BEST FRIENDS FOREVER B1 Your Community Recorder newspaper serving the communities of southern Campbell County E-mail:kynews@communitypress.com Abby Weyer and Kathryn Ball
Volume 4, Number 36 © 2009 The Community Recorder ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
T h u r s d a y, J u l y
2, 2009
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Homes selling in SummerLake By Chris Mayhew cmayhew@nky.com
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Headed out to events around town for the Fourth of July weekend? We want to publish your Independence Day celebration photos. To get started, go to NKY.com/Share and follow the steps there to send your photos to us. Be sure to identify everyone in the photo and which community they live in. PHOTOS WILL APPEAR ON YOUR
Housing construction and sales have continued in SummerLake subdivision, and in other pockets in Alexandria, albeit at a slower pace than the 2006 housing boom. There have been 10 homes sold in SummerLake since the start of 2009, said John Haas, vice president of Maple Street Homes, who oversees 20 communities in the Greater Cincinnati area including SummerLake. Haas said he saw the best monthly home sales figures for the region this May since 2006, and that June looks like it’s going to be better than May. “Things have definitely backed off, but I’m definitely seeing the tide turning where people are gaining confidence in the marketplace,” he said. A combination of low interest rates, reduced prices by Maple Street and government incentives
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The silhouette of a worker carrying materials for building a house on Whispering Way in the SummerLake subdivision in Alexandria can be seen through the garage door entrance Monday, June 29.
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A hole-in-one
Golf: It’s the exhilaration of a well-hit ball, and the camaraderie of time spent in the open air with friends that calls people back for one more whack at perfection. “It’s like a disease, once you start playing golf you can’t not want to play,” said Tom Townsley, 66, of Bellevue. LIFE, B1
Miracles for Life
Tom Starr, who has received two transplants in the last 20 years founded Miracles for Life in 2001, an organization devoted to raising awareness about being a blood, tissue and organ donor and sending children who’ve received transplants to summer camp. “The first mission was donor awareness ... We want people to know it should be an obvious thing, it’s the gift of life. It’s like I say, ‘If you don’t need it, donate it,’” Tom said. NEWS, A4
To place an ad, call 283-7290.
Caleb Baker, a laborer for Turner Builders, hammers with one hand while holding a nail gun in the other hand Monday while perched on a ladder near the base of the second floor of a home being built at 9775 Whispering Way in the SummerLake subdivision.
are helping, Haas said. “And we’re seeing a lot of the first time buyer using the $8,000 stimulus credit,” he said. SummerLake’s continued growth can also be credited in part to the parks, three lakes with picnic tables, shelters and hiking and walking trails that make the community an attractive place for prospective buyers, Haas said. It has the largest park in terms of acreage of any Maple Street community, he said. There are two home collections sold in the subdivision. The Hometown collection has 10 styles and ranges from 1,224 square-feet up to 2,493 square-feet from the low $130,000 range to more than $180,000 on the high side, Haas said.
The Parkside collection pricing starts in the low $140,000 range to around $200,000 and the 10 different floor plans range from 1,551 square-feet to 2,972 square-feet, he said. Haas said all of the builder’s home styles and developments can be viewed at the Web site www.maplestreethomes.com. Brandon Bray, a developer, and managing member of Summerlake, said about 90 of the subdivision’s 194 lots are sold. Plans are going ahead for starting a third phase of 22 homes in a couple of months, Bray said. Despite the economy, the amenities right down to the playground equipment are helping to attract buyers, he said. “They aren’t tremendously great
numbers, but they’re very respectable compared to other areas of Northern Kentucky and Greater Cincinnati,” Bray said. There are actually two subdivisions, Ridgewood Valley, near where Campbell Ridge Elementary School is, and SummerLake that the city is still receiving building permit applications for, said Mayor Dan McGinley. Alexandria has issued 15 building permits for homes so far in 2009, compared to 32 in 2008. The fact that the two subdivision developers haven’t stopped building is a sign of hope for the economy, McGinley said. “I think there are people who are expressing confidence in the area, and I think they're right,” he said.
Focus of special meeting police budget By Chris Mayhew cmayhew@nky.com
Alexandria City Council met in special session Thursday, June 18 for about five minutes and discussed planned police department funding. Council member Bill Rachford, who recently announced his candidacy for mayor in 2010, called the special meeting. Rachford said after the meeting that he and others on council were looking to confirm whether the department was seeking to hire one police officer as already budgeted or possibly for two officers, which was not budgeted for by council. Rachford was told by Mayor Dan McGinley that the city was only seeking to hire one police officer at the moment to fill an open position. The position became open earlier in the year when a member of the police department took a job working with the city’s public works department as the city added a fourth public works laborer position. An offer has been extended to
Executive session denied
Alexandria’s City Attorney Mike Duncan advised that the police positions and funding issues council was trying to discuss Thursday, June 25, at a special meeting were not eligible for an executive session, which would be privileged and private. The agenda for the special meeting listed only an executive session for police personnel issues. Minutes of the meeting were kept, but it was not recorded for public access cable television. Rachford, who requested the meeting, said when he was speaking with Mayor Dan McGinley to request the meeting that he was unsure whether it would need to be in executive session or not, but that it was a possibility. McGinley said he asked Rachford to elaborate on the specific purpose of the meeting beyond saying police personnel matters when the meeting was being requested, but Rachford declined to offer specifics. “As it turned out it was not a proper subject for an executive session so we held our little five-minute meeting in public,” McGinley said. one of the applicants for the open police position, and the target start date is July 1 if the offer is accepted, Rachford said. For the upcoming fiscal year, which starts July 1, Rachford said he wants to be as close to budget as possible and avoid having a second year of shortfall, so the possibility of hiring more than one officer concerned him. “I want to try to avoid next year having to amend the budget to the tune of $100,000 or $150,000 or so,” Rachford said. Rachford also said that he
wanted to obtain assurances there wouldn’t be any employee changes, especially hiring beyond the one police officer position, before a new list of the city’s jobs and job descriptions and classifications were approved. Council is having the Northern Kentucky Area Development District develop a set list of job classifications and descriptions of city jobs. The city doesn’t have anything like that now, Rachford said. Currently, positions can be added at the mayor’s discretion. McGinley said after the meeting
that Rachford also asked about the grant the city has applied for from the Department of Homeland Security that would provide full salaries and benefits for two more officers for three years. If the grant is awarded to the city this fall, the city will have to pay for the officer’s vehicles and be required to pay for a fourth year of each of the two officer’s salaries. McGinley said the possible grants and the hiring of a replacement officer are issues that have been covered by council before. “It was all explained in the budget meeting, so we shouldn't have had to explain it,” McGinley said. Council member Barbara Weber said after the meeting that she too wanted more explanation about the police department’s funding. Council is not getting enough information from Mayor McGinley, and until the meeting they had not been told about an offer being extended to one of the candidates for the open police officer position, Weber said. “I’m just tired of hearing about things that involve this town second hand,” she said.