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Pine Meadow
Ranch Home Owners Association
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Mountain Views Summer/Fall 2000 Pine Meadow Ranch Owners Associationwww.pinemeadowranch.org P.O. Box 17698, SLC, Utah 84117 The next couple of years will be confusing until we become accustomed to the idea that there are two organizations that will be running the affairs of the Ranch. They are the Pine Meadow Mutual Water Company and the Pine Meadow Ranch Owners Association. Each organization will have separate annual dues. There will be two annual meetings where officers are elected. There are two budgets that need approval. There are two impact fees that need to be paid before building a cabin. The Pine Meadow Mutual Water Company will be responsible for the operation of the water system, repairing the water system, upgrading the water system, issuing water letters, installing water lines to the meters and installing meters. The Pine Meadow Ranch Owners Association will be responsible for everything else related to the operation of the ranch. The Owners Association Board would like to ask that no one build any open fires of any kind until the fire danger has changed for the better. I don't believe anyone would like to be responsible for the damage that could be caused by a fire getting out of control. Again I would like to remind people
that every square foot of land after you leave the freeway is private. There is
no reason for anyone to leave the road with their ATVs. Even if you think you
know who owns the land, does not give you the right to cut across or ride around
on that lot. If you want to blaze a new trail make sure that it is on your own
property. Its time to start thinking about running for a position on the Owner Association Board as one of the officers or area Representatives. If you have any suggestions about winter parking, please write up your proposal and submit it to the Board as soon as possible. I would like to encourage everyone to pay their yearly assessment as quickly as possible so that work on improving the roads can continue.
President, Pine Meadow Ranch Owners Association With the Owners Association mailing statements for annual dues, we have received numerous comments and questions that we can answer to everyone. Comment: We are confused as to why we are paying dues twice. Why must we pay water and road fees separately? Answer: When the Summit County Special Service District was dissolved, our attorney strongly recommended that we create a completely separate functioning water company that works in tandem with the Owners Association. We have done that and it is working quite well - other than we all get two statements each year - one from the Pine Meadow Water Company and the other from the Owners Association. Comment: Your water and road fees are way out of line. I don't use water and rarely use the roads. Answer: Both the water company and the owners association had to jump in and try to figure what financial basis we should start out with. The only track record was what the Special Service District had charged us in fees last calendar year. Both the water company and the owners association used last years budget as a guide. You are paying exactly as much as you did under the SSD. If there is an excess in funds in either the water company or the owners association, we will reduce fees next year - if there is a shortfall they could go up. Both groups need feedback from you at the individual annual meetings as to what amount of service you desire at the ranch. Comment: How come some roads get graded regularly and the one in front of my cabin rarely sees a blade? Answer: The ranch has main roads, secondary roads and "off the beaten path" roads. The main roads are graded about three times a year. The secondary and minor roads are only graded once, usually in the spring. If there is a really rough road in your area, contact your area representative and he will have it checked out. Comment: Tollgate Canyon above the Oil Well Road is TERRIBLE! When are you going to do something about it? Answer: The road from the Oil Well turnoff up almost to Bobcat Springs is a major problem area. It can be road based and graded, but because of the steepness of the grade, it lasts about 2 days and is bad again. The HOA board has decided that the best long term fix is to put asphalt - REAL asphalt in that section. Problem - asphalt is expensive - about $83,000 for that run. When everyone pays their yearly assessment, we will be able to afford the blacktop. It is a very high priority. The Pine Meadow Ranch Owners Association Board meets twice a month. Below is a schedule of upcoming meetings. The FIRST meeting each month has time allocated for public comment. If you would like to present anything to your board, please feel free to come to one of these meetings. If you cannot make the first meeting of the month, contact your area representative and he will get you on the agenda for the second meeting of the month. All Pine Meadow owners are welcome to all meetings. Meetings are on Tuesday nights and start at 6:30 PM. The location varies, but is usually at a branch of the Salt Lake County Library. For up to date information as to location of meetings, call your area representative or check our web page at:
August 29 Whitmore Library Auditorium, 2197 E. Ft Union Blvd (7200 South) September 12 West Valley Library Meeting Room, 2880 W 3650 S September 26 Sandy Library Large Meeting Room, 10100 Petunia Way (1300 E) October 10 Park Library Meeting Room, 4870 S 2700 W October 24 Whitmore Library Auditorium, 2197 E Ft Union Blvd (7200 South) Future meetings will be posted on this page as we get a schedule.AREA 1 - Jeff Jensen 801-560-9809 AREA 2 - Ken Hill - 801-965-8766 AREA 3 - Roger Barrus - 801-292-7988 AREA 4 - Maynard Koncar - 801-572-1296 AREA 5 - Wayne Malmstrom - 801-768-9112 AREA 6 - Jeff Camp - 435-649-8077 AREA 7 - A.B. Johnson - 801-486-3004 If you cannot contact your area representative, please contact a member of the Owners Association Executive Board. PRESIDENT - Scott Boyle - 801-233-9254 VICE PRESIDENT - Steve Treseder - 801-571-1869 SECRETARY - Merrill Nelson - 801- 942-3378 TREASURER - Russ Glenn - 801-566-6727 The annual meeting of the Pine Meadow Ranch Owners Association has been scheduled for November 16th at 6:30 PM. We do not have a location yet, but you will be notified by mail and all specifics will be on the Pine Meadow web page. This year we will be electing the following members of the board This means that almost half of the board positions will be up for election. We need YOU to run for one of these positions. If you would like to run (or you would like to nominate someone) please mail your nominations to the Owners Association at P.O. Box 176987, Salt Lake City, Utah 84117. Please, all nominations must be received by September 8th. A.B. Johnson has volunteered to chair the election committee. We will mail you a card with all of the candidates plus specific location of the annual meeting.
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From Jerry Rupert - Ranch Manager: The major accomplishment so far this year has been the upgrade of Hillcrest Lane to Valley View Road to Arapahoe Drive to Pine Meadow Drive. Geary Construction, out of Coalville, performed this work. The initial phase for this project started last year when the bar ditches were cleared, the road was graded and one culvert was installed. This year four additional culverts were installed and four inches of road base was put down, watered and rolled. Horrocks Engineers tested the compaction of the road base to make sure it met our standards. The end result is a very nice road that provides access to the center of the Ranch. You can access these roads by coming up the Forest Meadow Road from the bottom of the mountain or by coming up Tollgate Canyon Road and turning off at the Oil Well Road. It is expected that property owners will be able to access these roads directly from the Oil Well Road as soon as the gates are removed. Two other projects have been completed and those would be a French Drain was installed on Forest Meadow Road just above the intersection with Bull Moose Drive. Another French Drain was installed on Tollgate Canyon Road just below Moss's cabin.
As far as routine maintenance goes, a plan has been initiated to grade all of the roads within the Ranch once a year and to grade, water and roll the major roads at least three times per year. To this point almost all of the roads have been graded once and the major roads have been graded, watered and rolled twice. At least one more round is planned for the major roads this year. Many of you are probably saying, ~~there is no way Tollgate Canyon Road has been graded this year." Well, actually it was graded once this year and it lasted about two days, which is the norm. After many discussions with engineers and road contractors, it is a general consensus that the only way to fix Tollgate Canyon Road within the Ranch boundaries is to put asphalt on it, real asphalt, not the Rotomill that is on lower Tollgate. The Rotomill put down on lower Tollgate, which was a great improvement, is only a short-term solution. There were approximately ten miles of Rotomill put down in the last couple of years in our area by a variety of people in a variety of ways and only two miles has held up, sort of The two miles in lower Tollgate Canyon is beginning to fall apart now as well. So the bottom line is Tollgate Canyon Road at the top needs to have asphalt put on it to hold up. The cost for asphalt is about three times as much as road base, so we are talking about a significant expenditure. By the way, road base would not hold up either if you were wondering. My suggestion for this year would be for you to try different access roads into the Ranch. The Forest Meadow Road from the bottom all the way through the Ranch is a good choice or try the roads that were just finished. My guess is that for many of you one of these routes will actually be shorter and definitely will be a lot nicer ride. Moving onto power installation projects. There are two projects left in the entire Ranch that need to be completed to provide all property owners with access to power. Both of these are in the Forest Meadow Ranch in the Porcupine Loop area. Utah Power and Light is in the process of drawing up the plans and contracts at this point. Bids have been received from two contractors for the installation and we are still waiting on one more bid. The plan for this construction season was to install the power lines in September. At this time all signs indicate that we are right on track. So it goes in the road and power realm. If you have any questions, please contact your area representative and they can forward those questions to me. A FEW WORDS ABOUT- "THE DUMPSTERS" Summit County provides garbage service for the property owners in the Tollgate Canyon area. The dumpsters are located in the lower parking lot at the bottom of Tollgate Canyon Road. These dumpsters were relocated last year from out by the freeway to the parking lot. The reason for this was due to their over use and the subsequent unsightly area around them. Last year this proved to be very help fill. Unfortunately, this year the problem seems to have resurfaced. Many property owners are using the dumpsters for refuse that is not to be put into them. The dumpsters are for household garbage only, not refrigerators, portable toilets, carpet, broken sheet rock, etc. We would ask that you take anything other than household garbage to the dump by Rockport Reservoir. It is easily accessible by going one exit to Wanship, turn right and go a few miles and it is on your right. Even with a truckload of garbage it will not take you more than 20 - 25 minutes to take your refuse there. This will help immensely in making the dumpsters available for household garbage and also keep the dumpster area much cleaner. I would personally like to thank Jill Jemmison for her efforts in contacting the county and BFI to help keep the dumpsters in a usable condition. I would also like to thank those of you who have taken the time to help keep the dumpster area cleaned up. Return to Top of PageLast year a plan was implemented to start
improving some of the local roads that have been neglected over the years. All
of the roads in the Ranch had the bar ditches cleared out and were graded. On
some of the roads new culverts were installed. This was done with the intention
of coming back at a later date and putting down road base on those roads. After
some scrutinizing and prioritizing, I came up with a list of roads that need
road base the most. The criteria I used was (1) how bad does the road get when
it is wet, (2) how many property owners use the road, (3) how much will it cost
to put road base down. Following is a list of roads that we hope to get some
road base on either this year or next: Finally, in cooperation with Marty Seelos, we will be covering the new parking area at the Oil Well Road with either Rotomill or some type of road base. For those of you who are not aware, the two parking areas at the Oil Well Road are not on Pine Meadow Ranch property. We should be very grateful that Mr. Seelos has allowed us to park on his property for all of these years. In conclusion, I would like to say the only way we can continue to improve the roads to the Ranch and within the Ranch boundaries is to support the HOA by paying your dues. I would like to give a big thank you to those of you who have paid their dues and another one to those of you who are about to. Located
at the Oil Well Road
Vehicles and snow machines can only be left for a maximum of five days.
Jerry Rupert Pine Meadow Ranch Manager It has been a long, hot summer. Wildfires have been burning across Utah. So far we have been lucky that no fires have threatened the ranch. With the dry undergrowth and high temperatures, we are at great risk for the possibility of fire. Please do not burn any open fires anywhere on the ranch. Even a fire in an ECC approved fire pit could give off sparks and embers that could start our mountain on fire. It really isn't worth it! 1. Determine a defensible space around your cabin. If you are on a gentle slope this space should be a minimum of 30 feet. If you are on a very steep slope, the defensible space should be up to 200 feet. Since fire usually travels uphill, the you should pay special attention to the area downhill from your cabin. 2. Remove all dead trees, shrubs and dry grass from your defensible space. 3. Is there a continuous dense cover of shrubs or trees present within your defensible space area. If so these should be reduced to small groups of plants. 4. Make sure you have at least a 30 foot wide area surrounding your cabin that is LEAN- small amounts of flammable vegitation, CLEAN - no accumulation of dead vegetation, firewood or debris, and GREEN - any plants are green and healthy during the fire season. 5. Are there trees and shrubs of varying heights in your defensible area? Fires tend to go from ground fire and up to major wildfire by climbing these "ladder fuels." The above material was taken from the pamphlet "Living with Fire" distributed by Great Basin Fire Prevention. You may get a copy of this pamphlet and further fire information at the following websites:
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Are you a ham radio operator? Alan Done is an owner on the mountain and also an avid short wave fan. He would like to know if there are any other ham opeators at the ranch. A emergency communications network could be established. If you are interested, contact Alan at 466-4497 Correction & Clarifications It has been mentioned in some recent conversions that Joe Rush, a builder on the mountain, does not have a state contractors license. This statement was made in error. Joe has a current state contractors license. Please accept our apology.
is distributed by the Pine Meadow Ranch Owners Association. If you have suggestions, questions or comments on this newsletter, please contact your area representative as listed in the newsletter. |