Folks,

After four power outages this year we decided it was time to sit down with Cherokee Electric, so this morning I accompanied our board president, Ken Terrell, and vice-president, Pete Galbraith, down to Rusk. We met with Greg Jones and his engineering supervisor, Bart Bauer and talked for about an hour about what can be done to improve the outage situation in our neighborhood. Greg reminded us that we have have a substation much closer to Country Place, in Walnut Grove, so our outages are more localized now. And they revealed that after all the complaints they had during the Phase I operation they had gone into “reactive” mode with regard to our neighborhood, only coming out when there was an outage. But since Phase II and Phase III are now approaching their life expectancy of thirty years, they agreed it’s time for us to pick up where we left off with the replacement of cables. Therefore, next spring they will start Phase II. Phase I was 60% of the work, so these next two phases should be much faster, hopefully only 2-3 months each if the weather will cooperate. We have agreed as your board to keep the residents informed about what to expect and to field complaints so that Cherokee and their subcontractors can get on about their business.

No doubt about it, this project will not be simple. Their cable has to be buried 48″ deep. The Southern Utilities pipes, Verizon cable and Suddenlink wires are all on top of Cherokee’s, so they will be digging through a bird’s nest to get down where they need to be. Some areas can be bored (less lawn and landscape damage), but some will have to be trenched. And those are just the first steps. Then the new lines have to be pulled and reburied and they have to change out transformers and terminate them. Then comes landscape remediation. Finally, a couple of months later Bart will do the final inspection to see if any of the trenching needs to be filled in again (after some rains have made it settle).

We will all need to be patient during this process and try to remember that after these new lines are pulled we will experience far fewer outages. As an example while those of us on Oak Meadow (old lines) have endured four outages, the folks on Big Timber have only experienced ONE (and that was because a substation elsewhere was out).

If any of you have ideas on how we can make this process less painful for our neighborhood, we’d like to hear them. We are looking forward to new lines and fewer outages in our neighborhood.

Gerald & I appreciate the low profile of CP.  Not having cars whizzing in and out and through the neighborhood  makes for a much better “country living” experience.

I have a suggestion for the garage sale idea.  There is a national organization called FreeCycle & there is a local Tyler Chapter.  The statement below is from their website.

Tyler TX Freecycle(TM) is open to all who want to “recycle” that special something rather than throw it away. Whether it’s a chair, a fax machine, or an old door, feel free to post it. Or maybe you’re looking to acquire something yourself! Nonprofit groups are welcome to participate! Everything posted must be FREE, legal and appropriate for all ages. The Freecycle Network is a movement of people interested in keeping good stuff out of landfills while building a sense of community.  

Since CP has its own website (thank you Larry Lynch) perhaps we might consider starting a Country Place chapter.  If selling items is important,  we may consider some modifiation of the freecycle idea.

Anyway, just an idea for consideration.

From: Mary Strickland
Sent: Friday, August 22, 2008 5:31 PM
Subject: Suspicous Vehicle Today – Around 3 p.m.

Hi,

I saw another black SUV, this time a Chevy with Texas plates.They went speeding down Ridgetop.  I told Odell to wait and see if they pop back out, and they did.  Then, they went toward the Lynch’s house.  We pulled in to get our mail, then we headed down their street.  The SUV was just backing out of someone’s driveway (past the Lynch’s) and came toward us.  I couldn’t get the plate number.  They were going very fast.

I think the speeders are sticking out as non-countryplace residents.  Maybe we should have bumper stickers or some type of identification that we belong here on our cars in order to make the “visitors” stick out.  Or, maybe we should have a list of our vehicles available to each other.  We should also tell our people to slow down and obey the speed limit so we know when someone doesn’t belong here.  That way we can rule out residents.

This SUV looked out of place.  I just sensed it.  I called Larry Lynch and told him, since they may have been casing his house.  I think we scared them off.

There was also a green pickup truck with three afro-american males driving around at 5:00.  They had tree branches in the back.  I met them on two different streets.  This also seemed suspicous.  I made it a point to go up and down all the streets, in case the black van was still hanging around.

That’s all for now!  I’ll try to get a plate number, but it’s hard when they are driving 40-50 mph!

Mary Strickland