Doing life, blogging about it

so few places remain

where you can exist

We have a public HOA meeting once a month. But sometimes situations arise where we need to vote as a board to make a decision right away (usually involves spend money) via email. That is allowed, but we have to vote unanimously 5-0 in that situation and then we just report it at the next meeting.

So. There is a fence that runs along the border of our neighborhood. It was installed by the developer 30+ years ago, and therefore it is the HOA’s fence to maintain. But. It turns out that the fence itself cuts off access to anywhere from 2-8 feet of our neighborhood homeowner property at various points. It has always been that way (I guess nobody actually knew about that until we had GIS data available? Idk) and in the case of my personal parcel, the people living directly on the other side of the fence (not part of our neighborhood) built a shed on that land that isn’t technically theirs.

At this point, nobody is interested in reclaiming that property. We might not even been legally entitled to it anymore, idk. Doesn’t matter. The actual issue is that there are very large, mature trees on the other side of that fence. Presumably, the developer put the fence where they did in order to preserve those trees. And that’s lovely, except for when we have bad storms and those trees fall down.

So there’s the HOA fence which cuts off property and on that property are large trees that sometimes fall down. And the people living behind the fence (again, not part of our neighborhood) are also very insistent that they have no responsibility for those trees or the fence.

So obviously there has been a lot of conversation about this fence. People have different ideas about what to do. But, as it stands right now, it is the HOA’s fence and we’ve set the precedent that we pay for removing fallen trees and fixing the fence as needed. This is a large financial commitment that we have not properly planned for - something I plan to address as the new Treasurer - and I would also like to do an assessment of all of those trees to remove any that are dead and just waiting to fall and damage the (already old and dilapidated and needs to be replaced) neighborhood fence.

ANYWAY!!! The drama was that we had a big storm over a week ago and a large tree fell and damaged the fence in someone’s backyard. So they emailed the HOA and asked for assistance. We are almost a full four weeks away from our next meeting, so we attempted to take a vote via email to spend the money for tree removal and fence repair ASAP. But this ONE GUY simply COULD NOT UNDERSTAND why we wanted to approve it. He thought it wasn’t consistent with past precedent because there have been discussions about changing the way we handle these situations moving forward. Which, fine. We can discuss that. But we have not made that decision. So we were locked in this 4-1 vote for like ten days going back and forth via email. Meanwhile, our neighbor is stuck with this tree down in their backyard and a broken fence. And if this guy didn’t get on board, our poor neighbor will have had to wait nearly A MONTH for us to inevitably approve it 4-1 at the public meeting. Ridiculous. The back and forth was just asinine and made no sense.

But finally, somehow, he seemed to understand what everyone else was saying? Idk. But he finally agreed and we approved the quote and work order.

Good grief.