Wednesday, May 30, 2007

GOHOA Problems

My HoA has become a problem recently.

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I have a company vehicle that hardly qualifies as a commercial vehicle. It is a Ford Explorer Sport Trac (have you seen this thing?) Basically its a tiny little truck in which Barbie wouldn't be caught dead. I mean this "truck" (and I use the term loosly) is about as far from "commercial" as you can get!

Anyway- I got a letter a couple months ago that the vehicle, being the GIANT COMMERCIAL vehicle that it is, was in violation of HoA rules, and that I could not park it in the community. So I quit parking it in front of my house, and began parking it up the street.

I also contacted the Community Mamangement Association, and asked them if I could simply get magnets to cover the company logos on the vehicle- the person I talked to at this time said that would be fine. So- I put in a requisition at work for some blank magnets, which had to be approved by my boss, etc. and are finally on order.

Well- to my surprise I got home today, and the truck was gone. So- you guessed it, the truck was towed. Isn't this a little extreme? Do we need a ban on commercial vehicles anyway?

So its not just the truck- its the constant letters telling me to pressure wash my friggin siding, and cut the grass in my FENCED-IN BACK yard. I even had a line-item to replace a missing piece of siding on the back of my house (there isn't any siding missing on the back of my house)

So I got to thinking- I work in HVAC, I know HoA's, Why don't we get a board that actually does useful things. Why don't we do things that we as a community actually want? Why not campaign to create a board that actually provides helpful and useful information to my neighbors? Why not find out what my neighbors really care about like-
1. SAFETY-
a. walkways and sidewalks are in various stages of disrepair and there is poor lighting at night.
b. the dry pond at the end of my street should have a cover over the water pipe inlet- some kid or pet could crawl in there and get hurt.
c. my truck (mentioned above) was broken into over the winter and a laptop and blackberry was stolen sometime in the middle of the night
2. ACCOUNTABILITY- The State of Maryland and Howard County require that financial and meeting records be available to Homeowners.
3. WASTE DISPOSAL
a. why can't we come up with a better way to manage waste disposal? Do you like having to wait until after dark on Thursday to take out the trash?
b. recycling (see point a)
We have rights as homeowners, and I'm really not looking for a fight- I just want to see some "reasonableness" come to our community and for once see some common sense reign in our community.

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1 comment:

Random Jen said...

I dislike HOAs on principle. "My house= my rules" and such. There's a horror novel by Bentley Little about a home-owners association... no real point to that comment besides the point that someone DID write a horror novel about an HOA...