New Bench Update

Today in the maintenance shed, the ninth and hopefully final cement bench was cast. The three-man muscle team of Leonard Helbig, Tony Sencich, and Mike Ross fabricated forms, hand-mixed and shoveled 2,880 pounds of cement, and later broke open the molds. The 160 pound bench ends were then smoothed with a stone, layered with a coat of  filler, and again smoothed.

While this is going on, the 54 wooden bench slats are being cut, planed, sanded, and stained. Today another female volunteer, Etel Helbig, showed up to help me stain the mountain of bench slats.
Our wonderful maintenance supervisor, Ed Scobee, is on-hand and contributing to all the work, staying late after we leave and beginning work early before the volunteers arrive to keep the work area organized, and materials handy. While tamping wet concrete, or cutting 2 by 4s, he continues to answer crisis calls on his walkie-talkie, cell phone, and with his crew who are in and out all day long.

At his home, Wes Rice has taken the responsibility for the nine aged brass plaques that were removed from discarded benches and he is restoring them to their original brilliance. When all of these pieces come together at Sunset Point and Pelican Point, I hope the residents show their appreciation to these wonderful volunteers.Soon we are planning a day for the residents to refinish the benches around the park.It has yet to be approved by the board. We'll let you know the date as soon as it happens. Stay tuned.

March 31st Rough Weather

What a remarkable weather day! While working with the Bench Brigade in the maintenance shed, we observed more and more cars arriving at the clubhouse after 11am. The storm sweeping through Tarpon Springs earlier this morning slowly moved south. In the maintenance shed, we had a NOAA radio broadcasting the tornado watches and warnings. When the alarm beeped and the radio broadcasted the tornado warning in Pinellas County, the folks at home apparently were watching on their TV sets, and they drove over to the clubhouse.


I was very happy to see the enlightened few leave their mobile homes and take cover in a brick building. OK OK it might not be the the BEST solution, but staying in your mobile home during a tornado warning is a pretty dumb thing to do. The atmosphere in the room may have been somewhat tense with the group watching the TV, but there is always a group looking for a card game, and by George, a card game of Golf started up, keeping 8 or 10 residents entertained thru the crisis.


It appears from the TV news that there were two tornado trails through the city today, one north of us, and another through south Tampa along Interbay. Straight line winds also contributed to considerable damage. Mayor Iorio spent her last day in office surveying the tornado damage throughout the city. The tornado warnings continue tonight until 8pm, another hour or so.


If we can make it through the next little round of storms tonight, once again Regency Cove has been blessed.

Our Bench Grant

A small group has been working since Friday to fabricate concrete bench ends to add to Sunset and Pelican Points. They will almost match the benches there now. Resident Len Helbig made the pattern from an existing bench end. A few modifications were made, and a prototype mold was made last Friday, and cast on Monday. Today, the concrete shapes were removed from the forms, a nice smooth layer skimmed to fill the little voids, and they were set to the side to dry while the next batch is being cast.
By tomorrow, we will have completed 6 bench ends to make 3 new concrete benches. A bid arrived in February with a cost of $800 per pair of bench ends. We will have made three benches for under $400, if all goes well.
This grant is supported by the Hillsborough County Board of County Commissioners, the Hillsborough County Children's Board, and the Frank E. Duckwell Foundation within the Community Foundation of Tampa Bay. Our thanks to them, and to our wonderful volunteers.

Ed Scobee has been working with the trio, which also includes Mike and Sandy Ross. Coming in April we will have a volunteer day to sand and stain and recondition all of the benches in the park.

HB 5005

I had the pleasure of spending some time on Moday with two representatives from the Division of Business and Professional Regulations.One came from Tallahassee, the other from the Tampa office. They presented at the annual ROC Forum Board Orientation held on March 21, 2011. Three of our board members attended. I was saddened to hear that there is a bill (HB 5005) attempting to eliminate the Office of Compliance which oversees mobile home parks and condos.
The bill is attempting to deregulate many professions, including CAMS, our licensed community association managers. What in the world are they thinking about?
The FMO Watchdog group claims that this bill may take up back 20 years or more. We need to let our representative know that we strongly oppose this bill.

Representative Dana D. Young

Capitol Office: 1101 The Capitol , 402 South Monroe Street , Tallahassee, FL 32399-1300 Phone: (850) 488-2770

District Office: Suite 202, 2909 W. Bay to Bay Boulevard , Tampa, FL 33629-8175, Phone: (813) 835-2270

2011 Annual Meeting

The Election Committee was present bright and early before 9am to get all set up for the important task of counting ballots. At 9am, the ballot box was opened and sorting began, by last name. When names couldn't be read, the committee relied on the address to identify the voter. If the envelope name didn't match the recorded voter name, the ballot was marked "disregard". Several names and addresses were quite illegible, and they also were marked "disregard". Bundles of 25 were made and placed back into the ballot box, which was re-locked.
Many of the last minute ballots were missing the outer envelope. By law ballots and envelopes must be available at the meeting. After the final call for ballots, the ballot box was opened again, as attorney Ellen Hirsh DeHaan announced a quorum was present and she opened the first Annual Meeting in several years. Mr Godels gave the certified public accountant's report. Questions were allowed at the end.
A vote was taken by the membership whether to fully fund the reserves in 2012, or not. The vote was 251 to 5 NOT TO FULLY FUND the reserves next year.
The results of the election were posted, and the three candidates receiving the most votes were Rosalie Reis, Elaine Belba, and Dennis Hayes.
A few members requested items for the agenda, and discussion followed on changing common areas, motorcycles in the park, rules and regulations, the use of fines, and reducing the number of board members from 9 to just 5. The attorney wasn't there to make legal judgements or decisions, she commented a little,and mostly she just thanked the speakers for their comments.
After the meeting was adjourned, the Organization Meeting was held. Patty Fennessy was on a conference call from her bed at the rehab center, so all board members, new and old, were accounted for. Our new officers are Betty Ridge as president, Dennis Kralick as VP, Elaiane Belba, secretary, and Rose Reis as treasurer.
Ruth Paruszkiewicz announced that she would be retiring as Chairperson of the Election Committee. We all need to thank Ruth for her conscientious efforts over the years.
'Nuff said.

March Madness

It has been a very sedate campaign this year. Our candidates have been very professional in their endeavors. Tomorrow will tell....

It was posted in the Info Room that the ballot box will be opened at 9am, for the purpose of verifying names and addresses, a very time-comsuming process.This is open to the public. Ballots will be accepted until the meeting is opened at 10 am. After that, any late ballots will not be counted.

If a quorum has been met, the annual meeting will be held. Again we must vote to keep from fully funding our reserves the next time a budget is done. If you will not attend the meeting, please assign a proxie to count your vote.

Our Veterans' Anthology

It was at a potluck supper, many months ago, that a new friendship was struck and a brilliant idea was born. IMAGINE!!?? Meeting a new person at a potluck supper? Maybe this is why the Friendship Club frowns at those folks who continually reserve seats for their neighbors, and refuse to be receptive to someone new at their table.

Well, it happened that a relatively new potluck attendee (Robby Roberts) sat near resident Ed Bedore, and they happily chatted throughout the dinner. Ed learned that Robby is the quiet little guy who calls people on their birthday and serenades them with Happy Birthday on his harmonica. Ed also learned that Robby was a WWII pilot who shot down a few Jap planes in his time. It was then that Ed decided that there are too many wartime stories right here in Regency Cove that need to be recorded right now, before we lose any of them.
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For a couple of months now, Ed has been pursuing his dream of recording the stories of the veterans of Regency Cove. He enlisted the aid of a friend who likes to write and doesn't know how to say "No". (That would be me.)

We're pretty close to 60 vets so far, men and women, Americans and Canadians, and there are many lurking in the shadows. We have been advertising for several months in the Outlook. Word of mouth has been working for us, as one guy suggests another down the block. We're hoping to get all the snowbirds before you leave.

There will be no money made on this publication, no ads, no memorials. We are planning to take the typed text to Kinkos and have them reproduce and bind the pages we've typed. It won't be a slick hard cover edition like the history book, but then again, it won't cost $45 either.

Would you just give us a call so we can talk to you? We don't want to dredge up any horrible memories, but just record who you are and briefly what you did and where you served. Think about it. Call me.