School's over, it's vacation time, the sun's out and it's time for fun! Get your neighbors together for a fun community party. If you have a community pool, have a splash day party. No pool, no problem - have an ice cream social at the park. No park? Then go for a block party. The important thing is to bring neighbors together to foster a sense of community. Here are a few ideas to include in your party:

• Hire a DJ to play music and create a festive atmosphere. They will bring the sound system and professional DJ will be able to provide a good mix of music for any occasion. Let the DJ know in advance you want an upbeat mix for a family party with a wide age range. DJs also can make announcements for you during the event.
• Provide lots of non-alcoholic refreshments on ice. Adults tend towards diet drinks and water. Kids like non-diet, flavored soda and juice boxes.
• Sno-cones are very popular and easy to put together. Rent a machine and they'll provide the scoops, cups and flavorings. You just have to bring a bunch of bags of ice in coolers. Kids love bubblegum flavor and "a triple" (cherry, grape and orange).
• Pizza is a great food for community parties because they deliver and you only need a plate and napkins to serve it. You don't have to worry about running short because you can just order more. Kids like plan 'ol cheese. Adults are into meat (pepperoni, sausage or Canadian bacon) or vegetarian.
• Make sure you have plenty of chairs and shade because it will be hot. Both can be rented.
• If you are having a pool party, the lifeguard staff will be happy to conduct pool games for the kids.
• If you want entertainment, consider clowns to paint faces and make balloon animals. We hired a mariachi band in full regalia to play at a Cinco de Mayo Splash Day party once - not a good idea - they almost passed out playing in the noonday sun around the pool. Any entertainer (DJ, clowns, band) needs to have a shaded area to work.
• And what day of the week? For daytime events, Sundays work best. Families are so busy on Saturdays running around and doing household chores. For evening events, Saturday night works best.

And don't forget the 4th of July. Various municipalities and large organization will be putting on plenty of big entertainment from daytime parades to evening live music festivals and fireworks. How about organizing your own small community celebration with your neighbors? Here are a few ideas and photos to get you thinking.

• Have a parade around the community. Pick a route winding through the community and staying off the busy streets. Keep it under a mile.
• Invite the local fire department to lead the parade and police to help with traffic. Before the parade, kids love to climb on the fire truck and get their pictures taken. Firemen and police officers are always great with children. And they love to sound their sirens. This year, the 4th is on a Wednesday - if you do your parade on Saturday June 30th, it may be easier to schedule your guests.
• Gather at a central location (park, school, greenbelt) and start and end there.
• Invite a local realtor to take part by handing out small American flags to all the participants.
• Provide coolers with water or juice because walking a mile in the summer in Houston will be hot.
• Enlist a teen from the neighborhood with one of those big (annoying) car sound systems to drive with the parade playing patriotic music.
• After the parade, pass out ice cream and popcicles. You can have these catered in a push cart, hire an ice cream truck or do it yourself with coolers and dry ice.
• In your announcement, encourage everyone to wear red, white and blue. Hold contests for best decorated thing on wheels, most patriotic pooch and most outrageously decorated adult. Give out small prizes to many of the participants. Everyone is a winner.
• And very importantly, take plenty of pictures to post on your website!

Now is also the time to start thinking about National Night Out on Tuesday, August 7th. In it's 24th year, NNO is an opportunity for you and your neighbors to:

• heighten crime and drug prevention awareness,
• generate support for local anticrime programs,
• strengthen neighborhood spirit and police-community partnerships, and
• send a message to criminals letting them know that neighborhoods are organized and fighting back.

You can coordinate a NNO event at a central location in your community with simple refreshments like hotdogs or pizza. Or you can have a grand party with moonwalks, games, food booths and guest speakers. Or you can encourage neighbors to put on their own block parties. Local law enforcement agencies can be very helpful in coordinating NNO events. Police officers and elected officials enjoy visiting NNO events throughout the community so let them know where you will be and they will come. Here are a few photos of fun in various communities.

Mow or Go to Jail

You may have seen the recent Houston Chronicle article reqarding the homeowner that went to jail for not mowing her lawn. You can read the full text of the June 6th article by clicking here. A few folks may have cheered when they read the headline but most, including us involved with community associations, were concerned.

Linda Ballew is a 50 year old widow who lives in the Kirkmont Association on the south side of Houston in unincorporated Harris County. In 2004, the Association took her to court over the lack of yard maintenance and was granted a permanent injunction requiring her to mow her entire lawn twice a month and trim her trees and shrubs once a year. According to the article, her 18 year old son cut the front yard after the judgment but the back hasn't been touched. Neighbors have had run-ins with large snakes, skunks and nutria coming from her yard and are afraid to let their pets and small children into their own back yards.

Last August, Ms. Ballew was ordered to appear in court to explain why she should not be held in contempt of the judge's 2004 court order. She failed to appear and was sentenced to 3 days in jail. The judge, however, suspended the sentence for four months to give her time to clean up her yard. Finally, after nothing was done, she was taken into custody on June 1st and stayed in jail for 4 nights until she agreed to cut her yard within 30 days.

Every owner in residential community associations is expected to provide adequate lawn maintenance on their property. Normally, this is an aesthetic issue that can drag down the value of adjacent properties. However, in the case of Ms. Ballew, and others that are not this extreme, the high grass, many times coupled with trash, can be a real health and safety issue. But for lawn care, jail time is a poor, slow and extremely rare remedy.

The best approach is to perform regular inspections of all properties and to notify owners when their yards need care. Although nobody likes to receive a letter, we are able to establish expectations with the owner. They recognize that they need to edge or weed tree rings or clean grass from expansion joints or sweep the grass cuttings from the street. If letters don't work and if your governing documents allow, forced mowing is a good option. With forced mowing, the problem is resolving promptly and at a reasonable cost to the owner (compared to an attorney letter or lawsuit). In most cases, once the owner receives the invoice for the mowing, they tend to start taking better care of their lawn. On vacant properties, forced mowing fees may be collected depending on whether a foreclosure occurs. Even if the fees are lost due to a foreclosure, many times it is a good decision to mow the property for the benefit of community appearance.

Where forced mowing is not authorized by the governing documents or in cases affecting health or safety, municipal health authorities should be involved. In or experience, most cities have good programs in place to resolve health and safety issues. They can issue citations, assess fines, maintain the property and file liens and generally they can do things faster than a community association.

There is no doubt that the overall appearance of homes in a community affects curb appeal and property values. And lawn care is a continuous challenge.

Here is the upcoming schedule in our popular C.I.A. Services Seminar Series. Each seminar begins at 6:30 p.m. and runs 2-1/2 hours. Since we always provide deli sandwiches, you won’t have to rush to eat dinner beforehand. You’ll leave with knowledge you can use immediately and a great notebook with the seminar slides, samples and reference materials.

After you’ve been on the Board a few months or a few years, you realize that some things are pretty complicated. This seminar has a heavy legal and legislative orientation. We’ll dissect the lawsuit process, review the foreclosures and discuss significant portions of the Texas Property Code and federal law. After all the legal stuff, we’ll touch on aspects of “risk management” which includes insurance, reserves and budgeting concepts.

• June 12, 2007 (Tuesday), 6:30 p.m. — Southwest Office
• June 28, 2007 (Thursday), 6:30 p.m. — North Office

This is the required training course for certification as a Community Website Administrator (CWSA) on the C.I.A Services web site. As a CWSA you'll be able to maintain the pages for your community. You'll be able to create news flashes, update key personnel, add community information, display photos, conduct surveys and much more. At the end of the seminar we'll give you a taste of HTML - the web language that will allow you to do some pretty advanced things if you like. Being a website administrator is very easy and you can do it from anywhere you have an internet connection.

• July 12, 2007 (Thursday), 6:30 p.m. — Southwest Office

The complete list of seminars and descriptions are on the Library page of our web site or you can just click here to view the information. The 2007/2008 seminar schedule will be published in July. You can register at any time by calling our Southwest Office at 713-981-9000 or emailing us at seminars@ciaservices.com.

Energy costs are rising and in a few years we'll be telling our children "I remember when gas was $1.89 a gallon". Many of us started driving when the price was under $0.50 a gallon but that really dates us. The reality today is that energy is getting more expensive and we all need to find ways to reduce consumption and save money.

C.I.A. Services created the Electricity Savings Program (ESP) in conjunction with Tara Energy in order to provide a program to our communities and all residents that will save money without hidden surprises. ESP is saving money for our clients. Those that signed on when we introduced our program last October have locked in rates for up to four years. Commercial accounts (i.e. the community common areas) have rates as low as 7.2 cents per kwh. Currently, residential accounts can lock in for 3 years at 9.75 cents per kwh. All new accounts receive a $25 credit on their first bill.

For more information on ESP including current rates and options, click here. So what are you waiting for? Think ESP and save!

We are proud of every one of our communities so it is always hard to find just one to highlight. We start by having each of our Community Managers write a nomination for one of their communities. We then read them all take a vote. Here are our most recent selections:

• June — Ashford Lakes Community Improvement Association
  Southwest Office — Allyson Abbott, Community Manager
• May — Clear Lake City Boulevard Association
  Southwest Office — Ralph Troiano, Community Manager
• April — Atascocita West Community Improvement Association
  North Office — Brenda Alvarez, Community Manager

To see the full story on these communities and to see the past winners, visit the Community of the Month page on our web site.

Every month we appreciate the communities that are celebrating their anniversaries with us. Here are our clients that started with us in June.

• Oak Cliff Place Homeowners Association — 15 years
• Atascocita North Community Improvement Association — 13 years
• Vicksburg Community Association — 11 years
• Copper Creek Community Improvement Association — 10 years
• Frostwood Community Improvement Association — 10 years
• Sablechase II Homeowners Association — 5 years
• Silvercreek Community Association — 1 year
• Telfair Community Association — 1 year

Our goal has always been to create a positive, long term relationship with all of our client communities. We are very proud to be managing all of these communities.

• Congratulations to North Office Community Manager Evelyn Abram on her 7th anniversary with C.I.A. Services in June.
• Our indispensible North Office clerk Gloria Bell is celebrating her 18th anniversary with C.I.A. Services in June.

Evelyn Abram		Gloria Bell