting and being recognized by the Chair (presiding Board member). The recognized speaker will be allowed the full 3 minutes without interruption, with the exception that the Chair may interrupt to maintain order.
2. Discussions and decisions during a meeting are limited to the items on the agenda that is approved at the start of the meeting. New topics introduced during a meeting will be assigned to agendas for future meetings.
3. Only agenda business will be discussed during a meeting. No personal differences or personal issues will be allowed as part of the discussions. Anyone airing individual differences will forfeit their right to complete their statements.

These rules are designed to ensure that we conduct our meetings fairly, openly, and without the kinds of distractive behaviors that cause tensions.
We hope to see you on September 18th

Dennis Horazak, Secretary

Welcome to Cypress Isles!
Go over and say, "Hi!"
Welcome to our new neighbors at:
739 Spring Island Way
512 Divine Circle
524 Divine Circle
If we've missed anyone else who recently moved in, please let us know so we can mention you in the next newsletter.

President's Message
On June 19th we held our annual meeting and I was so pleased with the large turnout of residents. Thus we were able to hold the meeting as we had the quorum as required by our operating documents. Even though the agenda for the annual meeting is structured like any other, the most important part of the annual meeting is to elect the board members for the next year. There were eight residents who either submitted their candidate forms prior to the meeting or were nominated from the floor. As a resident of Cypress Isles and a board member, it was great to see that many individuals desiring to join the board and help guide the future of our community. Our operating documents allow us to have up to nine board members, but there must be an odd number so there is never a tie on any item requiring a vote by the board.
Having eight candidates required a vote by the residents in attendance to elect seven new board members.
I am pleased to say that five of the incumbent board members were re-elected along with two new board members. Following the annual meeting, the newly elected board is required to elect its officers for the next year. I would like to thank my fellow board members as they have given me the opportunity to serve as your President for the next year. I am also very excited to have the following serving as the VP, Secretary, Treasurer and Directors.

John Tenney - Vice-Pesident
Dennis Horazak - Secretary
Myron Davis - Treasurer
Cookie Symons - Director
John Culbertson - Director

Your new board for the 2007 / 2008 term is already working on the issues that have been identified as critical. Of course traffic control within our community is top priority and the request for a Land Use change at the end of Lake Underhill to Single Family Residential is a HOT topic as well. These two issues are at the forefront of your board's activity since both will seriously impact our community. Please take the time to view the CI and WLCA web sites and read about the latest on these issues or reach out to any board member to find out what you can do to help.
In addition we will continue to focus on ways to lower our operating expenses and to keep dues down without sacrificing quality of services. In addition the board will be very focused over the next 2 months understanding changes in the State Statutes that went into effect on July 1, 2007 so we can make the appropriate changes to our bylaws.
As your President and a resident of a community with a mandatory HOA, I would encourage each and every resident to understand these changes as well. If you would like to learn about the State of Florida HOA statutes you can go to the MyFlorida.com web site and look up Statutes 720, 1844, and 920. Be an informed resident and understand your HOA Bylaws and Operating Documents, as they will help you whenever you might have a question about the HOA activities and decisions.
I look forward to another great year as your President and for our community.

Ron D. Wiley, President

Cypress Isles Traffic Committee Update
If you would like to help the Traffic Committee, contact John Tenney (johnwill@tenncomgroup.com, 407.383.3079), Robin Hofler (richard.hofler@bus.ucf.edu, 407.382.7477) or Carolyn Kreutzpaintner (jk3ck@yahoo.com, 407.658.4488).

The Traffic Committee has met on a weekly basis and made steady progress towards reducing our cut through traffic problem. We meet every Wednesday night at 7pm, at a homeowner's house. Call one of the committee to find out which homeowner is hosting the meeting that week.

You may have seen the "Watch Your Speed" electronic signs on Spring Island Way recently. That was in direct response to a traffic committee request to the county commissioner's office.
We have two important events coming up soon:
On or after August 20th, the day school starts; the county has been directed to begin a stop sign study for Spring Island Way. We have stated that there is a need for 3-way stop signs at the Crystal River Intersection and the Lakes Way Intersection. It is our platform that this is the quickest way to discourage drivers from cutting through our neighborhood, and may also help with the speeding problem as well.
On August 22nd, we are asking all CI residents to join us on Spring Island Way from 5-7pm for a "Park in the Street" event, where we will park our cars so they just barely interfere with traffic, not enough to be illegal but enough to make people notice that they are in someone else's neighborhood.
We need residents to be outside and together for this. We encourage you to hold up signs saying things such as "Welcome to our neighborhood, please drive carefully! Our kid's lives depend on it"

County Update

The county is putting a streetlight at the corner of Waterford Chase Parkway and Lake Underhill. Here is our take on this: While we believe that the light may reduce the waiting line on Lake Underhill heading eastbound in the evenings, and thereby reduce some of the cut through in that direction, it is going to cause a greater problem with the northern communities, such as Barrington and Jade Forest, using our neighborhood to avoid the light. The end result is that the light will cause more problems (for us anyway) than it will solve.

Future Plans
After the stop signs are in, we hope to investigate some traffic calming devices to the neighborhood, such as islands at each intersection. These would not be large traffic circles, but would lower the width of the road enough that people would have to slow down to go by them.

Other Ideas That Have Been either Rejected or Tabled

Speed Bumps - aside from the possibility of damage to cars and the resultant liability incurred, it was felt that speed bumps would be saying to the world that we have a problem, and could result in lower property values (This has happened in other neighborhoods.)
Gating the Community - the expense is just too great to take over maintenance of the roads, and the county has stated they are opposed to us gating the community because our road is currently considered a right-of-way. We're checking on the legality of that.
Cul-de-sac at the end of Spring Island Way - this is actually an attractive solution but would require some legal interpretations by the county on the right-of-way issue.
Lowering the Speed Limit - this was rejected as not being effective enough to reduce cut through traffic, as the troublemakers are not currently following the speed limit anyway!

What You Can Do To Help
Please attend the meetings and get involved with the activities. It is important to remember that when the news crews come out here for the "Park in the Street" event (and they will) that if there are just 10 people out there then we will be dismissed as "those kooks in East Orlando" but if we have over a hundred people out there, we will get noticed by the county commissioners, and action will be taken!
Join us - it's your neighborhood!

John Tenney
Chair, Traffic Committee

This includes residents on Divine Circle, Cedarwood, Spring Haven, and White Cedar Courts. We don't know which of our neighbors who live directly on SIW will be home from work by 5 PM and if everyone in our neighborhood parks on SIW, it will be a great help to accomplish our goal.
Please remember not to park in front of fire hydrants, don't block your neighbor's driveway without their permission, leave "pull over" space for the cars to pass, and leave sufficient space at intersections.

Claudia Rilea, Traffic Committee

Cypress Isles Contact List

Board of Directors
Ron Wiley, President 407 384-2564 rwiley4@cfl.rr.com
John Tenney, Vice-President 407-383-3079 johnwill@tenncomgroup.com
Dennis Horazak, Secretary 407 207-6557 densus@bellsouth.net
Myron Davis, Treasurer 407 737-8200 mdavis8200@comcast.net
John Culbertson, Member 407 658-4261 jculbertson@cfl.rr.com
Harold Engold, Member 407 273-4990 LTHEJHPD@aol.com
Cookie Symons, Member 407 273-5460 Minnieland@aol.com

Judith Meldrum, Community Management Professionals
407-903-9969 Ext. 106 Judith@community-mgmt.com

Neighborhood Watch
John Culbertson 407 658-4261 jculbertson@cfl.rr.com

Traffic Study Committee
John Tenney 407 383-3079 johnwill@tenncomgroup.com

Media
Dennis Bode, Webmaster dbode@cfl.rr.com
Sandy & Denny Horazak, CI News Editor 407 207-6557 sanden@bellsouth.net

Funding for the mailing of this edition of the Cypress Isles News was provided by:

Three Months of WLCA Business
These are excerpts from the May, June, and July, Master Association (WLCA) Board meetings.

Proposed Development Raises Concerns
Concerns over the disposition of Parcel N19B - the tract of land just beyond Jade Forest - dominated the open forum before the July meeting. A developer's proposal to build 71 single-family homes on the tract had been denied the previous week, but the issue is far from over, and homeowners and board members alike worried about increased traffic on the already overcrowded Lake Underhill Road. Orange County, one or more developers, the school board, and representatives from WLCA and the neighborhoods are all expected to be involved in the ongoing process leading to a decision at some undetermined time.

Proposed Cell Tower Decried
All Board members and several neighborhood representatives recently received copies of an informal proposal from T-Mobile's attorney to build a flagpole-like cell tower in Waterford Lakes. The Board and most in attendance were against the idea because of its noisy generators and aesthetic concerns about its 145-foot-high antenna, but the point was also made that cell reception would improve. The Operations Committee is getting more technical and contractual information.

Orange County is Fixing Bad Sidewalks
Orange County is inspecting and fixing all of the uneven and broken sidewalks in Waterford Lakes, including sidewalks in the neighborhoods. The WLCA Board was instrumental in putting some pressure on Orange County to get this accomplished.

Landscape Maintenance Issues Addressed
Several homeowners voiced concerns about large trees in common areas encroaching on or endangering private properties, neglected landscaping in some common areas, and poor placement of fencing and slow development of privacy hedges.
Trees throughout the common areas have been inspected, and limbs and trees likely to cause damage during hurricanes have been marked for removal and replacement. In addition, the landscaping contractor has been directed to pick up the slack or face reduced payments.

ARC to Meet Weekly, Mail New Guidelines
New guidelines for house painting and clothesline hanging will be mailed to all Waterford Lakes residents in the near future. In the mean time, the ARC will continue meet every Tuesday at 7:00 pm at the cabana to decide about architectural review applications. In accordance with Florida statutes, these meetings are open to the public.

Sprinkler Timer Repaired by Vandal
An undisclosed Waterford Reserve resident was observed vandalizing and re-setting the irrigation timers so that Waterford Reserve would receive more of the Waterford Lakes water allocation. The WLCA Board contacted the Waterford Reserve Board, who directed the vandal to repair the timer and not to do it again. Bad resident.

Automatic Chlorination for Pool
Some type of chlorine system -- either an automatic chlorine injector or a salt chlorine generator (electrolytic chlorine generator system) - will be installed at the pool, replacing the bucket brigade currently used to schlep chlorine from the storage area to the pool.
Fees Assessed for Tennis Lessons
The Board approved a fee of $2.50 per reserved court per hour for professional tennis lessons, to be paid by the tennis instructors. The fee will help defray the cost of wear and tear on courts and equipment.

Next Meetings
The next WLCA Board meetings will be on Mondays August 27, September 24, and October 29, 2007. All meetings are at 7:00 p.m. at the Alafaya Library.

Dennis Horazak

Complete approved minutes of WLCA board meetings are posted on the Waterford Lakes website at www.waterfordlakes.org > Document > BOD Meeting Minutes. Comments can be sent to the WLCA Board at www.waterfordlakes.org > Board/Committees > Address the Board.

Who Ya Gonna Call?
WLCA Office (Dawn) 407-380-3803 453 Mark Twain Blvd. wlca@bellsouth.net www.waterfordlakes.org

Orange County Sheriff Non-emergency 407 836-HELP (4357)
Animal Control (unleashed pets, etc.) 407 352-4390

Progress Energy Streetlight Repair 1-800-228-8485 www.progress-energy.com

Whatcha Gonna Click?
www.ocso.com/Agency/ElectronicCrimeReporting - to report certain types of crime online, such as lost property, theft, vandalism, and vehicle burglary.
www.ocso.com/CrimePrevention/PropertyCrimesandRobberies - to find out what types of crimes are occurring in your area.
www.cfcrimelinewarrants.com - to check individuals for warrants.
www.snopes2.com - exposes hoaxes, urban legends, and other email crap

Neighborhood Watch
We have a new Watch Coordinator…
Welcome to our new Neighborhood Watch Coordinator, John Culbertson. John and his wife are both active in community programs. Christine has been Block #11 Captain since the beginning of the Neighborhood Watch program in 2000, and was former Watch co-coordinator in 2005. You have read John's columns in past issues of the Cypress Isles News, containing valuable information on recycling and even deep-frying a turkey!

As Coordinator, John will be responsible for ensuring that all blocks have captains, and that communication flows between our Neighborhood Watch and the Orange County Sheriff's Department.

If you have any questions or would like to participate in the Neighborhood Watch Program, John can be reached at:
407-658-4261 or: jculbertson@cfl.rr.com.

Sandy Horazak, Editor

A note from your friendly ARC
Heckuva job, neighbors…
The Architectural Review Committee would like to commend all the residents who are out there week after week in this heat maintaining beautiful properties. Thank you!
Some residents need to power wash your dirty driveways and sidewalks (you know who you are), but in case you don't, you may be getting a reminder letter in the mail.
Another reminder for those of you who still have street trees -- be sure to trim them from the sidewalks and the street. Walkers have to duck around low hanging branches and drivers are hitting the low hanging branches in the street with their cars and SUV's.

Cookie Symons, ARC

CIN Publication Schedule
The Cypress Isles News is published quarterly by the Board of Directors for the residents of Cypress Isles. We welcome non-commercial articles and paid advertising from our neighbors. Send email submissions to Sandy Horazak - sanden@bellsouth.net. Copy deadlines are February 1 for the February issue, May 1 for the May issue, August 1 for the August issue, and November 1 for the November issue. Articles may be edited for length, clarity, or content.

Sandy Horazak, Editor

Dateworthy Notes

Happy Anniversary
August 17 - Bill & Kathi Snook

Happy Birthday:
August 7 - Ron Wiley
October 3 - Harold Engold
October 3 - Mary Kranz
October 5 - Mike Kranz

OTHER STUFF:
Trick-or-Treat - Wed. Oct. 31, 6-9 PM

Daylight Saving Time Ends - Sunday Nov. 4 - TURN CLOCKS BACK 1 HOUR

Who Dunnit?

Now you see it…

Now you don't…

But this vehicle below was observed and photographed by an astute neighbor in Bradfordt Lakes - dumping the signpost without its sign in the bushes on Crystal River Drive on July 11 around 1 p.m. If you recognize this vehicle, please contact any Board member.

Cookie Symons, Block #6 Captain