Reminders for Lakeport Owners and Residents

Maintenance of the Exterior of Your Home: If you are contemplating maintenance involving possible changes to the exterior of your home, be sure to check Lakeport Cluster Standards. If a relevant Lakeport standard doesn’t exist, you need to follow the appropriate Reston Association (RA) Guideline. Links to Lakeport and RA architectural requirements, the DRB application, discussion of RA’s counterintuitive party-wall rules, and resources for landscaping and replacement trees (required by RA if you remove a tree) are all available in Section A of Documents on the Lakeport website at https://www.lakeportcluster.org/p/documents.html.

Contractors: Please ensure that your contractors do not leave building materials (especially nails that may puncture tires) on your driveway or on the nearby street, both during and after their work. Also make sure they do not dispose of building material or clean their paint brushes on common property.

Maintenance Resources: Be sure to review the Home Maintenance Checklist in this issue for smaller maintenance projects that could save you major expenses and headaches in the future. And remember that RA has arranged with Sherwin-Williams for a discount of 30% to 40% off paints and stains (exterior and interior) and 15% off paint supplies at Sherwin-Williams store #3385, located at 495A Elden Street in Herndon (703-471-1484). If you want to take advantage of the discount, the code is 2214-8496-7. Washington Consumer Checkbook is an online publication (www.checkbook.org) that offers a huge user-friendly database of reviews of many types of local service providers, along with high-quality advice about how to approach selecting and working with them.

You Must Replace Any Tree You Remove: If you plan to remove a live tree on your property, you need approval from Reston Association. Furthermore, if you will remove or have recently removed a tree (dead or alive), RA requires that you replace it with another tree, preferably a native. See https://www.reston.org/DocumentCenter/View/915/Trees-in-Reston-PDF?bidId=.    

Party Walls: Although sometimes counterintuitive, the RA Deeds make the repair of any architectural element that falls on the property line between two houses (e.g., wall, trim, fence) a joint responsibility. If you aren’t sure whose responsibility it is to pay for the repair or replacement of a shared wall or trim, please see https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxSpjzCTaI6Jd0xnbEZEcEhLT3NiWjRKODNlZDBtTWdRdTBJ/view for information relating to party walls.

Drive Slowly: Even though school has started again, neighborhood children are outside, playing on sidewalks and in the streets. Please remember to drive slowly and keep your eyes out for children (and other pedestrians), who are not always thinking first and foremost about their own safety.

Lock Your Cars: If you park your car outside, be sure to lock it, and do not leave valuables visible, especially at night. Also remind guests to do the same. 

Report Suspicious Activity: If you see suspicious activity, don’t confront anybody but instead call the Fairfax County Police non-emergency number, 703-691-2131 (use this number also to report vandalism or any other crime that has already occurred). The police request that even if you just have a “gut feeling” something is wrong, please notify them with as many details as possible. It is helpful if you can also take photos unobtrusively. Police will be dispatched (or you may be able to provide a report over the phone). Also notify Lakeport’s Neighborhood Watch coordinator Chuck Foster at chuckfost@aol.com.   Please pay special attention to suspicious activity or sounds near the Lakeport dock, in the woods, or at night. For more information, see the “Neighborhood Watch” article in this issue of Ripples.

Visitors: If you have visitors whose car will be parked in common space for more than one night, put a note on the dashboard with your name and address and the dates the vehicle will be parked in Lakeport so the car is not towed.

Glass Recycling: Please remember that glass is not included as part of regular weekly recycling pickup. Therefore, do NOT put glass of any kind in your recycling bin! Lakeport residents have two options to recycle our glass:

1. Free glass recycling is available at Fairfax County Purple Bins: https://www.fairfaxcounty.gov/publicworks/recycling-trash/glass. The closest locations to Lakeport are at Reston South Park & Ride and at Baron Cameron Park (Wiehle & Baron Cameron). 

 2. A company called Glass Goat Recycling offers glass recycling with pickup for a fee. See Bi-Weekly Glass Pickup for details

Composting: If you are tired of smelly trash cans and want to reduce the amount of garbage you send to the dump, consider signing up for the compost pickup service offered by Veteran Compost DC–From Combat to Compost, which will turn your food scraps into high-quality compost. The company provides a bin, which has a sealing mechanism that is very effective at trapping odors inside and is picked up and replaced once a week with a clean bin (currently very early on Thursdays). The discounted group rate for residents of Lakeport is $28 per month. For more information, see https://veterancompostindc.com/ or call (202) 556-3806.

Help Keep Our Community Clean and Beautiful: Please contribute to the appearance of our community by picking up trash anywhere you see it while you’re out walking and enjoying nature in Lakeport (and elsewhere).

Geese: We continue to experience problems with goose droppings on our dock and grassy common areas, though reduced from earlier. We are paying Complete Landscaping to apply FlightControl, which appears to be effective in deterring (but not harming) the geese that eat the grass next to the dock. Please do not feed the geese (not only does this attract them, it’s not healthy for them), but do feel free to shoo them off the dock (just be sure not to harm them or allow them to attack you—we just want to make their time on our dock unpleasant enough that they will choose to hang out somewhere else!). It would be appreciated if you could help sweep the dock (there are brooms behind 1939 Lakeport Way that you are encouraged to use). 

Never Again Be Late Paying Your Quarterly Assessment: If you’ve been contacted by the Board for not paying your assessment as the end of the quarter nears (or even if you haven’t), please consider paying your quarterly assessments by direct debit through your bank instead of mailing a check or paying on TownSq (which incurs an extra fee). Using direct debit means that you never have to worry about incurring late fees because you forgot to make the payment ($35 in 2025, plus the $25 administrative charge from SCS for sending the letter). Alternatively, you can pay the entire assessment at the beginning of the year. Either approach means the Board does not have to spend time contacting you or to pay SCS for mailing quarterly statements to owners who have not set up direct debit or prepaid. A third option for avoiding late fees (but you’ll still get a quarterly statement, which costs Lakeport money) is to use your bank’s electronic bill-pay option to set up recurring checks. For information about any of these three options and for mailing checks, go to https://www.lakeportcluster.org/p/hoa-fee-payments-lakeport-cluster-hoa.html. 

Update Your Contact Information: Please go to the Lakeport Directory https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Dd35xTaOFcRAm758jlDi67JygUpJtgiJ/view  (PW=lakespray) and check the contact information listed there for your address. If a correction is needed (including removing the name of a former resident), either 1) send an email to webmaster@lakeportcluster.org and copy along@scs-management.com or 2) fill out the form at https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfFILfWGBoWIgWlBPSQmIKj4kIX0kPA7XsRjnsaOsNXuvVSkw/viewform. If your home has renters, have them fill out the form so they will be listed in the directory. Remember also that if you need to contact a neighbor or just remember someone’s name you have forgotten, you can always check this directory.