Lakewood Improvement Proposals
📊🧮We would like to inform residents of the opportunity to suggest projects or improvements around Lakewood with the Lakewood Improvement Proposal form. This form can be found under our ONLINE FORMS SECTION to download and fill out. These can also be picked up at the LPOA offices. 📑💡
LIPs can look like a number of different things—You take your walk everyday through a large, open area of common ground. Each morning you say to yourself, “There should be a bench here…and maybe a tree”. Come July, you’ll remember the LIP Form that’s been announced and you submit your request to LPOA to install a bench and plant a tree along your favorite walking path. Then you wait. Maybe you already know the process. Maybe you assume that your request will be automatically approved. After all, how expensive can it be, right? I mean, how much trouble can it be to get a bench and tree planted? Next year rolls around and you wonder when you’ll see the bench and tree.
The answer to whether or not you’ll see a new bench and tree while out on your walk is both complicated and simple. Lakewood’s Facilities Development Committee, who is tasked with reviewing our capital improvements budget, will begin meeting in August and start the process of sorting through the requests that were submitted in July. These requests, submitted by members, committee’s and staff, will have a price tag of 10 times that allowed by LPOA’s budget. Improvement projects must be carefully considered and analyzed for level of importance and urgency. Items concerning safety, or those necessary to the operation of the association will be considered first. Many factors are taken into consideration. Can we do without it? What percentage of membership will benefit from it? Does it make financial sense to replace it now, rather than a year from now? Does it fit into Lakewood’s overall budget? These and many other questions must first be answered before the final draft is presented to the Board in November for approval.
We know that the bench and tree that was submitted may be less important, overall, than the necessary replacement of a pleasure dock. But, that doesn’t mean that it gets any less consideration. Even if it doesn’t make the cut for next year’s budget, FDC also forecasts out for a 10 year span. The bench and tree could be placed on a future budget for consideration. So, don’t despair.
As always, if you ever have questions about the process, please feel free to contact any of us.
Sean Bachtel
LPOA Director of Community Relations
816-373-4343
sean@lpoa.com
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