Article Courtesy of The Herald-Tribune

By Tom Lyons

Published April 20, 2016

When Nicole Onorato bought a house in Lakewood Ranch in 2012, she barely noticed one feature.

A thin, black, curvy metal decoration hung in the V-shaped space over the garage door, where it was visible from the street but easy not to see.

Onorato says she didn’t notice when she supposedly got a letter about it in August of 2013, from her homeowner association. The letter said the decoration would have to be removed.

She did see the follow-up letter in December of that year. It included a threat of a fine if she didn’t comply.

Onorato was not at all attached to the ornament. She had to look to see what the heck they were even talking about. She was fine with getting rid of it.

But she had a new baby at the time and was recovering from a C-section, and wasn’t yet married, and didn’t really know who to call for such a small and silly task. So she didn’t jump right on it. She couldn’t climb a ladder just then.

But she sent a letter asking for a little time. She got no response, but managed to find a friend to do the job. Four weeks after she got the letter threatening a fine, she says, the ornament was gone.

She might never have thought about the whole thing again if not for the letter she got a few months later. It had news she can’t forget: The HOA said Onorato owed the association $12,266.

The bill was based on association rules that allow a fine of $1,000 per day.

The HOA had already filed a lien on her house.

Argh!! Shocked and dismayed barely covers her reaction. Onorato had never fought the association over that little metal thing. She just hadn’t realized the geegaw was such a time-urgent matter, especially since it had apparently been there for a long time before she bought the house.

“They’re nit pickers,” she said. She knows that. But even so, she can’t believe they would try to soak her for so much money over something so trivial.

That was before she learned that, in 2014, the association collected fines from members that totaled a bit more than the officially listed and budgeted expectation of $3,500. The total reported: $66, 738.

Onorato now also has to pay lawyers she hired. But Hosea Horneman and Michael Belle have negotiated for a major reduction of the fine, after first being told that the delay in payment had upped Onorato’s HOA bill to nearly $20,000.

The current offer from the association : A mere $3,000 fine plus a few hundred in costs. What a deal!

She hasn’t yet decided to take the offer. Her lawyers says there is a good chance that, if this went to court, a judge could agree with their assessment that the fine is unreasonable even though the letter of the HOA contract seems to allow it.

That route would be risky.

I can only present this as another cautionary tale. Anyone who agrees to be ruled by an HOA like that one needs to take heed. It isn’t just contrarians and rebels who run expensively afoul of the rules. So can anyone not quick enough to realize even the pickiest violation is an emergency.