Article Courtesy of The Tampa Tribune

By SUSAN M. GREEN

October 17, 2004  

Now it's an allegedly illicit flower bed.

George Gould, who lives in the 179-home Estates at River Crossing community of Bloomingdale East, is being sued by his homeowners association over verboten blue jasmine.

``I can't believe it's over something so silly,'' said Gould, a retired Navy lieutenant commander for whom guarding the home turf has taken on new meaning.

Last month, the Estates at River Crossing Homeowners Association sued Gould in Hillsborough Circuit Court over a patch of blossoms and ground cover that measures about 5 feet by 10 feet. The association claims Gould was not maintaining his lawn as required by the subdivision's Declaration of Covenants, Conditions and Restrictions.

The suit asks for ``injunctive relief'' valued at more than $15,000.

River Crossing attorney Gary Schaaf said homeowner association lawsuits sometimes seem to target ``minutiae,'' but they're really about preserving the groups' rights to enforce restrictions that help maintain property values.

Gould recalled last year's publicized flap over flagpoles, in which some Bloomingdale Village residents were threatened with fines if they didn't remove the poles and hang Old Glory from wall mounts.

"These things are about intimidation,'' Gould said.

Not true, Schaaf said.

"I hear that in practically every case I bring,'' he said. ``I have no reason to believe there's any personal animosity against Mr. Gould.''

Schaaf said home buyers pay higher prices in deed-restricted communities, and they're entitled to protect their investments.

"You don't have to worry about people painting their house purple or putting up really high fences or hanging their laundry out,'' Schaaf said.

Gould said it's really a privacy fence, not flowers, that raised the homeowner association's ire.

He said he installed the fence shortly after he bought his home in April 2003. It meets all the requirements spelled out in the covenants, he said, but he did not seek permission from the association's Architectural Control Committee.

"I had no way to contact them,'' Gould said. ``There was nothing in any of the paperwork I'd received.''

Once the fence went up, Gould said the association's contracted community manager told him the board's president, who lives a few blocks away, didn't like it. He said he was asked to move the fence back on both sides of the house to encircle only the back yard.

Gould said he wanted to enclose as much of his corner lot as possible to allow pets to exercise and to screen a bathroom window that faced the street. He said he spent $300 to have the fence moved back on one side.

``We were trying to get along,'' Gould said.

He said he drew ire, though, when he attended an association meeting and asked why the small subdivision is shelling out more than $1,000 a month for professional management when larger neighborhoods get by with volunteers. He said association members pay dues of $195 a year.

He also questioned why neighbors, including association President Adam Roth, are allowed to keep portable basketball hoops in their front yards when they are banned in the covenants. Roth could not be reached last week.

Community manager Rick Pitrowski said Friday the declarations pertaining to basketball hoops were poorly written and can't be enforced.

Gould said the lawn was dead when he bought his house. He and his wife, Kathleen, repaired most of it, but one sandy spot stubbornly resisted seeding, plugging and sodding.

After consulting with landscapers and a county Cooperative Extension Service agent, the couple gave up on grass and planted flowers. Gould said association members told him last spring he didn't need permission for flowers. Schaaf said those kinds of informal interpretations of covenants don't hold up in court.

Pitrowski declined Friday to discuss the lawsuit or the current condition of the Goulds' yard. He said the Goulds were sent warning letters about their lawn in January, February and April. He showed photographs taken in May of patchy brown spots: one by the driveway and the area now occupied by the flower bed.

"This is not acceptable in a deed-restricted community,'' he said.

Gould said he has been paying $80 a month for yard maintenance. The yard crew didn't show up for two weeks last spring, and then the yard went untended for one week during the recent spate of hurricanes, he said.

Letters from the law firm that represents River Crossing arrived in June and July. The letters complained that the lawn had died but did not mention the flower bed.

Gould said the first complaint he received about the flowers was in the lawsuit.

SEE: LETTER TO NEIGHBORS

SEE: Homeowners' Association Declares War On Dissent