June 21, 2024
Hello once again Pike Trails Ranches Property Owners,
The entire board offers their apologies for the late letter distribution. We’ve been busy and have had a change of the guard, sort of speak, and are getting things moving now. Our Recording Secretary Cindy Chew resigned and Kathy Mikesell has stepped up to fill the position. Our President Ken Thomas is too busy with his other responsibilities and he is also resigning. This will move the 1st Vice President to the President’s responsibilities and the 2nd Vice President to the 1st Vice President’s responsibilities and there will be an opening for the 2nd Vice President’s position to be filled by appointment/volunteer action of the board. Feel free to contact us if you’re interested in getting involved. Thanks again to all of our past officers for their help.
Dues/Finances: As always, this newsletter is for the dues assessment reminder and general information. Just like everyone else the costs for everything needed to keep our roads, ponds, insurance, maintenance and supplies up to speed, keep going up and we are stretching those dollars as far as we can and the Dues are where the dollars come from. That being said, an explanation of the dues assessment criteria is as follows:
Base Dues: Single Lot with access from PTRIA road $175.00
Base Dues: Single Lot with access from CR 88/Hwy. 9 $70.00
Added to Base: Additional Unimproved Lots (each) $70.00
Added to Base: Additional Lot with Home on PTRIA Road (each) $175.00
Per our By-Laws, Dues are voluntary and ownership and dues responsibility are determined through the County Assessor’s Office Data. If the information we have is incorrect please let us know. We do not browse the records unless we have something wrong and need the Property Owners to notify us that a change in ownership has occurred. A separate page is included with a coupon to fill out for contact information and the assessment value, please return that completed with your payment to help us keep our records straight.
Annual Meeting: The annual Membership meeting has been set for the Saturday of the Labor Day weekend which will be August 31, 2024 at 11:00 AM at the at the Southern Park County Fire Protection District Station #3. It is located at 2406 Park County Road #88, Guffey, CO, 80820. Chief Red plans on attending and delivering a few wise words. Fried Chicken will be provided and whatever sides or deserts you would like to bring would be great. We’ll have some chairs from the Fire Department but you may want to bring one of your own… It may be more comfortable! Hope to see you all there.
Roads Maintenance, Repair and Culverts: As per last year’s meeting and motions this board has done two drive through assessments, detailed needed repairs and maintenance and established a needed cost evaluation. That cost value came to a larger total than we collect in dues for better than three years. We then divided the needed work and materials into thirds and put together a request for proposal and sent it out to several contractors. Proposals still came back at nearly 3X the available funds we have available for repairs for a year. As a board we made the decision to work with Rock Movers Excavation (Scott Butz) and contract out a complete Grade and Crown effort and apply Gravel/Road Base where needed on our main roads and work gravel to secondary roads in the next cycle. RME was able to fix some of the drainage problems with the grading and crowning. RME has volunteered drive culvert installation efforts when the property owner purchases metal pipe (at least 8 inch or better). This will ensure that they are in the correct location and we’ll be able to grade the entire road width.
Ponds and Fish: The 2024 class of trout were delivered May 3rd and they are getting used to their new home. 142 lbs. of trout were delivered and split between the upper and lower ponds. We received a mixture of 9” – 2lb fish and smaller to increase our quantity while still having some larger fish. After doing some shopping around we could not find anyone else delivering to our area this year. So, with that said we placed our order with Crowther’s Freshwater Trout out of L Jara, CO. We have been ordering from Crowther’s for the past couple of years and they have always been friendly and accommodating.
Father’s Day Fishing event was June 15th, with the rain date scheduled for June 22nd. Emails were sent on May 25th , this year we did not post at the mailboxes. Honestly, I totally forgot we posted the notice as well. Sorry for that miss on my part. We had wonderful weather and no fish were caught…… Nadine’s report.
Champion Motor Grader: Our Grader has rolled its last roll! Transmission fails to engage and it will not move under its own power. We paid for an evaluation where it sits. Evaluation from Sarvid’s Heavy Equipment Repairs LLC and their inspection revealed that in order to put the grader into operating condition the costs would most likely run $55,000-$80,000. If the Machine was in good running condition it would only have a value of $12,000-$16,000 and in the current condition has a value of about $3,500-$5,000 (scrap). The board decided to cut our losses and scrap it out. Budget line items were adjusted and we are currently working with Bonnie’s Car Crusher to finalize the issue.
Fire Talk: As always, we all need to be extremely careful with fire. We’ve been fortunate that we have had as few issues as we have had. There are currently no Fire Bans in effect and we are working to Park County Guidelines for open burning. Please check to see if you need a fire permit before you open burn, just talk to the folks at the Fire House in Guffey, better safe than sorry.
Property Ownership Transfers: Just another reminder about letting us know when ownership and contact points change in our subdivision. Also making sure the right information is on the County Data Base. We don’t want to bother people but there may come a time that we’ll need to contact a property owner. If you are a new owner… Welcome to the neighborhood…
Your Board Thanks You for Your Time and Help.
Terry Johnson Cell- 303-704-6441 1st Vice President
George Purnell Cell- 719-989-8963 2nd Vice President
Nadine Butz Cell- 610-704-6815 Treasure
Kathy Mikesell piketraders@hotmail.com Secretary