June, Liddy and I enjoyed Christmas and New Years in Germany with our daughter’s family. They live in the southwest of the country near Ramstein AFB where our son-in-law is an Air Force employee.
While we were away, Kathleen Edman let us know that several fence panels had been blown over during the windstorm of December 18th. I suspect that most of our members are not aware that the long fence on the east side of 189th Avenue is the responsibility of our HOA. We are now looking at repair/replace options.
Before leaving for Europe, we met with a real estate attorney to clarify our understanding of how our HOA can recover dues from members who are in arrears with their payments. I have summarized the information we received in this post.
The last HOA member finally paid his outstanding dues just before our departure. He was over five years in arrears. However, he did not pay the penalty that the HOA had assessed for late payment as per our CC&Rs. This member had several complaints, basically saying that the HOA has done nothing for him.
So… I asked our attorney how we should respond to these kinds of complaints. He said that we need to turn it around. We need to ask what we can be doing for our neighbors. We chose to purchase a house in this community knowing it was governed by a set of CC&Rs that define our HOA. We chose to accept those rules by signing the contract. We, as HOA members, need to ask how we can help our neighbors by maintaining our community while keeping our costs down.
Having said, I would like to thank Kathleen Edman for organizing the work party that did some maintenance to Tract C, our community park. Calvin Parke generously loaned a trailer and hauled away some of the trash and debris. Kathleen and Calvin were aided by Sue Cooper, Andy Edman, Brett Lewis, Dan Morris, Lance & McKenzie Nethercott, along with Kevin & Shelly Lindsley.
A great big thank you to all who participated and a great start to this year!