Volume 22, Issue 2 October 1, 2009
Directions
About Us
Park History
Contact Us
Map of Park
Park Rules
GRDA Rules
Member Q&A
Privacy Policy
Minutes
Referral Program
The good news is that nobody was hurt! The storm that went through North- eastern Oklahoma on August 10th , a Monday, hit Pine Island with a pretty good punch. Rental Unit #04 was blown over onto its side rendering it worthless. Rental Unit #03 was not damaged but you can see from the skirting that it was moved a little bit. We’re still not sure if it was a small tornado or straight line winds, however, members who were in their RV’s at the time said it sounded like a train going through. We had a lot of tree damage in Area 4. Some of the Members lost their awnings and the Ward’s pontoon was ripped from the dock where it was tied down with new rope and shredded the bimini cover on it. Remarkably, other rentals and RV’s were not damaged. The large tree on RV Site #433 was knocked down. A member’s RV was on the site but was not damaged and withstood the winds. Isn’t God’s power amazing! We are blessed because the park and rentals were full just the day before the storm hit. The Welcome Center roof was damaged extensively and the indoor pool now has an open skylight. The park was without electricity until the wee hours of the morning. There were huge trees and tree limbs down all over the park. Many thanks to our maintenance and housekeeping staff, our work campers and volunteers who worked all day Tuesday to clean up the mess and make the roads passable and campsites useable again.
There will be three (3) positions open for election of Board of Directors 2010 year. The following is the procedure to follow if you are interested in becoming a candidate for the Pine Island Board:
1. To be eligible to run for the board, you must have been a member of Pine Island for at
least six (6) months prior to the election and your membership must be in good standing.
2. Pick up a Petition and a copy of the Board of Directors job description at the office.
3. Candidates must present a Petition signed by 25 other eligible voting members in good
standing. The committee will verify that the 25 members are in good standing.
4. There will be one signature per membership per Petition.
5. Submit a brief resume and a photo of yourself to the office with the Petition.
Applications need to be received in the office no later than May 1, 2010.
REQUEST FOR CHANGE IN BY-LAWS OR RULES
All requests for any By-Law changes or Rule changes must be presented to the Board in writing no later than May 1, 2010, in order that said requests can be placed on the ballot or on the agenda for the Annual Meeting to be voted on by the Members of the Park. If you have any questions regarding By-Laws or Rule Changes, please do not hesitate to contact one of your Board Members.
The Health Department has been after Pine Island RV Resort to change the wood decking of the indoor swimming pool for several years. They no longer allow wood flooring on inside pools due to possible bacteria growth. The moisture in the enclosed pool area allows the bacteria to grow whereas at the outdoor pool, the sun and heat dry up the moisture so that bacteria is not a problem. The wood flooring will need to be changed to concrete. The estimate that the Board has received for doing this is $10,000. We will be able to reduce that price by using our work campers and volunteering members to do some of the work. (i.e. tearing out the old wood flooring; hauling in and spreading the gravel). The indoor pool will be closed after Labor Day weekend so that work may begin on the decking.
The indoor pool is one of the biggest selling points of Pine Island. We need to complete the new floor as soon as possible. Unfortunately, we do not have $10,000 just laying around. As Members of Pine Island, this is your park. The Park is owned by the Mem bers. Therefore, it is the responsibility of the Members to replace the wood floor with a concrete floor. If each of the Members would donate $20.00 that would almost pay for a new concrete floor. If you enjoy swimming in the indoor pool, isn’t $20.00 worth it? Or, if you don’t use the pool but your children or grandchildren like to swim in it, isn’t that worth $20.00 to you? This $20.00 donation isn’t mandatory, but I’m asking each of you to do this for the benefit of your park. Oh, and before you ask, No, I don’t use the indoor pool, however, my grandchildren do enjoy it. I asked the people at the last Board Meeting to each donate $20.00 and did receive several donations.
The Activities Department has started a ‘SAVE OUR POOL’ fund to help raise money to pay for the new floor. Jackie and L.D. Shinkle donated a Fast Track game to be raffled off. The money from this goes to the pool fund. The raffle tickets are $2.00 each or 3 for $5.00. The drawing was held at the September 12th Board Meeting and the winner was Ron McAbee. We sold 214 raffle tickets for the Fast Track game. We have made a quilt that will be raffled off at the June Annual Meeting. The tickets for the quilt are $3.00 each or 2 for $5.00. Thank you to Areitta Agee, Linda Black, Kenda Guist and Debbie Cooper for helping me make the blocks for the quilt and to Jane Nigh, Delores Bracey and Jeannie Lipe for doing the tacking of the quilt. We are creating a new Pine Island Recipe Book. When finished, you can purchase the book at the Welcome Center. The cost is not known yet, but will be approximately $10 to $15. Remember, all the proceeds from these items will go to the Pool Fund.
The Activities Department has been donating the proceeds from most of the dinners, tournaments, etc. to the “Save our Pool” fund. As of the day that this article is being written, we have over $2,000.00. One Member has stated that when we raise $5,000, he will donate $1,000. We have had several Members who have donated over $20.00, one donated $100 and another donated $500. We will have special plaques or bricks with Members names on them that donate special amounts over $20.00.
Joaquin Ramirez Sr., December 9, 2008
Gene Ramirez, July 13, 2008
Dub Willey, April, 2009
Bill McKay, May, 2009
Georgia Clark, September, 2009
If you know of a Pine Island Member who has passed away since the previous Newsletter, please contact the Office and let them know and that name will be included in the next Newsletter. Please include Member name, number, date of death and what town and State they lived in. (Names of members only please).
1. You are allowed to leave your RV unattended for only 48 hours unless you are on a
month-to-month lease.
2. There is a 10 mph speed limit throughout the park.
3. You must move to Area 3 for 7 days after 21 consecutive days camping in any other
area.
4. Children under the age of 12 must be accompanied by an adult in both pool areas.
Please do not allow your children to swim alone - this is dangerous!
5. Quiet time is from 10:00 p.m. to 8:00 a.m., please be considerate to those around you.
6. Children under 14 years must be accompanied by an adult between the hours of 10:00
p.m. and 8:00 a.m. if away from their unit.
7. Do not give out security gate code to persons who haven’t checked in yet.
8. Dues must be current in order to use the park.
9. All fees for camping sites and rentals must be paid in advance before camping.
10. Do not park your vehicles, boats or boat trailers on an empty campsite.
In case you haven’t heard, following are the election results from the June 2009 ballots that were mailed out and the voting at the Annual Meeting.
Ray Birkhead and Lance Ragsdale were elected to the Board of Directors. It was a very close race between the 3 candidates with only 33 votes separating the #1 place and the #3 place. The new Board sits as follows:
President: Lance Ragsdale Members: Richard Eckler
Vice President: Les Ward Boyd Stover
Secretary: Ken Bradford Ray Birkhead
Treasurer: Jerry Agee
The By-Law Change passed stating that any Member of the Board must attend at least 2/3rds of the Meetings or be replaced. However, they may request a Leave of Absence in case of medical reasons and the Board may appoint someone else to replace that Member during the requested Leave. 271 Yes votes and 17 No votes.
ATV’s and UTV’s are now both allowed on the park. The UTV’s passed 206 to 84; the ATV’s passed 167 to 108. However there are very strict rules with the usage of these vehicles. You can pick up a complete set of the rules at the office. The 3 most important rules are:
1) You must be a licensed driver to drive any of these vehicles (this also applies to Golf Carts);
2) Absolutely no off-roading on the park. You Must remain on the established park roads;
3) The 10 mph speed limit throughout the park applies to all vehicles on the park.
At the Annual Meeting the Members present voted to raise the maintenance dues from $71 per quarter to $96 per quarter, or $384 per year. This increase takes affect with the 4th quarter of 2009 (October, November and December). This increase is necessary due to increase in Pine Island’s electric costs, water costs and other cost increases and the decline in our Membership.
REC advised that Pine Island’s electric costs will be increased considerably; Rural Water should have their upgrade completed in October at which time we will be discontinuing our water system and turning on the connection to Rural Water as ordered by DEQ; federal minimum wage increase took affect the end of July increasing from $6.55 per hour to $7.25 per hour, this affects most of our employees as they were being paid under $7.25 per hour; our membership has decreased to below 1,000 members, and not all of those are paying members.
This has been a very busy summer again at Pine Island. We have all been meeting our new members at the activity functions, they are getting involved and seem to enjoy all the Activities we have to offer. This is great! We’ve had some new activities along with our usual activities. Pine Islander’s love to eat, love music and to play games.
There hasn’t been any shortage of food at Pine Island this year. We’ve had several potluck dinners, a Soup and Cobbler Supper, wiener roasts, ice cream socials and a Fish Fry! And there’s more still to come. We’ve had a cakewalk and a Dessert Auction too, like I said, we all love to eat. The proceeds from several of our ‘food functions’ have been going to the “Save our Pool” fund. The ice cream social in August brought in $26; the fish fry brought in $224.00, and the Dessert Auction brought in $187.00.
Music, music, and more music. We’ve had a country/western dance, Gospel Weekend and 4 separate Christian Concerts this year, including Gospel Elvis! Ozark Country Band came and performed for us on Memorial Day Weekend. We all enjoyed them and they enjoyed themselves too. They would like to come back next year for the 4th of July celebration and perform. We’ll set up a box next spring for donations to have them back. These guys come from the Springfield area and are really good. Gospel Weekend was held on June 27th & 28th. Gospel Weekend seems to grow bigger and get better every year. It turned hot that weekend, but have no fear - God provides! Ron Rogers brought several large chicken house fans, Rusty Ford brought a couple of large fans and Joe Weston brought his mister fan from his boat dock. We sold hotdogs and nachos at the concession stand so that the audience could stay and listen to the fantastic music and not have to leave to eat dinner and miss a performance. We made $300 from the concession stand plus had plenty of canned food items donated for the Grove Christian Help Center. Gospel Elvis performed for us on the 4th of July. He kept everyone entertained for 3 full hours. Ron Rogers and the Gospel Echoes were here the following weekend on July 11th; Victorymen Christian Singers came out on August 1st; and the Foundation Band the following weekend on August 8th. All of these performers were fantastic. Pine Island does not pay for the performers at Gospel Weekend or for these Christian Concerts. All of these performers donate their time and talent for the glory of the Lord. We do collect ‘love’ offerings at the concerts, but that’s it. I’d like to thank all of you who attended and donated to the ‘love’ offerings - there is no shortage of love at Pine Island.
On June 6th we had our Carnival and Picnic. It was a huge splash! We had a dunk tank, a jumping Jupiter and hot dogs. The morning was a little cool, but that didn’t stop anyone from being dunked in the dunk tank. The “Kings of the Throne” were Lance Ragsdale, Ken Bradford, Benny Kirkendoll and me, Debbie Stout. Les Ward and Jerry Agee couldn’t (or wouldn’t) agree to do the dunk tank, so I took the water to them. We had a few ’nice’ members who paid extra just to have water dumped over Les and Jerry’s heads. Les had been warned, but Jerry wasn’t. Ken ’convinced’ Jerry to stand by the chair and SURPRISE! I did the honors of pouring cold water over Jerry’s head. Jerry’s son-in-law told me later that he thinks that was the first time he had ever seen Jerry wet. I’m not sure who had the most fun throwing the ball to dunk people, the adults or the kids. By the way, if the kids who were throwing the balls are any indication - we’ve got some real ball players at Pine Island. They could hit that target real well. Oh, and rest assured everyone - we who sat on the ‘throne’ know who hit the target! The Carnival was such a success that we will be doing it again next year. However, the plan is that it will be around the time of the Annual Meeting (when its nice and warm outside!). If you would like to volunteer to help, please let us know. We would like to have clowns, face painting, and other things for the kids to do. Besides being a fun thing to do, its also a nice fund raiser for the park and could help to bring in new members.
Labor Day Weekend was a blast! We had sack races for the kids, crafts, Frisbee golf, movies, candy bar bingo, an ice cream social and our Hawaiian Luau. Everyone had a great time. This year at the Hawaiian Luau the kids made it all the way around in line 2 times swinging at the Piñata before it spilled out all of its goodies. On all 3 holidays this year, our park has been at least ¾ full. Most people come out and have family time together, but they also enjoy the activities.
Our Spaghetti Supper was a success. The stove in the kitchen is not currently useable so Areitta and I had to put ingenuity to work and use the ‘fish fryer’ to cook the spaghetti noodles. Thank you to Jerry for handling the fish fryer for us.
Our members love games. I don’t think it matters what game we play, we all have fun. We have had several card tournaments, playing both ‘31’ and the card game “Golf”. We’ve had several Fast Track Tournaments, we’ve played Deal or No Deal and we’ve had Big Bingo Night. This year we have introduced a couple of new games. One is the card game “Golf”. We’ve had one tournament and will another one in October. When we have tournaments, we also play a game called ‘½ pot’ where the winner gets half the pot and the other half goes to the Activity Department. The Activity Department has been donating its proceeds from this game to the “Save our Pool” fund and so have the individual winners. In fact, the winners from the tournaments have been donating their winnings to the “Save our Pool” fund. Way to go Pine Islanders! Another new game is Dime Bingo, we play this every Wednesday in place of Joker’s Bingo at 3:00. On Fridays we play Bean Bag Baseball. If you want to have some fun, come and play with us. Bean Bag Baseball was implemented for the adults, however kids 12 and up can play. We’ve been having a lot of fun with this game, there is no running and you can only throw the beanbags underhanded, however, watch out if your on second base (chair) because you could be in the line of fire!
After the October Board Meeting will be our Annual Chili Cook-off. It will be held in the kitchen at 5:30. Bring your chili over around 5:00. We need 3 people to be our judges. If you do not want to enter your chili for the judging but would like to bring chili, please do. Everyone else bring side dishes and desserts. Don’t forget your drinks!
Our Annual Spook Trail is October 17th. Fall Break for the Oklahoma Schools was originally scheduled for Thursday October 16th through Sunday, the 18th. However, because of circumstances beyond their control, they have had to change their Fall Break to Friday, October 17th through Monday, October 19th. On the 16th, we will have our wiener roast that evening at 6:00 at the new Alan Lee Memorial Fire Ring. Bring your own hot dogs and buns, bring side dishes to share with everyone, the park will provide the fire! We will sit around the fire, enjoy the fall weather and the roaring blaze of an open fire. Good company and good food, what more can you ask for? Decorate your RV for the contest. If we have at least 10 trailers compete, the 1st place prize will be 7 days free camping and 2nd place prize will be 2 days free. On Saturday afternoon at 2:00 we will have the judging of the trailers. Our Spook Trail Hayride and games will be Saturday evening 6:00 to 8:00, games for kids will be inside Eagle’s Nest and snacks will be inside the TV Room. This year the cost will be $1.00 each for the kids to play the games and $1.00 for the hayride. We will have a donation box set up for the snacks. We will be decorating both inside Eagle’s Nest and outside in Area 4 all that week for our Spook Trail. Anyone who can help would be appreciated. Just let me know that you are here and would like to help. We also need donations of candy for the trick or treat bags for the kids and donations of snacks. Let me know if you can help out in any way.
Our Annual Thanksgiving Dinner will be held on November 14th. The Park provides the meat, you bring the side dishes and desserts. Don’t forget your eating utensils, plates and drinks. I won’t be here for the Thanksgiving Dinner this year but Jane Bradford and Rhoda Ward have been kind enough to ‘volunteer’ to host the Dinner. Remember, the kitchen doesn’t clean itself and I’m sure they will appreciate help in the clean-up, etc. both before and after the dinner.
The Annual X-Mas Party, white elephant gift exchange, will be on December 12th. It is potluck, so bring a dish (meat will not be provided by the park). It will be held in the Teen Center. Don’t forget to bring a gift for the gift exchange.
Debbie Stout, Activities
The Health Department has informed us that the wooden deck around the indoor pool has to be removed and replaced with concrete. The estimate to tear out the old deck, add fill gravel, and replace it with concrete is nearly $12,000.00. Debbie Stout, Activities Director, has initiated several fund raising contests (Fast Track Raffle, Pine Island Cook Book, and Quilt Raffle) as well as requests for donations in order to raise the funds to replace the deck. You can help by participating in the fund raising contests or by including a donation when you pay your dues. The pool will be closing following the Labor Day holiday and we will begin tearing out the deck with our own labor in order to minimize the replacement cost. You can also help with this effort by giving us some of your time with the old deck removal.
Following the June storm approximately three dump truck loads of gravel and rock were removed from the boat ramp by Frankie Jackson Construction. Additionally, he re-cut the ditch on the right side of the hill as you approach the ramp and install Riff - Raff on the right side of the ramp where the water had undercut the concrete for a width of about three feet. Total cost of the project is $1,300.00.
A one inch water line was broken when a member attempted to hook up. The repair took longer than expected because multiple underground breaks were discovered.
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We had another incident where someone vandalized bathrooms. This time it was in the Eagles Nest restrooms, pool and pool deck. We are now going to lock the outside entrances to the men’s and woman’s restrooms and close the pool at 8 PM
We had a free ad in the grand lake business journal for Gospel Weekend. Visit site www.grandlakebusinessjournal.com.
Email solicitation was sent to approximately 60 Family Motor Coach Association (FMCA) chapter leaders inviting them to consider Pine Island for their chapter meetings. Additional emails will be sent as addresses are added to our database.
Pine Island was hit by a storm on August 10th that turned over and destroyed Rental unit #4, caused damage to the Indoor Pool roof, Welcome Center roof, Sewer plant fence and numerous trees. The downed trees in area 4 have been removed and limbs and branches throughout the park have been cleaned up. We have met with the insurance adjuster and went through the park and reviewed all the damage. He will submit his report and we should hear something in a couple of weeks.We responded to the out of compliance letter we received from DEQ regarding our failure to meet the July 31st deadline for completion of our connection to RWD3. Updated the DEQ on the rural water expansion completion date and our plan to cut over when improvements are completed at RWD3.
An application for Pine Island to join Freedom Resorts as an affiliate park has been submitted. We will extend members of Freedom Resorts a 25% discount off our standard $25.00 rate. We will provide brochures to Freedom Resorts to handout at their sales booth at various shows around the country. Additionally we will receive a 50% commission on any memberships sold.
An application for Pine Island to join www.internetcamping.net was submitted. The rate for internet camping members will be $12.50 per night. This rate is 50% off our standard rate and can only be used for 3 nights, 3 times per year. We receive a free listing in their resource center, a link to our website, and free display adds of our campground.
A Question and Answer document was completed for our members’ education on Pine Island issues. The Q&A document will be included in the September statement mailing.
After pursuing several quotes we have changed insurance companies for our Workers Comp insurance. The new rate is $5848.00 lower for the year than the rate we were going to pay our current carrier.
Joe Barnes and George Weston , Co-Managers
So. Texas Reunion
January 30, 2010
Paradise Park
301 E. Hall Acres Rd.
Pharr, TX
11:00 a.m. till 3:00 p.m.
Potluck - Bring your own table service, a covered dish & games
For more info call Jane Nigh 956-702-7398 or 956-358-3894
Bring a Gift with you if you want in the Gift Exchange