Academy teaches ins, outs of HOAs

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Academy teaches ins, outs of HOAs

Submitted by Admin on Tue, 06/20/2006 - 7:15pm. CAI

CAI Youth Groups?

Students learn how to deal with violations.

Mary Lou Youngblood one day hopes to protect her community from pink lawn flamingos, gaudy solar panels and decreasing property values.

Erin Zlomek | The Arizona Republic

The Surprise resident just bought a house from Fulton Homes and plans to get involved with her neighborhood's homeowners association board.

To prepare herself, she enrolled in Surprise's Homeowners Association Academy last winter. Registration for the academy's fall class begins June 29. The six-week course teaches the fundamentals of HOAs, said program coordinator Ruby Sitea.

Constant residential growth in Surprise creates a need for the class, Sitea said. More than 32 HOAs exist in Surprise. With the recent addition of 10 new housing developments such as Veramonte, Marley Park and Desert Oasis, the number of HOAs in Surprise will continue to grow, Sitea said.

Students in the class learn how HOAs make rules concerning parking, house color, vegetation and building structure. They learn how to conduct meetings, work with management companies and enforce rule violations.

The goal of any HOA is to protect the neighborhood's property values, Sitea said. Unfortunately, many new homeowners do not pay close attention to HOA rules when they move in.

"When you buy into a community, you are buying those rules," Sitea said. "They come with the deed. Some people say, 'Oh I can live with them (the rules),' until they get their first violation and realize, 'Oh, I can't park my car on the street, paint the house shocking pink or build a two-story playhouse for the kids,' " Sitea said.

HOA board and committee members commonly enroll in the class, as do residents, to learn about their rights as homeowners.

Dealing with violations is one of the stickier lessons taught in the class.

"I've seen so many HOAs go in and give fines here and fines there," Youngblood said. The biggest mistake, he said, is that some HOAs try to strong-arm people rather than bond together and work as a community.

To teach about violations, the class invites guest lecturer Curtis Ekmark, a Scottsdale-based HOA lawyer.

His best advice to HOAs is to use every possible alternative before taking a violating resident to court. He suggests holding conferences with violators and discussing solutions before assessing fines.

Academy graduate Jerry Piper, who sits on his HOA's architectural committee in Sun City Grand, takes a long-term view of his HOA's mission.

"If in 30 years, after I've passed, my community is still beautiful and you want to live here, I will have done my job," said Piper, who is in his 60s.

http://www.azcentral.com/community/westvalley/articles/0621gl-nwvhomeowners21Z1.html

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Perhaps mandatory

Submitted by Raunstar on Tue, 06/20/2006 - 7:22pm.

Perhaps mandatory associations will pass new rules requiring mandatory enrollment to the HOA Academy.

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I can see the little 'brown

Submitted by Voir Dire on Tue, 06/20/2006 - 10:25pm.

I can see the little 'brown shirts' goose-stepping through the common area now.

This ranks right up there with women's studies and sporting goods science.

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"HOA board and committee

Submitted by Anonymous on Wed, 06/21/2006 - 9:17am.

"HOA board and committee members commonly enroll in the class, as do residents, to learn about their rights as homeowners."

Rights as Homerowners?! LOL! 6 week course? I takes 5 minutes to tell owners that they have no rights.

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Yea, I want some HOA

Submitted by Anonymous on Wed, 06/21/2006 - 12:04pm.

Yea, I want some HOA attorney teaching me how to rat out my neighbors and how to live their lives according to the rules made up by some anal retentive jerk-off with no life. Yea, tell me where to move to right now so that others can make my life perfect according to their standards. And to the guy in the article that stated that after he dies, his community will be beautiful, they can bury him in the common areas as fertilizer for the flowers that hide the truth of the ghetto's produced by these developers with only money in thier eyes and profits dancing through their heads. Here come smore socialism in the form of housing. No one wil lhave anything different than the other. It sounds like a collective living group in Soviet Russia.

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Ah but don't you see, this

Submitted by Raunstar on Wed, 06/21/2006 - 12:25pm.

Ah but don't you see, this is a "spring board" if you will. We start with an academy where adults voluntarily sign up & pay to be taught how to live like socialists. Then we start mandating enrollment for all of our communities by amending our CC&Rs, or just adopting rules, this will bring us more profit.
Then with those profits, we open a Middle School, where we can send our children for more of this brain-washing education. Even mandate their attendance, why not! Say, all children over the age of 5 must attend at least one class per week. Then we can add some extra-curricular classes, such as "how to measure your neighbors grass from 10' away"; Class materials will include little "paint swatch sticks" for easier comparison to ensure your neighbors paint hasn't faded to a different shade of color. From those profits, we can install our own emergency violation number such as 666. Since 911 is already being used by the localities. We'll put radio chips on every home, every car, and every individual, so that we can quickly find & track the perpetrators who dare to laugh out loud in the common areas, or dare to enjoy a barbeque in their back yard. We can hire a team of enforcers to rush to the offending party's locale and issue tickets & fines for too many guests, parking in the street, or just being noticable.
We are only now getting started, but with the middle schools training our bright children to this way of life, they will be truly powerful socialists by the time they are grown! Well versed in the attitudes, mantras and the idea that life is nothing but rules & regulations. The real beauty... Never again will strangers ask our children "what's your favorite color?" and get an answer. Our children will stare blankly at them, and reply, "What is color?"

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Rauni, Exactly WHAT are you

Submitted by Anonymous on Thu, 06/22/2006 - 8:47am.

Rauni,

Exactly WHAT are you talking about? Do you really know anything at all about the Surprise HOA training sessions? From the article, it sounds like they've followed suit with GLendale. I attended the Glendale training program and found it to be a wonderful source of info on how to effective manage an HOA.

And profits. What profits? The Glendale program was free at the beginning but now charges a nominal fee of $50, which goes to the city. No one is talking about amending CCRs to require this training; however, I do believe every board member should partake of it.

Because you are dead set against HOAs and would like to see them abolished, you have a very warped view and find sinister motives for anything designed to help board members better understand their obligations.

Perhaps you should just stay in your HOA free zone and leave the business of HOAs to those of us who live in HOAs. To fill people's heads with the garbage you posted above is simply outrageous, to say the least! I know you're entitled to your opinion, but I'm also entitled to mine.

Mary

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I am not bound to please

Submitted by Raunstarr on Thu, 06/22/2006 - 2:31pm.

I am not bound to please thee with my answers.

William Shakespeare

I did never know so full a voice issue from so empty a heart:
but the saying is true 'The empty vessel makes the greatest sound'.

William Shakespeare

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I know you're not bound to

Submitted by Anonymous on Thu, 06/22/2006 - 4:18pm.

I know you're not bound to please me or anyone else with your answers. In fact, I'll be the first to admit that you are entitled to your opinion. But speaking of "empty vessels", that's exactly what your opinion is. Your characterization of the Surprise HOA training sessions is devoid of any first-hand knowledge and full of ridiculous innuendos.

From Horace Mann (a noted educator and statesman):

"Ignorance breeds monsters to fill up the vacancies of the soul that are unoccupied by the verities of knowledge."

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I know this is an old post

Submitted by Robert Metcalf on Tue, 09/11/2007 - 10:45am.

I know this is an old post but I just had to comment. HOA school - are you kidding?! Mary, what is wrong with you? Is life in an HOA so foreign when compared to life in a democracy that it requires classes? If you answer yes you better sit down and think long and hard about just what that implies. Let me ask you this. Would you support a statewide private government? I mean think how great it would be, no more messy "constitutional rights" to screw things up. Beige vinyl and perfect green lawns for 100 miles in every direction. Jesus Christ!

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HOA Nut House