Article Courtesy of St. Petersburg Times

By STEPHANIE HAYES
Published May 28, 2006

WESTCHASE - They're the law of the land in Westchase. They ensure the grass stays trimmed and house colors stay calm.

They're deed restrictions. And this week, they brought Ernie Sylvester and a handful of other homeowners out to the streets. They held signs encouraging neighbors to vote "no" on a huge revision of deed restrictions that has been in the works for more than a year.

"I'm trying to reach people that do not look at their computer that often, and I'm just trying to do it on a grass roots kind of level," Sylvester said.

Westchase's deed restrictions have been under reconstruction since March 2005.

It has been a big undertaking. The goal was to take out references to the community's developer, which doesn't have governing rights over the community anymore; and also to remove redundancies, change outdated rules and add new ones.

For example, if the package is approved, a late fee on association dues would increase. Awnings and weather vanes would be banned. Homeowners could string up lights at Halloween.

That doesn't concern some people as much as a couple of other things - for one, a proposed change that could make it easier for a small group of neighborhood representatives to make changes to the rules.

"Typically, when we're going to do things that affect people's money and property, we should make those changes to be very difficult," Sylvester said.

Ruben Collazo, the chairman of the five-person deed restriction committee, said there is a misconception afloat. The change would not give total control to a few people, he said. It would just make it easier to tweak details such as which house colors and types of fences to allow.

Some homeowners are also concerned about a provision that would ban anything not specifically mentioned in the documents.

Sylvester gave the example of hurricane shutters. Could anyone have predicted the popularity of those 10 years ago, he wondered?

"If we sat here all day long and put down all the things we wanted to do, we probably could not think of the things 10 years from now that may have changed," he said.

Even though the majority of proposed changes are not controversial, residents can't vote "yes" on one thing and "no" on another. They have to vote once on the whole package.

"I would hate for people to think that we reject these proposed changes outright because of our potential 'no' vote," said Ruth D'Eredita, who also questioned two items in the documents. "That's not true at all."

Tish Dietrich, who is on the deed restriction committee, said the fact that residents are speaking up is a good thing - it means they are participating in the process.

"I would like to see the community sit up and take notice, read the documents and ask questions," Dietrich said. "If they're not sure that the answer is right, send it back, get involved in the next meeting, and ask some questions."

D'Eredita said it would help if the committee provided an official, clear-cut summary of the changes. A 67-page red line proposal and 50-page clean proposal are posted online at www.westchasewow.com.

"People are busy," she said. "We all get so much junk mail, and it is so difficult to comb through all that in a timely way."

D'Eredita proposed a three-column summary: the old rule, the new rule and the rationale for changing it.

But, "there are so many changes, a summary would be almost as big as the document itself," Collazo said.

Collazo emphasized that the restrictions can still be tweaked before they are finalized. If they don't pass, though, they'll have to go out for another vote.

Homeowners have to send their ballot to the property manager's office by June 23. If they don't vote, their village representative gets to do it for them.