re: Lakeside Villas Complex: Dead Dog In Lake ( WBRZ is covering tonight at 10)

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Lakeside Villas is a great place to live if you love dead dog carcasses and duck poo.

We have been here for a number of years. The maintenance used to be swift in their response to issues, but over the last year (2016-17) they have refused to tend to even the most serious of problems.

I'll start with the ongoing saga of the dog carcass since it is the most egregious story of neglect. This is an "ongoing" tale because there is literally a dog carcass laying on the side of the lake as I type and the management has repeatedly refused to dispose of it. I have attached a photo of this dog carcass; be warned that it is a disturbing image.

On Sunday Feb. 5, 2017, my wife and I noticed something in the lake near one of the apartment buildings at Lakeside Villas. It was far enough away from the shore though that it was difficult to tell what the actual object was. My wife thought it was a tire. I thought it was a big turtle shell because of the shape and brown color.

We didn't think much of it because it was mostly submerged. Out of curiosity, I went to check on the object a couple more times over the next few days. On Tuesday morning (Feb. 7), the object had washed up on shore and was then easily discernible as a dead dog. How the carcass ended up in the water is a mystery. Why it is STILL in the water right now ELEVEN DAYS LATER is less of a mystery: Lakeside Villas does not care about its residents or its property.

Upon discovery of the dog carcass, I immediately called the apartment management and left a voicemail. I then later went over to the office and reported the issue to them in person that day. I returned again the next day and told them when still nothing had been done about it.

The dog carcass was STILL in the water near the shore as of Friday (Feb. 10) and was super bloated and gross looking. I spoke to another resident that day who reported it to the management as well.

On Sunday morning (Feb. 12), I went out to see that the dog had washed up on shore and the carcass was laying on the land about 5 feet from the water. It looked like someone had just dragged the dog out of the water and left it there.

I went back out to check on the carcass in the afternoon and someone had wrapped it up in a white plastic bag. I, wrongly, assumed that animal control had come and wrapped it up and was coming back to grab it later that day. But Sunday rolled on and that carcass just lay there all day baking in the sun. It smelled too disgusting to approach at that point.

So Monday arrived and, while the carcass was still there in the morning, it miraculously disappeared sometime around noon. I later saw one of the maintenance workers pouring bleach on the ground where the carcass had been laying for the previous couple of days. So I figured that the maintenance workers had finally done their job, disposed of the body, and were cleaning up the area. Once again, I was mistaken...

I didn't think anything more of it until I saw a post on an internet discussion forum by another resident of Lakeside Villas who said that he had seen the carcass floating in the water. They even posted photos time-stamped for Feb. 15, 2017. I went to investigate this morning (Feb. 16) and was disgusted to find the dog carcass was indeed in the lake again.

The other resident said that, when he reported the issue to the apartment management, they told him they were, "going to let it float around until it sinks." So it seems that the apartment maintenance actually pushed the carcass back in to the water rather than dispose of it in a sanitary and proper way.

People fish in this lake all the time. There is a "nature trail" that parallels the lake's edge and the dog carcass is laying just a few feet from the trail. Residents who want to take a walk outside cannot do so without having to look at and smell this dog's dead body.

As shocking as this story may sound, if you had lived here as long as we have, you would understand it is really not so surprising given Lakeside Villa's trending history of indifference. This dog carcass episode is just icing on the trashy cake.

The grassy areas of the complex are minefields of dog poo. At one point, a trash can was tipped over for weeks and the trash (including dog poo bags) was just laying on the ground. They have stopped refilling the dog poo bag dispensers. Some people lost their cars in the August 2016 flood (the east and part of the south portions of the complex flooded) and some of the flooded cars are still just sitting there. There's a large tree near the entrance to the complex that fell down during the storms last week and it's still just laying there. It was partially laying in the road for a couple of days and I ended up just moving it out of the road myself.

The trash dumpsters overflow literally every week and the ducks rummage through the trash, spreading it all over the place. Some nutria live in the lake and they've started chewing on the trees by the lake so there's just dead trees laying by the side of the lake.

Best of all, there is a dock on the lake with some benches that the ducks like to sit on. The entire dock and the benches are covered in duck poo which is never cleaned [see attached photos]. Even many of the complex's sidewalks are covered in duck poo.

It's kind of ironic that the apartment has "Lakeside" in its name, while the side of the lake is the last place you would want to be.

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