The Bellevue Terrace Neighborhood Association

BTNA Newsletter - September 2005

Nov 10, 2005

Presidents Message:
Hey everyone its PARTY TIME! That?’s right, our park will be finished by December 15th this year, and a party is being planed for sometime in January. I?’m working with the City Neighborhood Office to get things rolling. This was promised by the county and city three years ago when we had the ground breaking for the Levi project and I am asking that they keep their promise to us, we deserve it.

I hope everyone had a nice summer and hope you have kept up with the progress of the city and our neighborhood. The 4.4 million dollar parking garage project was stopped, thank goodness, so our money won?’t go for that.

Most of you should have received post cards from the city about the speed tables that will they will be putting on Irving, Courtland, Lockwood Ridge and Greenbrier to slow the traffic down. They won?’t just be globs of blacktop; they will be textured concrete with a brick inlayed pattern in the center. The city feels this will slow the speeders down.

Property values have risen again and again and there hasn?’t been a house in this neighborhood that was sold for under $200,000. We have a nice neighborhood and most of the owners keep their property in good condition but we still have a few that make some streets look bad. PLEASE take some pride in your neighborhood by keeping the grass mowed, trash can put back behind the front of the house and of course NO COMMERICAL vehicles can be parked over night in the neighborhood, (we are still working on getting the no commercial vehicle code changed); These are just some friendly reminders because we don?’t want to see any of our neighbors get fined for not complying with the City Code Enforcement laws.

Don?’t forget to take advantage of the homestead exemption on your home. If you are one of our neighborhood property owners and your house is your primary residence and you live there most of the year and you do not rent your house, you are entitled to file for a homestead exemption. This means that your property taxes will be lower. Your property taxes are figured on an ?‘assessed value?’ of your property as determined by the county. With the homestead exemption, the ?‘assessed value?’ on your property will be $25,000.00 lower - resulting in lower taxes owed by you.

I have helped several of our neighbors apply for their homestead exemptions this past year. If you have any questions please feel free to call me and I will help you with the process.

Our election of officers will be on the agenda for our November 8th neighborhood meeting. I have been your President for 3 years and have enjoyed doing what I could to make this a safer and better place for all of us to live. I have accomplished just about all I wanted to do for the neighborhood and would like to see someone else take over as president. I will stay on as a board member but it is time for someone else to take the helm. Please think about what you can do for everyone in Bellevue Terrace and please come to the next neighborhood meeting on September 13th and also the one on November 8th for the election of our officers.

I guess this is my continuation of yelling about the FIRE WORKS!!!!!!!! It is illegal to set off fireworks in our neighborhood. There have been several reports of damage being done to pool cages, screen rooms, automobiles and other property caused by fireworks being set off by some of the people in our neighborhood. Our next celebration will be New Years and the police department has asked us to let everyone know that they will be patrolling our neighborhood and enforcing the NO FIREWORKS laws. So please DO NOT use fireworks this New Years.

The Sarasota County Sheriff's Office has partnered with Watch Systems LLC to provide you with an e-mail alert system to notify citizens of all registered sexual offenders within 1 mile of your home, business, school or other desired address. If you would like to be notified via email when a sexual offender moves within 1 mile from your home - you can sign up at www.icrimewatch.net/ICWAgencySite.dll/EmailRegister.

Hope to see more of you at the meeting on September 13th. We need your input if we are going to keep our neighborhood a great place to live. Please come and talk with us and find out what is happening in our neighborhood as well as our city. Meetings are always at my house now so many of you are close enough to walk.
Mickey - President BTNA