Property & Grounds Committee & Board Workshop

March 15, 2006

Your HOA: The Business of Protecting

 Community Property Values, Part I

A disappointing development—The Board sends the wrong message!

      As Board Workshops go, this particular workshop with the Property & Grounds Committee will most likely go down as a seminal and a disappointing development for the future of the community. When given the opportunity to implement and enforce the CC&Rs to protect property values, the Board said, "No!" Did the Board make a mistake or do we have the wrong members on the Board making the hard decisions for the community?

Do not be surprised as you carefully read the following from our CC&Rs. As with a homeowner’s long standing and enforced requirement to landscape, each owner in Sun City is also required to “maintain his or her Lot . . . as well as the interior surface of any perimeter wall or fence . . . .”  Article 5, Section 5.1.

Recently the Board met with members of the Property & Grounds Committee to conduct a workshop on the issue of fence maintenance. The P&G Committee correctly understood there was a need to address the issue of fence maintenance and did so in making a proposal to deal with this matter. Iron fencing is everywhere in the community, either on or adjoining HOA owned property, adjoining common element property (backing up to streets), between homes at higher elevations, and along the front, side and rear of many homes for one reason or another (swimming pool, dogs, security, etc.). One thing was clear to the HOA and the Committee—fencing is beginning to show signs of wear (paint chipping and the formation of rust) and was beginning to show sign of needed repair. The needed remedy, of course, is to repaint the fence—all tens of thousands of lineal feet of fencing throughout the community. Some members have already done so, while others have done some touch up painting to cover rusted areas.  

The argument for painting all fencing is both need based (to prevent the iron from breaking down, which it will if not properly covered) and economic. The economic argument stems from economies of scale, that is, the HOA should be able to obtain a much better cost per lineal foot than an individual homeowner can for the same service. And who among us really wants to paint their own fence? But just in case, our more adept do-it-yourself homeowners can do just that as long as they follow HOA approved guidelines.   

As envisaged by the P&G, each homeowner would be responsible for the cost of painting:

 1) that portion of any perimeter fence facing the Lot owner’s property, whether along the back or sides of the property and without regard to fence “ownership,” and regardless of who originally constructed or paid for the fence, plus

2) any non-perimeter fencing on the Lot, such as gates and other non-perimeter fencing.

As to what constitutes “the interior surface” of a fence, while P&G originally thought that might be ¼ of the fence, Dea McDonald (for the Developer) said that Del Webb considered that “interior surface” was intended to represent ½ of the fence. 

For any given perimeter fence, an owner would be liable for 50% of the cost of painting the entire fence. For example, say the only fencing on your Lot was along the back perimeter wall and was 75’ long. And that wall was shared by another property owner with a Lot below yours. Under the CC&Rs, each owner is equally responsible for the maintenance of their shared fence, even if the fence is located 10 or 20 feet higher on one property than the other. If the cost per lineal foot of painting the entire fence is, say, $2.00 per lineal foot, then each owner would be responsible for one-half of that amount for each lineal foot of fencing, or in our example, for a total of $75.00 for each Lot owner, or ½ of 75’ times $2/lineal foot.

What is a “perimeter” fence. The “perimeter” of something is the outside dimensions of an area in terms of lineal distance, e.g., feet or yards. For example, a typical lot in Sun City has a perimeter of about 330 feet. A perimeter fence is a fence that separates one property from one’s neighbors. It is not merely the rear fence, but includes any fencing that acts to separate one property from another property. Such a fence may be on your property, on the property line, or on your neighbor’s property. However, under the CC&Rs, the issue of ownership of the fence is unrelated to the issue of who is responsible and liable for fence maintenance since that issue is a function of fence location (not ownership) in relationship to your Lot.  

 What could be more simple? The fencing gets painted, say every 7 or 10 years or whenever that need is determined, and the cost of doing so is then shared:

1) among all homeowners through the SCACAI reserve account for HOA owned and HOA interior facing fencing, and

2) among and limited to only those homeowners with any fencing (perimeter or non-perimeter) on or between their Lots.

Indeed, the P&G Committee must have concluded, here we have an equitable, rational and cost-effective solution to take care of the community’s long-term fencing needs.

So, what’s the problem? For reasons which remain at best fuzzy, the Board turned a deaf ear to P&G’s proposal. While the P&G proposal was not perfect and needed some fine turning, it nevertheless demonstrated a commitment to meet the community’s need. For here in the P&G proposal was a valiant attempt to address and manage a real community need in an equitable manner for all concerned—a need not invented by P&G, but one that was specifically called out and already mandated by our CC&Rs. But when the time came for the Board to step up to the plate and assume some responsibility for the care of the overall community, the Board walked away and turned their back on the community when they were presented with a plan to protect homeowner property values.

If the Board is not going to take any action in this one basic instance to enforce the CC&Rs to protect overall property values, what will the Board do the next time it has an opportunity to enforce other equally important provisions of the CC&Rs? Ask yourself what will eventually happen when as a community your leaders start to walk away from implementing CC&Rs that are designed to protect overall property values. It’s a warning to the community to be especially careful in deciding who should be on the Board. Another question! Do we now have the kind and quality of community leaders on the Board who are capable of assuming this type of responsibility and community-minded leadership? At least for now, many of our Board members have recently answered that question for us.

 So what direction did the Board give to the P&G Committee? The Board was very clear. They told P&G to focus their attention solely on protecting Association fencing and to drop any efforts to protect homeowner fencing. In other words, the Board told P&G to forget about the CC&Rs as it applies to homeowner obligations.

If that kind of attitude prevails in the future, we will be entering a slippery slope of slow decline that will be impossible to reverse. What the Board seems to have forgotten on this one occasion is that in choosing to live in a planned community, people want and our better served when the rules are implemented and enforced, not when the rules are ignored. But then again, our Board would seem to have a different vision for our community. Is their vision your vision?

Ron Johnson

March 22, 2006