Esker Hills

Sonic_exyouth

Sent it!

adser53

adser53 wrote:

This is a copy of the letter due to be issued to each house over the coming few days. Could anyone reading this please inform their neighbours about it.

Follwing on from the recent Resident Association meetings, where concern was voiced by many of you regarding the opening of the crèche and also regarding the availability of schools for the newcomers in the area, Owenass Development has proposed to modify the usage of the crèche building into a primary school.
As the local schools are in dire need of expansion, they are apparently overcoming the bureaucratic hurdles in record time; and might be in a position to have this completed by the beginning of the new school year this September.
However, as this will have a slight impact on the estate and it's residents, they have asked the Resident’s Association to run a poll to obtain approval from the residents for this proposal. As it stands, the building would have a capacity of 100 junior and senior infants.
Besides the obvious advantage of having a school in the area for our kids and toddlers, this would also have the added benefit of making it more attractive to open the shop at the entrance of the estate.
We would like to therefore kindly ask all households in the estate for their vote on this proposal. There will be a poll up on our website or forum within the next couple of days where each house can cast their vote. After voting, please PM "adser53" or "EuroTrash" with your address

http://sites.google.com/site/eskerhills
http://eskerhills.myfreeforum.org/index.php

Alternatively send a text to with your YES/NO vote and you're address to:
089 414 7955

(The reason we request your address is to prevent duplicate votes)

Regards,

The Esker Hills Residents Association Commitee

Ok everyone, things have changed a bit. We have been in contact with Owenass and for the school to be up and running for September, they need a decision asap. Pat Flanagan from Owenass has requested a meeting for early next week with ALL RESIDENTS. I can't stress enough how important it is that everyone attends because if you're not there, you can't have a say in the matter and you may be very unhappy with the outcome. The R.A is meeting tomorrow night the sort out the details of the meeting and put a flyer together. Can I ask everyone on here to tell their friends, neighbours etc about this meeting and if anyone is free on Sunday for an hour to hand out some leaflets it would be greatly appreciated because the 4 of us won't get them all done on our own. PM me if you're available. The day of the meeting is to be confirmed but will more than likely be before or on Wednesday and will more than likely be in Kavanagh's Pub rather than O'Loughlins hotel.

Thanks guys

elainee40

Adser is this going to be a private school for the estate ie Our kids get first preference or can other kids from outside the estate get in etc?

adser53

To be honest Elaine we dont have any info about the school other than what I've posted above.
Chatting amongst ourselves we felt that we should demand a seperate access rd from the entrance to the school so that cars wouldnt be on Blossom court and that preference should be given to residents.
The fact is, this school probably wont really affect 80-90% of the estate but it could be a real pain for the people beside it. Thats why theres a meeting rather than a poll so that everyone that lives beside can have their say instead of losing the vote to people who wont be put out by it. Plus we'll get to see exactly what the builders want to do with the place . Owenass' architects have been working on it over the w/e and we havnt seen any plans or proposals for the school, we just got word about it from Pat Flanagan. We all know as much as each other at this stage

elainee40

Well me for one thinks it is a great idea ha, i have daughter starting to go to school in 2011 and this little one also should be few years down the line please god

Sonic_exyouth

When is the meeting?

adser53

Sonic_exyouth wrote: »

When is the meeting?

The meeting is this coming Thursday (the 2nd) at 8pm in Kavanagh's pub. Its basically next door to O'Loughlins hotel where we had the last meeting. I know i said we'd be putting leaflets out yesterday but we didnt get around to it. There's a few of us meeting up tonight at 8pm to hand them out. I also said the meeting would probably be wednesday night but the room wasnt available until Thursday.

adser53

Right everyone, leaflets were handed out tonight to every house (hopefully)in the estate.

Just want to say thanks a million to everyone who gave a hand handing them out. We got it done in 30-40 mins instead of 2 hours :D:D

See you all Thursday and hopefully the Esker Hills webbie and forum picks up

elainee40

No problem anytime, I came home to ask Partner had he got a letter he said yeah but he handed it back out thinking id bring home a letter lol Nope i didnt lol :rolleyes:

adser53

Just a quick reminder to everyone about the meeting tonight, hope to see yis there.
Im just glad I won't have to talk at this one :rolleyes:

adser53

The Esker Hills Website will be updated shortly with the minutes of the first RA meeting in O'Loughlins and a brief recap from last nights meeting about the creche.

elainee40

What happen after we left, did people give ideas on how they would like road etc

adser53

If you check out the E.H website in the news section I've posted up a brief recap of the whole meeting (only 2 pages) and at the end of it there's a map attached where I've sketched on the ideas we had after talking to Pat.

adser53

Just a reminder to everyone the clean up day is this Saturday (the 11th) starting at 12:30pm.
This has been organised by the residents association and is registered as part of the "Macra na Feirme National Know Your Neighbour Weekend" sponspored by the ESB and launched by President Mary McAleese.

http://www.knowyourneighbour.ie/

We feel this is a great way to tidy up the estate, raise litter awareness and most of all, a chance to get to know your neighbours! This will be a great help to implementing the Neighbourhood watch scheme in the coming weeks!

Will anyone reading this please pass on the info to their neighbours who may be unaware of the clean up day?

Thanks

Adam

mellaine

adser53 wrote: »

Just a reminder to everyone the clean up day is this Saturday (the 11th) starting at 12:30pm.
This has been organised by the residents association and is registered as part of the "Macra na Feirme National Know Your Neighbour Weekend" sponspored by the ESB and launched by President Mary McAleese.

http://www.knowyourneighbour.ie/

We feel this is a great way to tidy up the estate, raise litter awareness and most of all, a chance to get to know your neighbours! This will be a great help to implementing the Neighbourhood watch scheme in the coming weeks!

Will anyone reading this please pass on the info to their neighbours who may be unaware of the clean up day?

Thanks

Adam

aw, I missed it.....were leaflets handed out about it? I wanted to pitch in.....will there be another one?

Bodhan

There were no leaflets, but there was an announcement at the meeting and every event is posted on the esker hills web site, here's the links for ya

http://sites.google.com/site/eskerhills/Home

http://eskerhills.myfreeforum.org/

now you'll never miss a thing.:)

mellaine

brilliant, thanks..have signed up to the Esker Hills forum :cool:

adser53

Cool Mellaine, the more the merrier

We've over 5% of the estate in the forum & newsletter mailing list now :rolleyes: just another 500 to go lol

And thanks for spreading the word Bob!!!

Bicky

Hello adser. Still around?
Planning permission has been turned down for the restaurant. That is a pity because it would be better to have something in there instead of an empty unit. However i dont blame the people who would be living above there. It would be fairly **** living above a fast foid place.
Anybody got any information about this?
It was originally on daft for 90,000 and it is 60,000 now. Far too much in my opinion.

adser53

Hey Bicky, i'm still around, just been using the actual esker hills forum instead of boards for the estate.
It's a pity about the retail unit alright,this is the first ive heard of it being rejected tho. There were loads of objections to it afaik. It would b fairly crap living over a chipper in all fairness.
Owenass are still saying theyre close to sorting the creche so fingers crossed. They'll probably just board up the units now and leave them if theres no takers for either. You couldnt really expect them to keep looking after them.
Check out our forum, there's loads on it about the estate

anonymous145

Hey all, i rang Owenass today and they are finishing up in the estate in the next couple of weeks.

I know a residents committee was previously set up but have since resigned.

I think we really need to hire a property maintenance company I have been in touch with Caroline Bergin Property Maintenance company, can people reply to me and let me know what ye think?

adser53

Hi anonymous, yup I'm still in the estate. If you check out our forum you'll see more discussions about this. Truth be told, property maintenance companies are a pure rip off and don't give a toss (generally). That's why we originally went to landscaping companies directly for quotes

Sonic_exyouth

anonymous145 wrote: »

Hey all, i rang Owenass today and they are finishing up in the estate in the next couple of weeks.

I know a residents committee was previously set up but have since resigned.

I think we really need to hire a property maintenance company I have been in touch with Caroline Bergin Property Maintenance company, can people reply to me and let me know what ye think?

I cannot tell you how utterly opposed to that Idea I am.

I refuse to pay €3,000 a year to a bunch of suits who do feck all.

adser53

Sonic_exyouth wrote: »

I cannot tell you how utterly opposed to that Idea I am.

I refuse to pay €3,000 a year to a bunch of suits who do feck all.

I couldn't agree more with you Sonic. Management companies are a pure waste of time. An entire estate under the control of a management company would be an absolute disaster, especailly one the size of Esker hills.

For a start, apartment owners (I believe) HAVE to pay management fees. House owners in an estate are not required to pay anything, it would all be voluntary donations which will be few and far between in this climate. Therefore the estate wouldn't even be able to afford a management company to begin with. That's why we went to landscapers looking for quotes as it'd be miles cheaper and if the work wasn't done, they wouldn't get paid. Simple as that.

I'd ask that anyone considering setting up a committee, going to management companies / landscapers etc just hang off doing anything for the minute. There's no rush, especailly on the landscaping side of things as the grass can't be cut until February anyway. Hiring a management company to tidy up the estate will never happen and the cleanliness of where we live is up to us. The residents themselves need to get more active. Also, acting alone means that you may be acting without the support of your fellow residents and companies won't like being messed around if no one supports you so sorting these issues out at a meeting with a committee, or a group of committees, is a must.

We have already done a lot of work about these issues and it doesn't make sense for people to start going out on their own trying to get things sorted when they could / can very easily pick up where we left off with a new committee.
The original committee, although having resigned, is still semi-functional and working behind the scenes. Especially with Owenass and Laois county council (All those dodgy street lights, big puddles of water, broken trees and other estate problems didn't fix themselves, that was us behind it).

We've all been very busy with our own lives lately so havn't done much on the next meeting but it will happen soon and a leaflet will be put out about it. The main agenda for this meeting will be to elect a new committee (or commitees as some people like the idea of individual committees for each road/area), get all the estate issues out in the open, discuss the prospects for the future upkeep of the estate etc.

Hopefully we get an increased turnout as we're still only looking at max 10-15% of the estate being active (online on our forum and coming to meetings)

Adam

Sonic_exyouth

my water is not working

is that a common issue, or, should i be doing something about it?

adser53

theres a handful of houses in the estate that dont have water due to frozen pipes afaik. Owenass helped 1 person I know for definite so maybe give them a call?

Sonic_exyouth

adser53 wrote: »

theres a handful of houses in the estate that dont have water due to frozen pipes afaik. Owenass helped 1 person I know for definite so maybe give them a call?

Adser,

do you mean frozen within the house?

adser53

i'd be very surprised if it was within the house itself. If youve got water in the toilets then your tank has water in it in the attic. If it's your kitchen tap then the mains may be frozen. More than likely, if this is the case, the pipe underground, outside, under your kitchen window is frozen/blocked. That's my best guess anyway but definitely give owenass a call. It seems to have affected houses that were vacant for a few days which meant the water could lie in the pipe and freeze

Sonic_exyouth

adser53 wrote: »

i'd be very surprised if it was within the house itself. If youve got water in the toilets then your tank has water in it in the attic. If it's your kitchen tap then the mains may be frozen. More than likely, if this is the case, the pipe underground, outside, under your kitchen window is frozen/blocked. That's my best guess anyway but definitely give owenass a call. It seems to have affected houses that were vacant for a few days which meant the water could lie in the pipe and freeze

Yeps, the underground stopcock is at fault here.

Owenass hooked my water to neighbours temp, and will fix it when its thawed, but, for now, I'm stealing water!
What'll we do when Mr. Lenihan has his way, and we're metered?

adser53

glad you got sorted Sonic. Ye gotta hand it to Owenass though for helping out