Author: Harley Green

Dear Neighbors,

The road committee would like to share an update on what has been happening with Goose Creek Lane and the financial status of the road fund.

As you know, the current condition of the road was very poor before last week’s fix-up. We have been trying our best to efficiently utilize the limited funds we have to make them last through the year, but we are already close to being out of 2019 dues. We are working with the contractor to setup a long term repair and maintenance plan to get the road in a condition that will not degrade so quickly and would like to discuss this plan with you during a neighborhood road meeting on Sunday, April 7th at 5pm (more details at end of newsletter).

You may have noticed the large potholes and mud that developed in the section of road past the mirror as you drive out prior to the last fix-up. This was caused in large part to poor plowing by a neighbor that plowed snow into the side of the road where we had built the culverts, rather than off to the North side. This caused the snow to melt and drain to the middle of the road and not be able to flow out. Similar road damage occurred in front of the Johnson’s barn where plowing pushed debris into the culvert along the North side of the road, causing rain and snow melt to flow out onto the road, worsening potholes through that section. We would like to ask those that do volunteer their equipment and time, to be conscious of the drainage impacts of your plowing. The last set of road repairs we had last week cost over $5,800!

As mentioned earlier, we are working with our contractor to put together a long term road repair and maintenance plan. This plan will address the continual degradation of the road and put in place major upgrades to prevent the rapid deterioration we have seen in recent years. Part of the proposal also includes a regular snow clearing contract so that the road will not be damaged by neighbors plowing and accidentally creating additional problems. We plan on discussing this plan at the next meeting, which should also be attended by our primary road contractor if he is available. We would like to point out that this plan should bring the road up to a much higher standard and allow us to maintain it at that standard so we do not have to go for weeks and months with the road in nearly impassible conditions.

However, this proposed plan is not cheap. The initial upgrades to bring it up to a higher standard are estimated to be between $10k and $13k, with annual maintenance of $10k. Obviously, we will not be able to execute this plan without additional funds. Quite honestly, as you will see at the end of this letter, we may not even be able to maintain the road for the rest of the year without additional funds. To that end, we would like to hold a neighborhood road meeting to allow for your input on how we maintain the road into the future. Please plan on attending this important meeting:

Road Meeting – Sunday April 7th, 5:00 PM
21100 Grey Fox Lane
Dial -in: Contact us for phone number

During the meeting we will discuss in detail the proposed maintenance and improvement plan and its costs, current financial state of the road fund, road fund improvement plans, and opportunities for helping with the road.

Neighborhood Business Listing

Several neighbors have asked about compiling a list of business and services that our neighbors provide. To help facilitate this we would like to offer any neighbor that is current on road dues the opportunity to have their business/services listed on the website. That way if you need a service you can hopefully find it provided by one of your neighbors. If you would like your business/service listed, please send us an email with your business/service name, a few sentences about what service is provided, website link, and logo image. Then next time we send out a newsletter we will provide a summary of the local businesses as well as a link to our website where they are all listed.

Road Dues

As you are aware the annual GCF road dues for 2019 are now due and were increased, as was discussed and voted on last year, to $350 annually – the first increase in many years. Please consider this your notice and send your $350 dues payments for 2019 as soon as possible to:

Goose Creek Farms Road Committee
PO Box 604
Leesburg, VA 20176

*If you have not yet paid 2018, please send that payment ($300) in as well!

As of the writing of this letter, 26 households out of 45 in the neighborhood have contributed to the road fund in 2019. Thank you to the following 26 families:

• Adams, Tim & Patricia
• Bohn, Ron & Theresa
• Brown, Brad & Kathy
• Cha, James & Faith
• Chin, Allison
• Cook, Sara & Chris
• Coupar, George & Hazel
• Crawford, Mary Alice
• Dick, Edward & Jessica
• Green, Harley & Adrienne
• Hinke, Fred & Nancy
• Horton, Dave & Mallory
• Jeyanathan, Jey
• Isom, John & Christine (Tina)
• Judd, David & Janice
• Koritko, Kerry & Gudnadottir, Ingrid
• Lambert, Jim & Monica
• Larson, Chey & Matthews, Deb
• McCormick, William & Sandra
• Pickett, Dave & Missy
• Roush, Mike & Jeanne
• Sanders, William & Julie
• Sawyer, Jonathan & Ashley
• Victor, Michael Trisha
• Virt, David & Sarah
• Weaver, Cory & Debra

If you do not see your neighbor on the list, we encourage you to please chat with them about the importance of maintaining the road. Encourage them to help contribute so we can keep the road in good condition.

If it is difficult to budget a one-time dues payment, you can always send monthly installments. Any contribution helps and will allow our neighborhood to have a road that is passable.

Another comment that we have heard is that some individuals feel that if they use their personal equipment to plow snow on the road or do other occasional work that they then are absolved from the responsibility of contributing to the road fund. While it is nice when neighbors volunteer their equipment, the road dues are frankly a minimum contribution to a shared community resource. If one chooses to volunteer their equipment outside of coordination with the road committee then that is just being a good neighbor, but does not actually help with the financial requirements of maintaining the road. If you feel something on the road needs to be done that is not happening, please do not just use your own equipment to “fix it” and then feel like the neighborhood is indebted to you so that you do not contribute to the road fund. We have seen too many times that these “fixes” end up causing more damage and financial burden to the road fund. So we ask you to please coordinate with the committee and we can find an optimal way to get the work done, be it some combination of neighbor volunteerism or with paid contractors.

Road Fund

To recap 2018, we spent $13,995 and received $8,400 in contributions; resulting in a net loss of $5,595 and an ending balance of $12,787.

The good news for 2019, is that many of you that did not get your contributions into the fund in 2018, made up for it already this year. To date we have received $9,700 in contributions from the families listed above, well done! The bad news is that in the first three months of 2019 we have had to spend over $8,300 for plowing, sanding, and major road damage repair. That will leave us with just over $1k of contributions to cover ¾ of the year unless we go further into our reserves.

Between now and the scheduled neighborhood road meeting, please think about what might happen to our neighborhood if we do not, as a community, take steps to improve the quality of Goose Creek Lane. If we run out of money and can’t make repairs, services like UPS/FedEx/Amazon/USPS may stop delivering up the road. Friends and family from town may not want to come visit. Cost of maintaining our vehicles due to damage from the road will increase. Property values will decrease or not sell at all.

We are going to do everything we can with the funds available to keep the road in passable condition, but the reality is we may very well run out of money in 2019 if we continue to have the rainy weather like 2018. We look forward to discussing the road plans with you and hope to see each of you at the next meeting!

Best regards,
Harley, Ashley, Mallory, and Cory
GCF Road Committee 2019

Hi Neighbors,
We are having our contractor do major road repairs today. Please try to minimize trips taken to avoid interfering with the work.

We are hopeful that this year we can get more neighbor participation in contributing to the road dues so that we can make more long-term road stability improvements.

A big thank you to everyone who has already mailed your 2019 road dues! We have not yet had a chance to compile the list of current neighbors, but will share that in future newsletters.

As a reminder:
Please send your $350 dues payments for 2019 as soon as possible so we can continue maintaining the road!
Goose Creek Farms Road Committee
PO Box 604
Leesburg, VA 20176

Dear Neighbors,

Here is a summary on the status of the Road Committee as we closed out 2018 and updates for what we plan in 2019.

2018

In 2018 it rained. It rained more. It still kept raining. As a result, we the road suffered. It had washouts, potholes, and mud spots. We did the best we could to keep up with road repairs and even made significant progress fixing underlying issues with washouts in the steep hill section. One of the major projects we worked on was fixing the water drainage and flow issues from the top of the hill down to Lime Kiln. This involved digging a deeper culvert along the side of the road, adding large rocks (riprap) in steep sections of the culverts to slow water flow and protect the road from washing out, fixing persistent potholes, and adding gravel.

Another major effort the road committee had to take on in 2018 was trimming brush back along the road. This is a significant problem for the road and we really appreciate the neighbors who were responsible and cleared back the brush on their own property. However, there were still several property owners who neglected the brush along their property and we had to spend a significant amount of time finding contractors who could do the work at a reasonable cost. Please, take the time this year and keep the brush on your property cut back so that your neighbors can safely drive through and our work crews who maintain the road can do their job.

In 2018 we found a new contractor who also maintains the roads at camp highroad and has been able to provide a lot of great services for us at much less cost than we have had to pay in the past.  For example, we had quotes to trim the brush along the section of road between the hill and the mirror from other contractors that were going to charge nearly as much as AW charged to clear the brush, plus do major road repairs. If you need someone to perform work on your driveway or spur we would recommend calling AW Smith (703-930-9750). Unlike other contractors, he works out in our area often so it is not burdensome for him to come out this way and he has a great understanding of what it takes to maintain and repair gravel roads.

2018 Finances

This is a dark spot for 2018 in our neighborhood. Due to increased labor and material costs along with all the required work on the road due to the rain, we spent nearly $6,000 more in 2018 than we brought in from dues. Obviously we can’t continue to maintain this trend. So as we discussed in newsletters last year and as a result of the dues poll we conducted, we must raise the dues in 2019 from $300 to $350 / year.

2019

The plan in 2019 is to continue to maintain the road as best we can, but we will have to be a lot more restrained with how frequently we make repairs in order to make up for the budget deficit last year.  Even before the deficit last year, the finances of the Road Committee were not where we would like them to be in order to be prepared for handling major road washouts or other costly emergency repairs.

We would also like to thank the neighbors that have volunteered their time and equipment to help with maintaining the road and plowing snow. One request we have for those that do volunteer their time and equipment is to please reach out to us when you plan on working so that we can all coordinate our efforts. Last year, we had situations where members of the Road Committee had taken time off work to meet with contractors and get estimates for work to then have to call and cancel or modify work plans because a neighbor had come along and done some partial road repairs. So please, if you think something urgently needs to happen on the road and are considering taking care of it yourself, please just check-in so that all of our volunteer time and efforts are used efficiently.

Road Dues

As you are aware the annual GCF road dues for 2019 are now due and will be increased, as was discussed and voted on last year, to $350 annually – the first increase in many years. Please consider this your bill notice and send your $350 dues payments for 2019 as soon as possible to:
Goose Creek Farms Road Committee
PO Box 604
Leesburg, VA 20176

*If you have not yet paid 2018, please send that payment ($300) in as well!

We are fortunate to have a community of individuals who work together to ensure the betterment of GCF without having an HOA involved, but that does require the diligence and contribution of all community members.  That being said, there were a large number of residences that failed to contribute their 2018 road dues, which resulted in nearly $6,000 of expenditures in excess of what was contributed in 2018. 

As you are aware, in 2018 we experienced significantly more rain than in prior years, thus there was more need for road repairs.  As a result, it is particularly important that all members of our community participate in the upkeep of our road and the annual contribution of road dues.  Regardless of where you live on GCL, all residents utilize the “hill” to enter and leave the community, which is historically the most costly part of the road to maintain.  Please take this into consideration when deciding whether to contribute road dues to the community. 

In the coming weeks we will be reaching out to each of the delinquent members of the community to determine why dues were not paid in 2018 and to begin the collection process for 2019.  In the meantime, please advise of any questions or concerns by contacting the road committee.

Best regards,

Harley, Ashley, Mallory, and Cory
GCF Road Committee 2019

Hello Neighbors!

I’d like to share with you a summary of our 2017 activities, the finances status, and volunteer opportunities.

2017 Activities
In 2017 we did a lot of great work on the road! The road was smoothed several times, millings were spread over the road from start to finish. Long-term improvements included replacing the traffic mirror at the blind curve, and installing a “yield to uphill traffic” sign to help visitors know the “rules of the road” up here!

Finances
In 2017 residents contributed a total of $11,100 of dues. Additionally, many of you contributed in-kind with your labor and other resources. Thankfully we had no plowing expenses or major road work repairs that had to be completed. However, just the basic road maintenance costs added up to a grand total of $9,373. Our current account balance (prior to the road work this week) is $18,682. I’d like to point out that this does not leave much room for handling significant road problems like washouts, culvert replacement, and major regrading that may be required from time to time. More discussion on that later in the newsletter…

Volunteers Needed
We have had a great team of volunteers on the road committee to welcome new neighbors, manage finances, and facilitate road work. But seasons change and people cannot volunteer forever. Lou and Trisha need to step back from the Road Committee this year, and we want to thank them for the time and effort they’ve put toward maintaining the road over the years.

This creates the opportunity for two new volunteers to step forward and help! The open positions are for vice-president and secretary. These positions are VERY part-time, requiring work sporadically throughout the year. You’ll spend less time on this than you do waiting for or behind the school bus on Lime Kiln Rd!

The committee appreciates this is a volunteer situation, so you can be sure that your time, availability, and capabilities will be honored and appreciated. Please send me a note if you would like to learn more about this exciting opportunity to help your neighborhood!

It has been a pleasure to serve as the road committee president this past year!
–Harley Green

2018 Dues

Thank you to everyone that contributed to the road fund in 2017. We had record levels of participation from the neighborhood! Unfortunately, as outlined in the previous section, our income and expenditures do not leave much margin for a bad year weather-wise, improvements, emergencies, etc. We wouldn’t want our road to end up like this due to low funds:
Some neighbors have suggested we consider raising the annual contribution that we ask from each household to cover more regular road maintenance, and to have a reserve for the potential issues mentioned above. We will be conducting a poll through the email newsletter (click the link to sign up) to see what the neighborhood would like to contribute for 2018 to make sure the road is kept in good condition. Check back for results later!

Hi Neighbors!

These last few weeks of rain have really been brutal on the road. Thankfully we have a work crew coming tomorrow (2-15-2018) to spread new millings and grade out all the pot holes from the entrance to Goose Creek Lane to the top of the main hill.

Please drive with caution and expect delays throughout the day.