As you’ve heard from your board repeatedly over the past year, one of our top concerns is safety of our community. Safety can mean a lot of things, ranging from external access and gates, to the slick roads and snow removal we’re currently working through now.
Recently, we’ve heard some concerns that emergency vehicles may have difficulty getting to all homes, especially in our cul-de-sac area on Saphire. We take these comments very seriously as we all live together in our community and want to ensure we all feel safe and secure in our homes.
From that, we contacted Spokane County Fire District 9, shared our homeowner concerns and asked them to do a drive through of our community to ensure we are meeting and hopefully exceeding the emergency expectations.
Yesterday evening one of the firefighters contacted us after driving through our community with their emergency vehicle and the shared that the emergency vehicles had no issues driving through the cul-de-sac and believe it provides much better access to homes than having snow pushed to the edges. They also made sure we had access to fire hydrants, and reported no problems. Additionally, we were told that they do not see snow pushed in the middle of a cul-de-sac commonly in our area and think it is a wonderful idea. They will be providing this as an option for other cul-de-sacs in nearby neighborhoods when asked.
As we’ve said before, we do want to remind homeowners to not park on the sides of the roads during a snowfall, and parking in the turn-around easements is strictly prohibited.
We hope this alleviates the concerns brought to our attention, and as always we welcome constructive feedback and comments while we work through any and all items that the HOA oversees for our community.