Dear LMPA Cur­rent, Past and Future Members,

Our vibrant lake com­mu­ni­ty wel­comes all our new friends and neigh­bors that have dis­cov­ered our “lit­tle slice of heav­en”. Look­ing back, 2018 was a busy year for the LMPA. We con­tin­ued to work close­ly with the Town of Hop­kin­ton Board of Select­men appoint­ed, Lake Maspenock Aquat­ic Veg­e­ta­tion Con­trol Man­age­ment Advi­so­ry Group (Advi­so­ry Group), who reports to the Direc­tor of the Depart­ment of Pub­lic Works (DPW). As you may recall, this group was formed three years ago to work hand-in-hand with the Cer­ti­fied Lake Man­ag­er (Con­sul­tant) and con­cerned cit­i­zens to cre­ate a com­pre­hen­sive man­age­ment, con­trol and mon­i­tor­ing plan for our lake. The plan can be found on the LMPA web­site at www.lmpa.org.

In keep­ing with the plan, two exten­sive weed sur­veys were con­duct­ed in the spring and fall by the Advi­so­ry Group. Fall sur­vey results showed a sub­stan­tial increase in weed growth. Every three years, the lake is eli­gi­ble for an extend­ed draw­down, this year being the third. Work­ing togeth­er, the DPW and LMPA request­ed from the Con­ser­va­tion Com­mis­sion (Con­Comm) an extend­ed draw down to be con­duct­ed this last fall. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, con­cerns of los­ing access to water from one prop­er­ty own­er on the lake result­ed in Con­Comm deny­ing the extend­ed draw down request. The Advi­so­ry Group, DPW and LMPA are com­mit­ted to work­ing with the prop­er­ty own­ers and Con­Comm to seek res­o­lu­tion to this issue pri­or to next fall. In the mean­time, the Advi­so­ry Group will con­tin­ue to explore oth­er poten­tial weed treat­ment meth­ods, espe­cial­ly for the high growth and recre­ation­al areas.

Our annu­al meet­ing was held at Ko’s Sushi Bar and Grill and proved to be a night with good atten­dance and great input from our mem­ber­ship. At this meet­ing, Mal­colm Page who served as Pres­i­dent for many years and par­tic­i­pat­ed as an active mem­ber for many, many more, stepped down from the Exec­u­tive Board. We thank Mal­colm for his ded­i­ca­tion and ser­vice to the LMPA and for all that was accom­plished dur­ing his tenure.

The social com­mit­tee had a very active year and we thank them for their hard work and cre­ativ­i­ty. The long stand­ing win­ter social evolved into the Spring Fling last April and was held at the Hop­kin­ton Coun­try Club. This event proved a great suc­cess with over 100 mem­bers attend­ing to enjoy a night of music and danc­ing while catch­ing up with friends, meet­ing new neigh­bors, and enjoy­ing great appe­tiz­ers. We tru­ly hope to see every­one again at this year’s Spring Fling. We encour­age all to check out the enclosed fly­er and pur­chase your tick­ets early!

Oth­er com­mu­ni­ty events host­ed by the Social Com­mit­tee includ­ed Fam­i­ly Fun Day where once again Ani­mal Adven­tures was a huge hit with the kids.    Fun was had by all par­tic­i­pat­ing in the sand cas­tle build­ing con­test, play­ing games and of course enjoy­ing good food!  The 4^th of July Boat Parade was brought to anoth­er lev­el as boat own­ers showed out­stand­ing cre­ativ­i­ty with the Sweeney’s boat win­ning the trav­el­ing prop tro­phy for their Ski Nau­tique turned into a tub with bub­bles for… “some good clean fun”. We held our 3^rd Annu­al LMPA Corn­hole Tour­na­ment with out­stand­ing mem­ber­ship par­tic­i­pa­tion lake wide. Sev­er­al new hous­es vol­un­teered as host hous­es for our 24 teams in this dou­ble elim­i­na­tion event. Spe­cial thanks for those host­ing and to the Sweeneys for again host­ing the finals and after par­ty. This year we held the 3^rd annu­al Chili Cook Off/Tail Gate Par­ty with Rich Shep­hard win­ning best tra­di­tion­al chili and Ryan Jones best untra­di­tion­al chili.

Safe­ty and stew­ard­ship of the lake con­tin­ued as we worked with the envi­ron­men­tal police to offer a free boat­ing safe­ty course to mem­bers and the pub­lic last spring. Boat­ing safe­ty is a pri­or­i­ty and we encour­age all  our mem­bers, neigh­bors and boat own­ers to “self police” our lake. If you observe peo­ple com­pro­mis­ing safe­ty, please speak with them.   Water qual­i­ty checks are con­duct­ed three times a year in mul­ti­ple loca­tions around the lake. These results are post­ed on our web­site and demon­strate con­sis­tent­ly that we have a healthy lake. We held two high­ly suc­cess­ful lake clean up days, one in the spring and one in the fall. A big thanks to Harvey’s for donat­ing the dump­ster. A new addi­tion to our com­mit­tee efforts is the “Lake Wise” pro­gram being head­ed up by Cyn­thia Esthimer.

You may have noticed a new look for the LMPA. A big thanks goes out to LMPA mem­ber and design­er, Mark Camp­bell for design­ing our new logo! We have incor­po­rat­ed this logo onto our LMPA gear that will be avail­able to pur­chase at events and peri­od­i­cal­ly through­out the year. Our LMPA com­mu­ni­ty is thriv­ing and con­tin­ues to grow.  Dues are $35 annu­al­ly or $65 for a two-year mem­ber­ship, payable by check writ­ten out to LMPA and mailed to 6 Downey Street Hop­kin­ton, MA or via the Pay­Pal link on our web­site at www.LMPA,org. In an effort to be envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly and cut down on costs, we strive to com­mu­ni­cate elec­tron­i­cal­ly. If your email changes, please let us know by email­ing lmpa.org@verizon.net.

As this let­ter reflects all our accom­plish­ments as a com­mu­ni­ty of ded­i­cat­ed vol­un­teers, we hope you agree 2018 was a great year for the lake! Look­ing for­ward to 2019, we ask mem­bers to remain cur­rent in your mem­ber­ship, encour­age friends to join as mem­bers (You don’t have to live on the lake to join!) and par­tic­i­pate by get­ting involved in our many events and vol­un­teer oppor­tu­ni­ties. We have oppor­tu­ni­ties to vol­un­teer on sev­er­al com­mit­tees includ­ing the His­tor­i­cal Com­mit­tee, the new “Lake Wise” pro­gram and Social Committee. 

We invite you to check out pho­tos from all com­mu­ni­ty events that can be found on our web­site at www.LMPA.org. Also found on our web­site are events post­ed for 2019 such as the new “Light up the Night” event.  Please check it out and mark your cal­en­dar. Take some time to check us out on Face­book and be sure to “like” us to stay informed of updates and events. As always, we look to our mem­bers to take advan­tage of oppor­tu­ni­ties to vol­un­teer for events and on committees.

We thank you for your sup­port of the LMPA, look for­ward to a great year in 2019 and hope to see you at the Spring Fling!

The Exec­u­tive Board and Offi­cers of the LMPA