Volume 1 Issue 19

January 11, 2008

Council of Villa Associations and Regimes (COVAR) meeting minutes
December 8, 2007
Provided by Carroll Gantz

Attendees: Atrium-Larry Fox; Bay Point-Harvey Gibson; Beach Club-Anne Bradley; Bohicket-Floyd DeAndrade; Charles Town Place-Sylvia Scobee; Courtside II-Bill Spunder, Margaret Stober; Dune Crest-Jim Fraser; Golf Shores-Dick Schanken; High Hammock-John Caracciolo; Live Oak-C. Barry Shedrow; Marsh Walk-Bob Ryerson; Marsh Point-Lynn Richbart; North Beach-Michele Dougher; Ocean Wind-Julie Lanzone, Anthony Lanzone; Pelican Watch-Gary Quigley, Dennis Smith- Racquet Club-David Reese; Sealoft-Kim Hamilton; Shadowwood-Harry Vincent; Shelter Cove-Holly Newman; Spinnaker-Kathy Murray; Summerwind-Perry Mace; Tarpon Pond-Ellen Coughlin; Village at Seabrook- David Reese; Wedgewood-Holly Newman; Guests: Frank Farfone-SIPOA Board; Heather Paton-ARC Administrator; Jim Leib-Seabrook Island Club President.

President Gantz welcomed the guests.  The minutes of the September 8, 2007 meeting were approved.  Treasurer Fraser reported membership donations from thirty four associations/regimes and a cash balance of $903.10. Communications Chair Caracciolo reported that representatives were designated for each member regime/association.  He urged members to verify the listing and keep it current.
President Gantz noted that villa construction plans and plats are available at the POA maintenance office behind the garden plots.  If not claimed, they will be discarded. He discussed the special COVAR Board meeting with the ARC and key property managers, noting the valuable exchange of information and the commitment to cooperate on ARC projects and initiatives. 

Nominees for SIPOA Nomination Committee 
President Gantz noted that COVAR Secretary Gary Quigley had been nominated to serve on the POA Nomination Committee.  The Committee, consisting of four elected members, stands for election each year along with the nominees to the POA Board of Directors.  He noted that the selection of Gary appears to be the first time that a villa owner and nonresident has been nominated for election to that committee.  He commended the Nomination Committee for its action in naming Gary and the three other official SIPOA candidates – Marian Chamberlain, Else Froberg, and Sherry Pollard.  The COVAR Board endorses these four candidates enthusiastically and urges villa owners to vote for them.

Recycling/Waste Collection
Vice President Schanken announced that the new Recycling Drop-Off is operational.  It is located next to the Seabrook Island Utility Commission and SIPOA Maintenance area.  In addition to the normal items, a container is available for corrugated cardboard.  If owners are not on the Island for the collection day, they are encouraged to use the site.  The next Brown & White Special Pickup is set for January 11.

Proposed Amenity Card Charges by Seabrook Island Club
Secretary Quigley reviewed the concerns expressed by some villa owners about the amenity card charges.  He noted that COVAR’s charter provides for villa owner representation with the POA and not the Club or other private organizations.  However, the discussion of the issue revealed a lack of data on villa owner rentals and no consensus on what actions, if any, COVAR should take on a number of villa rental issues such as security (gate passes, parking, etc.), the role of rental agents and guidance to renters on Seabrook Island procedures and regulations as well as the amenity card issue.

Establishment of COVAR Villa Rental Affairs Committee
President Gantz reported that the COVAR Board had established a new committee to focus on villa rental affairs and had appointed Kim Hamilton to chair the committee.  Committee Chair Hamilton noted that her first task is to (1) identify points of contact for villa rental affairs and (2) develop reliable and current data on villa rentals. 

COVAR Meeting Dates for 2008
President Gantz reported that some non resident villa owners suggested scheduling COVAR meetings at the time of holidays such as Labor Day urging that it would provide greater attendance by individual villa owners.  He noted that although all villa owners are welcome, the meetings are scheduled to accommodate COVAR representatives, POA Board members and staff, and regime managers. Scheduling meetings around major holidays would not meet that goal.  Vice President Schanken moved that the meeting schedule remain consistent with existing practice –the second Saturday of March, June, September, and December. President Gantz called for a vote. The motion was unanimously approved.

Nominations for COVAR Officers
President Gantz announced that election of COVAR officers will be held at the March 2008 meeting.  Any villa owner interested in serving as a COVAR officer should submit his or her information to Vice President Schanken at siCOVAR@bellsouth.net.

ARC Presentation
ARC Chair Frank Farfone briefed COVAR representatives on the status of the ARC and its current initiatives.  The ARC is focusing on improving the quality of its procedures and simplifying the approval process with an emphasis on consistency.  The ARC manual is undergoing a major revision to provide a shorter, easier to read document that addresses the conditions existing at this time on Seabrook Island.  Among the concerns to be addressed are (1) what should be the restrictions on lighting on Seabrook – balance safety with environmental issues, and (2) what types of trees, shrubs, and ground cover are appropriate?  He asked that COVAR participate in the revision of the ARC Manual and designate a villa owner to meet with his committee for that purpose.  President Gantz welcomed the ARC initiative and pledged COVAR participation in the ARC project.

The next COVAR meeting is Saturday, March 8, 2008.

Gary Quigley                             Carroll Gantz
Secretary                                   President                                   

Green solutions to an overlooked problem
By Kristin Hackler

“The significant problems we have cannot be solved at the same level of thinking with which we created them.” -  Albert Einstein

     On January 3, The Coastal Conservation League and the Concerned Citizens of the Sea Islands held a presentation at the Mark Clark Hall on the Citadel campus to describe the findings from a design charrette organized by the community planning company, Glatting Jackson. The open house for the design charrette was held over three days at the Holiday Inn Riverview and was attended by hundreds of residents from the tri-county area. The aim of the charrette was to find alternatives to the proposed extension of I-526, a $420 million project that all three organizations and many Charleston country residents feel to be unnecessary; not just for aesthetic purposes, but for practical reasons, as well.
      Paul Moore, a Glatting Jackson representative, presented the group’s findings to a crowd of roughly two hundred local residents and the results were surprising.
      The first effects of 526 that Glatting Jackson noted came from work that had been done previous to their arrival; the results of a traffic model map run by Berkeley Charleston Dorchester Council of Governments (BCD-COG). The traffic model map, produced and interpreted by the Council of Governments, showed the West Ashley and John’s Island region in 2030, both with the Mark Clark and without the Mark Clark. Both maps took into account population growth, the CHATS (Charleston Area Transportation Study) Existing and Committed Road Projects and Half Cent Sales Tax improvements. However, not much changed when the COG added the Mark Clark into the model. In fact, the only improvement that the COG noted occurred around the highway 17 and Main road intersection onto John’s Island and that congestion was simply shifted further down, to Bohicket road, instead being fixed.
      Next, Paul noted the reason why cities exist in the first place; to minimize travel. He used the example of Beacon Hill in Boston. The city was built about the same time as Charleston and every home is within brief walking distance of several area restaurants, grocery stores, theatres, music venues, parks and businesses. This form of city planning, where streets were designed in pedestrian-friendly grid forms with easily accessed shopping centers and tree lined streets to encourage a slower traffic pace, was abolished by what Paul called the “Postwar planning model”. The idea, first proposed by General Motors in 1939, encouraged the creation of suburban sprawl and the beginning of today’s traffic catch-22. Basically, community planners would anticipate future land use around a city, forecast the travel to these areas over the next twenty to forty years and then design the roads to accommodate the future capacity. The result was that people would use these roads to move further out and away from community centers and then have to drive into town to get to work, go shopping, see a movie, etc. and thereby create more traffic. So the planners would widen the roads even further out and create other main roads to accommodate future projections of traffic, and so on and so forth.
      What happened is what we see in so many major cities today, such as Washington, D.C. and Detroit, Michigan. Suburbs that stretch out for miles and have no “center”, no basic structure that allows traffic to disperse in several directions end up shoving all of their traffic into one or two main traffic arteries; “Bad bones” as Paul put it, and the result is that people get sick of the all the congestion of living in the suburban sprawl and move back into the city. Good “bone structure” is essential to a well-built and efficiently functioning city. “Instead of reacting, we should act,” said Paul. “Plan the new communities first and let that influence later land use. Think ‘people’, not ‘cars’.”
     Glatting Jackson’s solutions took exactly this into account. By superimposing rough outlines of minor road restructuring over current major suburban traffic veins, the community planning company was able to essentially create order out of chaos. Basing their ideas on the “city grid” planning of early America and present day Europe, Glatting Jackson was able to show how simply connecting smaller communities along the Savannah highway corridor to allow residents to take alternate routes and creating three or four access points to main veins such as the Ashley River bridge and Main road on John’s Island would almost entirely clear the present day congestion. They also suggested the development of the two greenways in West Ashley, a project that Mayor Riley is currently working on, and developing a few of the current strip mall style eyesores into centers that resemble John’s Island’s Freshfields Village, a concept that encourages parking, biking and walking.
     For John’s Island, Glatting Jackson recommended that developers stick to the recently approved John’s Island Plan, a future projection of land use based on the concept of a central community along the Maybank corridor that reflects the beauty and walkability of downtown Charleston while allowing the perimeter and outlying areas to remain rural and encourage farming. The complete John’s Island Plan is available online at www.charlestoncity.info/dept/content.aspx?nid=672.
      Finally, the company’s suggestions for the traffic problems on James Island include the abolishment of a single access point onto the James Island Connector and instead, encouraged the creation of a Town Center where Folly road meets the Connector. The Center would create several access points onto the Connector instead of just one and by placing trees along the sides of Folly road and in planted medians, the result would be slower moving traffic (psychological studies have proven that drivers automatically go slower when driving down tree-lined corridors) and far less main road congestion.
     “Cities across America are realizing what they’ve done by using the Postwar Planning Model of center-less sprawl and are spending millions to revert back to planned, pedestrian-friendly centralized communities. This is your chance to stop this old style of planning and move Charleston in the right direction,” said Paul. “You already have the right idea,” he said, referring to the John’s Island Community Plan and the preservation of the downtown historic district, “it’s time to encourage it.”
     As for hurricane evacuation, one of the reasons cited for the necessity of the 526 extension, Paul pointed out that “there are still only three ways to leave Charleston county, the extension would just give you another place to sit and wait.”

To find out more about Glatting Jackson’s findings and alternatives to the I-526 extension, please visit www.no526.com. The site contains all of the information collected by the community planning company, as well as regional studies and ways for citizens to get in touch with their community leaders concerning changes in the I-526 development. More on the Coastal Conservation League can be found at www.coastalconservationleague.org.

Winter weather green tips
By Mary Gatch

    Winter weather was late coming this year – we’re just now getting the crisp days and cold nights that somehow make it seem more like the holidays. This weather is conducive to relaxing indoors and spending time with family. Here are a few suggestions for enjoying this time in an eco-friendly way.
If you have a traditional non-gas, open fireplace, there are a few environmentally-friendly fire logs available now. JAVA-LOGs are made from compressed, used coffee grounds bound with all-natural vegetable wax. With the ever-growing abundance of Starbucks and other coffee shops, JAVA-LOGs make great use of a sustainable resource. Pine Mountain logs are made from sawdust (also recycled and also compressed with vegetable wax). Even the market leader, Duraflame, recently introduced logs made with non-petroleum-based waxes. All three of these fire logs are more efficient and generate less pollution and carbon dioxide than burning wood. If it’s your first fire of the season, don’t forget to open the flue! Ceiling fans directed downward can help to distribute the heat throughout your room, rather than letting it collect at ceiling level. Enjoy the fire with your loved ones and a cup of organic hot chocolate, cider, or coffee.
Your home heating costs are likely to rise over the next month. Every degree you lower your thermostat saves approximately 5% of your home energy use. Programmable thermostats are great for automatically reducing the temperature late at night and bringing temperatures back up for the morning so homes are comfortable when people awaken. 
Most homes in this area have heat pumps with backup or “emergency” heat.  This backup heat source uses a lot more electricity so you’ll want to avoid frequent resets to the thermostat that engage your backup heat supply.  It’s best to use a programmable thermostat that is specifically designed for heat pumps.  Otherwise, you can gradually adjust the temperature to a higher setting.
Other ways to reduce energy usage during winter months include cleaning or changing filters for your air returns, closing drapes to reduce heat loss through windows (except for south-facing windows during the day), sealing leaks around drafty doors or windows, and closing fireplace flues when not in use.
Finally, if you have a hot water tank that is warm to the touch, it would benefit from additional insulation.  Look for pre-cut jackets or blankets with an insulating value of at least R-8.  If you have an electric hot water heater and follow prescribed guidelines, this is a fairly easy do-it-yourself project.  You may want to hire an expert if you have a gas hot water heater.
This is a great time for us to conserve our personal energy as well. The holidays are drawing to a close and the hustle and bustle of the new year is right around the corner. So use this time to relax, refresh, and recharge while you can! I wish you all a very happy and healthy new year.

Mary Gatch is an owner of DwellSmart, a one-stop shop for healthy and environmentally-friendly products. Mary lives on Sullivan’s Island with her husband James, daughter Julian, and son Adam. Contact her at marygatch@dwellsmart.com or by visiting the store at 615 Johnnie Dodds Blvd (located in Mount Pleasant between Eco Fitness and Twin Rivers Bowling).