Hello HOA Community, 

I met a few of you on zoom at the annual meeting this year and some of you I know from living at Rockridge Manor since 2011, but many of you I have never met.

This year it has been my privilege to serve as board president of the HOA. 

As such a difficult year in the world comes to an end,  I wanted to share a nice HOA moment. 

As you all know, in September, we purchased the land under the Rockridge Manor pool and upper deck. Coincidentally, both the deck and our pool heater also reached their end of life this year. As a result, our  maintenance staff replaced the deck with a brand new redwood deck.  On Thursday, December 18th, we had a new pool heater installed. On Saturday, December 20th,  I decided to take a swim to test the new heater.   

With the air temperature in Oakland in the mid-40s, it was encouraging, but not surprising, to see steam rise off the water.  For years, the pool has been heated, but unless you were a proud member of the polar bear club, it was a pretty tough undertaking in the winter months.  

With the pool lights reflecting waves off the white wall of R3, the redwood deck surrounded by holiday lights, Rockridge Manor looked like a resort.  As soon as I jumped in I felt a sense of bliss, rather than cold. We now have a pool that is not just open year round, but is swimmable year round.  The water is actually warm.  After doing laps for a while, I slowed down and took it all in, doing a backstroke looking up through the big old redwood tree at the night sky.  Oakland has a lot of beauty and a lot of hardship. I was glad to be on the beautiful side of Oakland tonight. 

So we have a warm pool on the cold nights of December and we will be saving on gas bills because the heater is 96% efficient.  

For those of you who don’t live here, the lobbies in our buildings also look very nice with the new, much more stylish, mailboxes, the pretty holiday lights and decorations and the 45 inch lobby flat screens which run a looping slideshow of information about our community with a picture in picture of the surveillance camera feed just outside so residents can see what’s out there before they step into the night  Hopefully, we will share some photos in the coming days.  

Anyway, as 2020 comes to a close, I wanted to write to all of you and wish you a happy holiday after a very tough year. 

Let us all pray that 2021 is a better year.  

All the best,David S Santamaria
Rockridge Board President
Rockridge Manor HOA