Welcome to 2012!  Here's hoping that you all had a safe and happy holiday season.  The winners of our Christmas Decorating contest were:

1st Place: 5333 Grouse CT  (there were 2 other good houses on Grouse CT as well)

2nd Place: 5618 Gander RD E

3rd Place: 4460 Willow Mist DR

Other good lights in the neighborhood were at the corner of Gander RD W and Terra Linda, the 5200 block of Gander RD W, and Bramblewood CT.  A great job by everyone that participated this year.  Pictures are on the web site.

The tree saga continues.  As you have seen by now, the trees are gone.  They were removed by crews working for DP&L the week of Jan. 18.  The back story on this is at our Board of Trustees Meeting on December 8 we were joined by 3 representatives from the city of Dayton to talk about the situation with the trees along Kitridge RD.  The representatives from the city were Fred Stovall, Director of the Department of Public Works, James Brinegar, Manager of Street Maintenance, and Mike Humston, Manager of the Forestry Department.  They brought with them a report from Wendi VanBuren who is an arborist with the Ohio Department of Natural Resources.  In addition to that report we had a report from Robert Siebenthaler who is an arborist that we hired to evaluate the trees.  I have a link on the web site to a single pdf file which contains both of those reports.

The very short version of the reports is that both arborists recommend removing all of the trees along Kitridge.  It was also recommended that if we want to have replacement trees that they should be of several varieties and be of varieties which are more appropriate for that location.  The city also had the utility people that mark underground wires come out and find any wires which may be underground in the area of the trees.  It was discovered that there are communication wires running under the existing trees.  This further complicates the situation.

With this information in hand, Mr. Stovall made the following offer to us.  DP&L will cut down all of the trees.  The city of Dayton will grind out all of the stumps.  The city of Dayton will replace the trees with more appropriate trees with our approval at a proper time for planting this year.  The board of Trustees has accepted this offer.  We will be in discussions with the city about the types, number and placement of replacement trees.  We should have the recommendations from the city for the new trees at our February meeting.