Each year one WHCCA board member serves as coordinator for Landscape & Garden. The coordinator manages the landscape maintenance of the islands, ravine, and entrances to Whispering Heights and Collingwood. This person also plans and supervises the Spring cleanup, which is normally held on a Saturday morning in April.

Starting in 2002, WHCCA began paying a professional landscaping company to maintain some of the common areas of the neighborhood which were not maintained by the city (basically the entrances and the ravine). Part of your dues go to pay for their services.

If you have a concern or suggestion in this area, please contact the current coordinator. Also, look for information in the Whispers newsletter about the date for the next Spring clean up event and come out to help!

Landscape photos from the neighborhood

If you would like to contribute landscape photos, please contact the webmaster.

MAILBOXES

Mail box shelter upgrade project (completed 2007)
The neighborhood owes a great deal to Dick Lee and Dennis Fleck, who created and for several years have doggedly pursued an ambitious program which has improved the appearance and value of the neighborhood. They managed, encouraged, and facilitated (and in many cases actually carried out) the repair and refurbishment of needy mail box shelters in the neighborhood, aided by other volunteers.

Ongoing repairs and rebuilds of mailbox shelters
Even though mail box shelter maintenance and repair are not legally the responsibility of the WHCCA, since 2007 the organization has managed the ongoing as-needed repair for the common good of the neighborhood. Large rebuild jobs (such as enlarging a 5-box shelter to support all locking mailboxes) may require the neighbor-owners to chip in labor and/or money, and it is always nice if the beneficiaries of WHCCA resources have actually been paying their voluntary dues! If you have a problem with your mailbox shelter, contact a current board member.

Locking mailboxes
If you are concerned about mail security, you may want to purchase a locking mail box. The WHCCA has arranged for a group discount on locking mailboxes (model Pinnacle #1022) with a Hillsboro, Oregon firm, Davis Tool. The discounted price is $115, and they may be ordered by calling 877-968-4827 (ask for discount D15 for Whispering Heights Collingwood Community Association). At this writing, the $115 price even includes next-day UPS ground shipping. This company is offering a remarkable discount, and only does so for our neighborhood and one other. Thank you, Davis Tool!

A local source for locking mailboxes is family-owned Security Safe & Lock, Inc, in downtown Bellevue (www.security-safe.com). They offer the same Pinnacle mailbox, though at a substantially higher price (ask for the 10% WHCCA discount off the 2012 price of $160). They also can provide installations and perhaps even stanchion modifications.

Locking boxes are larger than the standard non-locking ones, but at ~11.1 inches in width, they should fit four to a shelter if there is no center post. Some shelters in the neighborhood have the center post and some don't. If a center post exists, then it has to be cut out in order to support four locking mailboxes. The inside measurement of the shelter itself is 44-45 inches, after the center post has been removed. Below are examples of configurations used in the neighborhood. In a pinch the "outgoing mail flag" can be removed to reduce the width somewhat, though it is riveted onto the mailbox.

Numbers for new mailboxes
As you can see from the photos below, many different styles of numbers have been used on the locking mailboxes, reducing their attractiveness. The WHCCA has purchased batch of 1" high labels (black on white background) which are available at no charge on request (contact a current board member). Of course if you are adding a locking mailbox to a shelter which already has locking boxes with a different color or style of number, please try to find matching numbers at a local store like Lowes, Home Depot, or True Value Hardware.