Article Courtesy of The News
Press
By MARK S. KRZOS
Published December 19, 2008
In one Southwest Florida
gated community the bright and cheery colors of Christmas are not welcome.
Residents living in Villagio at Estero were told recently that Christmas
decorations were against the community’s bylaws and they faced $100 in
fines if Christmas lights and other decorations weren’t removed
immediately.
“We bought a place in Villagio in April 2007,’’ said resident Wayne
Cox, 61. “We put up decorations last year. This year we did the same
thing — we put up holiday lights and then we get this letter stating
that they weren’t allowed. ... We were blindsided. It’s a shame,
because Christmas was always a special holiday and seeing the smiles on my
grandkids.”
Tom Ferguson, president of the Villagio at Estero Condominium
Associations, said he’s left with no alternative.
“We’re just enforcing our documents,” he said. “We’re not
singling out one person or another. If people want to decorate their
lanai, they can do it. They just can’t decorate the common areas.”
This is not a crackdown on Christmas, Ferguson added.
“We decorated the town
center, the boulevard coming into Villagio,” he said.
Putting a Christmas wreath on the front door also is against the bylaws,
but Ferguson said an exception is being made this year.
“It was sort of a compromise,” he said. “Things got really out of
hand last year with these blow-up things and a lot of it looked really
tacky. So at our January board meeting, decorations came up and we said
that next year we have to be more careful and said we’d allow just the
wreaths.”
“It sounds like we’re being Scrooges, but we’re not,” he said.
“I love Christmas lights, and I was one of the first people here to put
up a wreath. We’re just enforcing our rules. People wanted to put
political signs in their yards — but they can’t do that, either.
It’s just about enforcing the documents. Residents told the board that
they wanted more enforcement.”
But Cox and his daughter Michelle Tifft, who is also a neighbor, said the
board was changing the rules in the middle of the game.
“They released an updated rules and regulations handbook a few weeks ago
and there was nothing in there saying anything about not allowing
Christmas lights,” he said. “And there was nothing in any of the
documentation we signed when we moved in here. If it had been there, we
wouldn’t have moved here.
“The rule book states that there is to be no signs, posters or displays
in the common areas,” Cox said. “I don’t see where displays means
lights. When we got the letter, they pointed to that section and added the
word, ‘decorations.’ That word was never mentioned anywhere.”
Ferguson, who maintained Christmas lights are a display, did say that the
community could revisit the rule next year.
Joe Adams, an attorney and partner at the Fort Myers law firm, Becker
& Poliakoff — and real estate columnist for The News-Press, said
condominium associations are within their purview to make such rules.
“If you’re in a condominium association, you don’t own the exterior
of the building,” said Adams, whose firm represents 700 condominium
associations throughout Southwest Florida. “They have no legal right to
install holiday lights on the exterior of a building that everyone
owns.”
While Adams agrees that the word displays means holiday lights,
decorations and political signs, he didn’t see Villagio’s policy as
being out of bounds.
But, Adams said, most condo associations do allow minor decorations for
the holidays.
“They are an elected board and can change the rules at any time,” he
said.
Some residents may have gone overboard last year with blow-up displays and
that could have caused the crackdown, guessed Tifft.
“Still, why couldn’t they have put this in their newsletter and saved
us from putting them up in the first place?” Tifft asked. “We’ve had
these decorations up every year in the three years I’ve lived here.
I’ve had a tough year and was really looking forward to a nice
Christmas.”
For Cox, not having Christmas lights in front of his home is like getting
coal in his stocking.
“I get sick to my stomach when I think about it,” he said. “I feel
like the whole holiday is being stolen from my family.”
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