HOA owns/runs water & sewer; can we cut off property owners who refuse to pay dues?

Our HOA owns the community water pump, distribution system, and sewer system, including a wastewater treatment plant. Most of the time -- no problems other than staying abreast of problems before they develop and making certain operators are properly certified and permits applied for -- and received in a timely manner. Well, when I write it all down maybe there are problems, but nothing the board hasn't been able to deal with.

That is beside the point, however, since we have some property owners who are using our sewage system AND water system without paying their monthly assessments, which at $95 per month are hardly prohibitive.

In any case, as our property owners sell their homes and move out we, the board, have been considering adding a water shut-off valve, with tamper-proof lock, to each of home that is thus sold. We have the right to access any and all property for the purpose of working on water and sewer lines, so trespass shouldn't be a problem.

We would first amend our covenants to reflect that we would have the right to shut down water service if or when property owners are three months late in making their assessment payments.

Do any of you see any problems with taking this route toward trying to eliminate the nonpayment of assessments and also liens on properties that are later foreclosed upon.

So, in other words, there is nothing we can do to collect our assessments?

These people never use our amenities. In fact, they constantly disobey even the smallest prohibitions we have. The man is -- or was -- a contractor who owns several trailers. We have a restriction against parking trailers on our green spaces (common ground). He has parked there for the past 12 years and, since we know he is half-crazy, and probably would resort to violence should he be confronted, we have never forced his hand and made him stop parking there.

Needless to say, we are glad that he has been foreclosed upon, and we cannot wait until he no longer lives here, although he is not responding to the real estate agent's entreaties to vacate the premises so Lord knows how long he will be here.

It just seems like once a person is ensconced on a property with a HOA that they are home free, especially if they do not avail themselves of any amenities.

These people are the worst, too. They don't even pay for trash removal. They haul it over to a neighboring HOA and dump it in their trash dumpster. We have heard from the property manager over there about it, but if we can't make them toe the line here what chance does he have of making them do so there?

We could shut off the water to the non payers in our HOA when we had 1 shared water meter. However, the power to do that was in our documents. Your CC&R's have to state in there that the punishment for not paying your dues is loss of this service. Since you are all the sole provider and not a public utility, it may be possible to adapt this rule. A public utitlity most likely could not.

It is best to place a lien on these properties for unpaid dues. We had a 6 month a policy in place. If you don't pay in 6 months it was an automatic lien. So it is time to insitute a policy so that you all can start enforcement.

I believe in most states utilities are regulated. Usually, utilities can shut off services to customers that have not paid their bills, but they must follow state regulations. I would expect that if the HOA controls the utilities, such as water and sewer, the HOA would be subject to the same regulations as any other utility.

In other words, you need to check your state laws to determine what you can and cannot do, and what steps, if any, you must take before turning off any service. Best to seek the advice of a lawyer.

Good luck. It will take the membership to vote in those changes into your CC&R's to be able to do this. Ours required a 90% vote of the membership to modify/update the CC&R's. There are some as high as 100%. Just to give you a heads up this will not be just a board vote situation. You also may have to have a special meeting to gather the votes. However, there are ways around that your lawyer can guide you through to be able to go door to door. It is also a good time to update the documents anyways. Especially if you are no longer under the developer's control. You want to make sure all references to the developer/builder is out of your documents including any voting system they may have had.

It took us over 2 years to get our documents changed to NOT be able to shut the water off. That is because we changed over to having separate water meters instead of owning the one meter. It saved us money that way. The cost was atleast 2 to 3 thousand dollars for legal, filing costs, and tracking down signatures.

Brian's back on his game! ; )