September is National Preparedness Month

This September: A Time to Remember. A Time to Prepare.
By Darryl J. Madden, Director, Ready Campaign

This September will mark the ten year anniversary of 9/11 and we ask you to take time to remember
those lost as well as time to make sure you are prepared for future emergencies. September is National
Preparedness Month (NPM), which was founded after 9/11 to increase preparedness in the U.S. It is a
time to prepare yourself and those in your care for an unexpected emergency.

If you’ve seen the news recently, you know that emergencies can happen unexpectedly in communities
just like yours, to people like you. We’ve seen tornado outbreaks, river floods and flash floods, historic
earthquakes, tsunamis, and even water main breaks and power outages in U.S. cities affecting millions
of people for days at a time.

This September, please prepare and plan in the event you must go for three days without electricity,
water service, access to a supermarket, or local services for several days. Just follow these three steps:

1. Get a Kit: Keep enough emergency supplies on hand for you and those in your care – water,
non-perishable food, first aid, prescriptions, flashlight, battery-powered radio – for a checklist of
supplies visit Ready.gov.

2. Make a Plan: Discuss, agree on, and document an emergency plan with those in your care. For
sample plans, see Ready.gov. Work together with neighbors, colleagues and others to build
community resilience.

3. Be Informed: Free information is available to assist you from federal, state, local, tribal, and
territorial resources. You can find preparedness information by: Accessing Ready.gov to learn what to do before, during, and after an emergency Contacting your local emergency management agency to get essential information on specific hazards to your area, local plans for shelter and evacuation, ways to get information before and during an emergency, and how to sign up for emergency alerts if they are
available

Contacting your local firehouse and asking for a tour and information about preparedness
Police, fire and rescue may not always be able to reach you quickly, such as if trees and power lines are
down or if they're overwhelmed by demand from an emergency. The most important step you can take
in helping your local responders is being able to take care of yourself and those in your care; the more
people who are prepared, the quicker the community will recover.

As FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate reminds us, "Individuals and families are the most important
members of the nation's emergency management team. Being prepared can save precious time if there is
a need to respond to an emergency." For more information on NPM and for help getting prepared, visit
Ready.gov or call 1-800-BE-READY, 1-888-SE-LISTO, and TTY 1-800-462-7585 for free information.

This September: A Time to Remember. A Time to Prepar

There's a national level emergency event planned are Condo & Hoa's included

National Level Exercise 2011 (NLE 2011) is scheduled for May 2011. The purpose of the exercise is to prepare and coordinate a multiple-jurisdictional integrated response to a national catastrophic event.

NLE 2011 is designated as a Tier I National Level Exercise. Tier I exercises (formerly known as the Top Officials exercise series or TOPOFF) are conducted annually in accordance with the National Exercise Program (NEP), which serves as the nation’s overarching exercise program for planning, organizing, conducting and evaluating national level exercises. The NEP was established to provide the U.S. government, at all levels, exercise opportunities to prepare for catastrophic crises ranging from terrorism to natural disasters.

NLE 2011 is a White House directed Congressionally-mandated exercise that includes the participation of all appropriate federal department and agency senior officials, their deputies and staff; and key operational elements. NLE 2011 will focus on regional catastrophic response and recovery activities between federal, regional, state, tribal, local and private sector participants.

Click for more information. 

If you interested in getting your community involved please visit our website and register so we can include your community.

International Community Association 

Distributed Generation Workshop “Generating electricity near where it will be used”

Distributed Generation Workshop “Generating electricity near where it will be used”

Saturday, May 7th 2011

9-130 pm

Walter E. Washington Convention Center

Come to learn about how we can together reduce our utility bills and make DC just a bit greener.

Question for DC At Large Candidates~ Do you or don't you support.

To learn more please look at a blog post we published way back in 2007 about this which means this has been brewing for years and no one has done a thing accept pass the ball on the owners that brought homes in these communities.

State of Communities: Beware of the Ides of March in CIC land.

State of Communities: Beware of the Ides of March in CIC land.: "So if you think about the state of the condominium market right now with both FHA & Fannie Mae basically not able to back loans in what 100 ..."

Community Manager Project: We sent our plan to Startup America

Community Manager Project: We sent our plan to Startup America: "So Friday Feb 11th we where able to pitch our idea to several officials while attending a Tech@State event at the State Departme..."

DC Electric: District Public Service Commission Pepco hearing T...

DC Electric: District Public Service Commission Pepco hearing T...: "We have to start with the fact that Pepco doesn’t recognize homeowner & townhouse associations as a Party of Rights*. This is evident by loo..."

Storm Water Ponds are back! Everyone run it's an unfunded mandate.

This caught our eye and we know what has to be done and why is it won't be solved in Maryland or any other State anytime soon.   In the 1999 Clean Water Act there was a provision for Storm Water Management Pond testing and standard levels that must be maintained.    The only problem is that no one ask or even thought for one minute about who owns the majority of them.

Did you guess?  If your read our StateofCommunities.org blog you sure would know the answer.   Common Interest Communities are the owners of these in most cases.  The Congress that decided to establish the testing and maintaining of these ponds~ don't have to pay the bills in these communities.  We're pretty sure that most CIC have no idea about this, most Counties are scrambling to comply with the State's demand, and the FEDs are fining everyone.

Here is the major issue. Almost no one has put all the pieces to the problem together into workable solution.  If the Associations don't have the funds and most will not even have a clue about this issue how are they going to fix them. Another Special Assessment because the Congress stuck them with an UNFUNDED MANDATE

BTW all to often these ponds where already environmental hazards created by the developers. Which once they reach the magic number of units sold leave they get to turnover the community, aka they bugged out. Leaving a new group of homeowners with a lot responsibility including these ponds. The cycle just gones on because of the nature of board turn over,  new local officials and a lack of any communication plan.

BTW the Gov response is to fine them except in the case of Montgomery County and we believe a possible solution.

Way back in 2001 then Montgomery County Chairman Ike Leggett had the vision to put together legislation that allowed the County to fund a program in which the County could enter into an agreements with these communities to take over roles mandated by the Clean Water Act. We recommend that anyone that is serious about cleaning these ponds take a look at it. BTW all new CICs in Montgomery County are required to have this agreement in place.

We think the hallmark of this was a parthership with Community Paperworks and the Department of Environmental Resources. It was established to help with the assembling of the land records, communication to the associations, running meetings to approve the agreements. In some cases extra work is required because the developer many not have deeded the land over to the community or the records where never filed in the first place.

This is something that clearly is still vexing Maryland and every other state and it is time to look into this solution that what  established in Montgomery County and both the International Community Association and Community Paperworks look forward to working with all officials and CICs;  So that Clean Water is not an unfunded mandate and a working solution is co-created.

Maryland’s Montgomery Council hearing on Pepco 2/7/2077

Considering 3 out of 4 homes in Maryland fall within a Common Interest Communities “CIC” (aka Condominium, Cooperative Single Family Homeowner & Townhouse Associations.)  and utilities specifically electricity is one of the largest budget item all CIC’s face. This is a huge issues to these communities and considering the cost bore by them as rate payers and the treatment they presently receive, or lack of it, from Pepco we need to get them some help.

Our partner, Community PaperWorks, Inc. “CPWI” has been working with Montgomery’s CICs  since CPWI opened it’s doors in 1989. Through this long history we have seen whether this is by design or neglect that Pepco doesn’t recognize CIC’s as a Party of Rights.  Where are the representatives to speak on behalf of these Communities?

We at the ICA are specifically interested in plans by Maryland’s public officials with regards to Pepco’s restitution of funds to be paid back to customers and how it will be administered.  In-light of the fact that Pepco treats most of the CIC’s as a hodgepodge of different baskets:

1. Consumer accounts for the owners units,
2. Business accounts for common electrical utilities
3. Street lights are in yet another account  

We worry that Pepco and public officials will by this confusion be prevented for analysing the true cost to the CIC. ERGO, the CIC’s will not get the correct restitution of funds.   

An ongoing tangential issues is that this present system prevents these CIC’s from gaining discounts that energy users of similar aggregation profiles have been getting for years like AOBA, local & federal governments, and of course big business which we believe would improve if Pepco faced a real Distribution competitor in this marketplace while not being discussed today it is an issue and need to be addressed sooner then later.

Until these issues are resolved the Condominium, Cooperative, Single Family & Townhouse Associations will continue to receive a very bad deal. For the amount of money these owners & their CIC’s pay in Pepco bills it would behove both business and community leaders to start working with CICs.  If left in the dark owners will be compelled to vote politicians out for not being “Community Candidates.” As we already saw in Maryland’s last election this is on the ballots even if Pepco is not the politician.

We know that the issues of the day and tomorrow will not resolved until the inequities are identified and made to reflect the highest Marginal Utility of Public Good.   The International Community Association and our partners like CPWI stand ready to work with CIC Boards, Community Leaders, Pepco and Maryland’s Public Service Commission.