Homeowners association causes turmoil
By ROBERT FARLEY, Times Staff Writer
Courtesy of © St. Petersburg Times
Published December 24, 2001 

 
It began as a social group, but now the Beacon Groves organization has taken positions that are unpopular and may go beyond its legal authority. 

PALM HARBOR -- Dyan Alexander was one of 10 people who started the Beacon Groves Homeowners Association in 1980. 

"I have regretted it ever since," Alexander said. 

The association was intended as a social club, she said. It held parties and helped elderly neighbors with jobs they could no longer perform. 

These days, it is trying to undertake many more responsibilities, not all of them popular with the 600-plus homeowners of Beacon Groves. Making things more contentious is the conclusion, confirmed by an attorney hired by the association, that the organization apparently lacks the legal ability to carry out at least some of its agenda. 

After its creation, the focus of the association gradually changed, Alexander said. Its members began taking a hard line on enforcing deed restrictions set by the developer. They sent notices to neighbors telling them to move boats from their driveways, repaint their houses one of the three approved colors -- brown, gray or green -- or cut their grass. 

"It became a Gestapo, with people checking over neighbors' fences to see if people had violations," Alexander said. 

In recent years, the association again stepped up its role. The board lobbied Pinellas County to bring reclaimed water to the neighborhood. It proposed assessing all homeowners for a privacy wall along the side of the development where the county is building a four-lane extension to Belcher Road. It made a goal of 100 percent compliance with the deed restrictions. And it told residents the $36 annual dues were mandatory for all Beacon Groves homeowners. 

Those changes began to chaff some longtime Beacon Groves residents, among them Bill Howard. 

Howard contends it is a board run amok. 

"They made one lady repaint her house because it was the wrong shade of green," Howard said. 

What most upsets Howard is that he says association is a pretender to its throne. The association had no right to make dues mandatory, he says. It had no right to go to the county and speak on behalf of all its residents in favor of reclaimed water. And it had no right to enforce the deed restrictions. 

Despite its name, Howard said, it is not a real homeowners association. 

The association solicited a legal opinion from attorney Joseph Cianfrone, who concluded in May that it would require a majority vote by Beacon Groves homeowners to create an architectural review committee with the authority to enforce deed restrictions. No such vote has ever been ever taken. 

Cianfrone also determined the board had no right to impose mandatory dues. 

That left the association in state of confusion, with two major and contentious neighborhood issues looming: a privacy wall along the Belcher Road extension and reclaimed water. 

Outgoing association president Blake MacPherson could not be reached for comment. Incoming president Brad Garey said he did not want to comment on the situation until after he takes over on Jan. 1. 

"Until I'm completely up to speed, I don't want to comment," he said. 

But Garey said he plans to find out what the will of the community is. 

In the end, it might not matter whether a majority of residents wants reclaimed water because it may be coming, anyway, said Todd Tanberg, director of alternative water sources for the county utilities department. 

Tanberg said the president of the homeowners association did come to the county several years ago and say that residents there wanted reclaimed water. But the county's master plan also identifies the the area around Beacon Groves as a future reclaimed water service area. So the county set about to hire an engineer to design the system in Beacon Groves. 

But about three months ago, Tanberg said, he got the first of several calls from Beacon Groves residents who said the homeowners association was bogus, that it did not represent the community and they did not want reclaimed water. 

One resident suggested the matter be put to a vote in Beacon Groves. In some other counties, that's the way it works. But not in Pinellas, Tanberg said. 

The County Commission decides which neighborhoods should get reclaimed water based on which ones would provide the best water conservation benefits, he said. 

The county still intends to bring reclaimed water to Beacon Groves, Tanberg said, but it will be several years before residents there actually see it. Once established, residents would be required to pay $7 per month for 30 years to pay for the cost of installing the water lines. They could also opt to pay $1,500 up front. Those who decide to hook up to the system also will have to pay an additional $2 per month flat rate use fee. 

That doesn't sit well with some residents such as William Dinsmore, who has lived in Beacon Groves for more than 11 years. 

"I'm against the reclaimed water," Dinsmore said. "It's not sanitary in my book." 

Tanberg defended reclaimed water and said that Pinellas County treats its reclaimed water more intensely than state law requires. 

"It is not to drinking water level, but it's not too far away," he said. "There is really nothing to be concerned about." 

Dinsmore also is against the plan to divvy up the cost of a privacy wall among all of the residents in Beacon Groves, even though his home backs up to the Belcher Road extension. 

No one wants a wall more than he does, he said, but that expense ought to be borne only by the residents whose homes abut the new four-lane road. 

The project to extend Belcher Road from Tampa Road to Alderman Road already is under way and is scheduled to be completed in July. 

Homeowners associations typically tackle the job of commissioning a privacy wall, Jim Collins said. It blocks noise, enhances safety and adds to the value of the homes behind it. 

In fact, Collins lives in a neighborhood along a new portion of Belcher Road just south of Tampa Road in which the homeowners association required homeowners closest to Belcher to pay the bulk of the expense, about $2,500 each. Homes one row behind that paid about $600, and the remaining homeowners paid $300. In other developments, the cost of a privacy wall was split equally among all homeowners, Collins said. 

But if there is no properly constituted homeowners association, can anyone in Beacon Groves be forced to chip in for the wall? 

Howard doesn't think so. He said he paid a premium to buy a lot that was farther away from Belcher Road. And where was the association, he asked, when residents whose homes back up to The Fountains, a strip center on U.S. 19, requested a wall? 

Howard had hoped to raise these issues in an association meeting in November. He also came came armed with dozens of proxy votes in favor of dissolving the association. 

But only dues-paying members were allowed in. And no community-wide vote was ever taken. 

Howard now wonders how the association plans to refund the dues paid by residents who paid only because the association said the dues were mandatory. 

"It's just a social club," Howard said.