Since we last left our hero....

Sorry for the lack of updates, but really, they're all quite boring. First and foremost, the Case of the Chocolate House remains resolved. El Presidente, in a near panic, called an "emergency" meeting of the board to further the issue. Turns out, Mr. Applesauce got kind of pissed that his color was denied, while Mr. Chocolate gets no comeuppance. He called the management company and proclaimed that the ACC denied him because he's Mexican.

Hilarious, I know.

So, I went to this meeting, rehashed my color theory on the ACC. Not-the-treasurer wasn't liking this theory at all. I brought color samples from the hardware store of all the popular exterior paints, and argued that they're all sufficiently compatible. She wasn't buying that either. I suggested that the architectural control board then choose a set of colors to enforce, or back the hell off. She kind of liked the choosing from a list idea.

El Presidente's inspiring leadership through silence drove me to then reveal my Grand Plan for enforcing deed restrictions. I got them to agree that the deed restrictions were not in place to act as convenient weapons that neighbors can use to bludgeon each other with. They're there to prevent me from building a 1:2 scale replica of Godzilla breathing fire in my front lawn, or from painting my house in a swastika motif.

They bought that, so I dove into my propsal: The HOA should act to enforce covenants if and only if we get a petition from at least 5% of the households that such an enforcement is necessary to preserve property values and/or neighborhood quality. If some individual homeowner, like Mr. Applesauce, felt there was a covenant violation, they can pursue it in court on their own, since according to the deed restrictions, they all may be enforced by "any member."

Amazingly, they bought this too, and so I adjourned myself out of the meeting after El Presidente wrote it down to send off to the management company to send to Mr. Applesauce.

This seems perfectly reasonable to me. It would be basically impossible to get 31 homeowners (out of our 630 homes) to sign off on anything but the grossest of violations, and it's these massive violations that actually may decrease home values.

So, that was that. Mr. Applesauce is still pissed, but I've talked him off the racist ledge, and told him the truth -- when he applied, it was a very different board controlling things. Now that there's an anarchist on the board, it'll be a lot harder to get the board to pursue legal action.

Oh, and I moved again to lower assessments to $40/quarter. 2-to-1 against.

On to other issues I've toyed with over the last couple weeks:

The Lawn Lottery

So, in order to keep you abreast, here are the other issues that have popped up since then, over the last couple weeks.

Once a week, the management company representative drives through the neighborhood to note the street addresses of ugly lawns. I have no idea what criteria she uses to gauge offense, but she has admitted that her reports account for about 80% of the total lawn violation reports. Citing the new "five percent rule," I moved that we get the management company to knock this off.

El Presidente and Not-the-Treasurer disagree. They appear to want to enforce a 5% rule only sometimes, or maybe just this one time. Rather than trying to parse the logic, here's the quote from El Presidente:

I do not wish to stop the drive by's because there are a lot of people in the neighborhood who do not like to call to complain because they feel like they are "ratting" on their neighbors, but still want something done about the situation in a non-confrontational manner.

I thought I just convinced them that this is not the kind of thing the HoA should be involved in....

Lawn Lottery: Tested

Someone complained this week that the violation reports on his lawn are insane. He mowed on the 18th, and got a violation dated the 20th. He wants the board to waive the fine. I responded as you'd expect. It's been three days, not a peep out of the rest of the board. I should follow up on that, and reiterate my position against the lawn lottery.

My fame grows...

Apparently, this blog is being read by clutch of Internet people who hate HOAs as much as I do. This is the kind of issue that attracts a lot of kvetching, so it's to be expected. Here's a link that got sent to me today (which reminded me to post on my own damn blog): http://www.thehoaprimer.org/. It's a fine primer, though a little heavy on the hyperbole. But who isn't? :)

I suppose I could publish an e-mail address to attract more correspondence, but really, blogger.com has a perfectly wonderful commenting system. If you want to talk to or about me, do it there. The comments aren't moderated (except for spam of course).