Should we start an HOA? (And how do we do that?)

Barbara,

What is it your expecting an Association to do for you?

If the individual is violating the deed restrictions, you and/or your neighbors can hire an attorney and seek an injunction against the individual to force compliance.

Private road or not, it's likely that there are county codes that determine speed limits. Then have everyone sign a letter requesting the County Sheriff to enforce the laws on your private property (the Sheriff department can tell you what you need).

To document the issue, you may want to have a camera pointed at the road. This can aid you in the future if an incident does occur.

Barbara,

I have never heard of an "illegal road." Most likely you have a common-law easement and the county wants no part in maintaining it because it does not meet their standards. My association is in Yavapai County and we have over 300 miles of roads that we maintain, also because they do not the requirements for acceptance by the county.

In 2011 Division One of the Arizonaa Court of Appeals issued an opinion that those who use an easement, such as a road, are responsible for its maintenance. The users can be compelled by court order to contribute to maintenance costs if they cannot come to an agreement. Freeman v. Sorchych.

I assume that the those who use the road are already either paying for repairs or doing it themselves. I see no reason why the majority of users could not force the speed demons to contribute a heftier amount due to the damage that they cause. These people have acknowleged in their reply letters that they feel that they can go as fast as they wish, so if it went to court they would have little defense. You do not need a formal HOA to do this and it is unlikely that the speeders would join anyway.

You might want to look into seeing if Pinal County has some sort of air quality department that can post a speed limit for your road. I was recently in a rural area near Buckeye and found a 15 MPH speed limit on a gravel road as there was a rock quarry nearby with lots of heavy trucks. The speed limit sign was put up by the air quality department to hold down the amount of dust being kicked up into the air.

One other avenue to explore is that any one of you or all of you can seek a court order to compel these people to slow down. Just because the road is on private property does not give a person license to operate his car recklessly.

I believe that what Barbara meant when she said "illegal road" is that the current road failed to conform to county codes (unclear if it was codes enforce at the time it was built or current codes). Since the road was on private property, the County didn't care. However, the County will likely never take responsibility of the road until the road is brought up to current code.

My Association has a similar issue. When we asked about the county taking over our roads we were informed that the roads are too narrow to meet code.

Or start maintaining the road.

Step One: Order truck load of gravel.
Step Two: Dump truck load of gravel on road in front of speeder's driveway.
Step Three: Repeat steps one and two as needed.

Oh and I forgot, if any of the properties are mortgaged, you would probably need the mortgage holders approval also, because you are in effect making a major modification to the property they wrote the mortgage on.

I didn't mean to ignore everyone until now -- I was having issues with my phone and had to wait until I was on my computer to log on.

You all are awesome. I'm getting some great ideas -- especially about calling the Department of Air Quality. I know that our private "illegal" roads don't matter to them because they're all about keeping dust down. I'll be chatting with them about official 15 mph signs today. We've asked the county to take over our roads but there's some issue about houses being built on the wrong side of the road or there shouldn't have been houses on both sides of the road or some such thing so they won't touch us.

The way I understand it is that we are unable to have the sheriff's department enforce speeding or reckless driving laws out here because we have "non-conforming" roads (illegal is what we call them out here). Hopefully nobody has been locked up because of them. lol However, maybe just maybe a trip out there with some donuts and coffee might work. We had a Pinal Sheriff who lived kitty-corner to us and he always had his vehicle parked out there. That was nice. We didn't have a speeding issue then. There are a couple of deputies who live out here but they can't enforce the laws because of that whole private road thing. Maybe they could just park a decoy out here... Now there's a thought. The guy who now lives in the home where the sheriff's deputy used to live is a Mesa cop. He's the one who said we should do a letter instead of confronting the guy face-to-face. Personally, if my neighbors felt the need to write a letter to me about something, I would be absolutely mortified. Obviously this guy has no common sense or sense of shame.

We have a sort-of-kind-of HOA right now that was set up by the builder when the homes were built. It's more of an "everyone play nice" kind of declaration than anything with any set rules except for things like easements, shared wells and the like.

The speeder wants to have regular meetings and everyone taking votes and all that. That's just not really the way we do things out here. We're VERY casual and our "meetings" consist of BBQs where everyone just gets together and once in a while some issue will come up like fixing the road or taking care of weeds in the ditch. For the most part though, the homeowners out here are very responsible when it comes to not speeding, not kicking up dust, making sure their homes and yards look nice -- all the things people who take pride in their homes do whether someone's telling them to do it or not. Frankly, we're hosting the next BBQ and we really don't want this guy at our home because he seems like the type who takes no responsibility for his actions and if he got hurt here we'd be afraid he'd sue us. As usual, all of the other neighbors have been invited but we're NOT going out on a limb and inviting this guy or his equally speeding wife or girlfriend or whoever she is.

We would prefer to not have to go through an attorney; however, this guy is such a menace that we may be forced to do that. It really stinks when someone doesn't have basic common sense and common courtesy to the point where hiring a lawyer is actually an option.

We actually have a neighbor who owns a dump truck that he hauls gravel with. I'm kind of liking the idea of dumping an entire load in front of this guy's house. That's evil enough to be right up our alley (we're really nice people until someone pisses us off then we get really redneck lol). I think we could get it for a good price, too. Have the guy dump the load and then tell the speeder it's his part of the road maintenance to spread it because the rest of us bought it. lol That's a seriously delicious idea. lol (Gee, dude, sorry you can't get out of your driveway without an earthmover! lol)

Unfortunately, not maintaining the road really isn't an option because it would hurt the rest of us -- especially during the monsoon season. This guy lives toward the end of our road and most of us live toward the beginning of it. Our road used to be really bad but then the neighbors banded together and made it the nicest one out here. We're getting ready to put in a new culvert at the beginning of the road (one neighbor is donating the culvert, another is donating his heavy equipment skills and the rest of us will help pay for everything and man the shovels). When it gets really bad out here, even the trash trucks won't come down this road because they don't want to tear it up. That's pretty sad when the trash companies think of things like that but a neighbor who actually LIVES on the road doesn't.

Anyway, thank you all for the great tips and ideas -- keep 'em coming, please. I'll be speaking with the department of air quality as well as the sheriff's department today. Hopefully we can get something going without having to involve a lawyer.

Good idea! I do believe one of the neighbors brought up those nail-down types of speed bumps. I can only imagine driving over one or two of those in my dually and keeping my kidneys attached (even going 2 mph) but it would be worth it. Thanks!

Take a look at the chicanes at http://trafficcalming.org/measures/chicanes/

There are several chicanes around Phoenix ranging from very elaborate curb modifications to simple rows of T-posts sunk into the pavement. From my own experience, they do work quite well while allowing vehicles of all sizes to pass through. And I like them because there are no speed bumps shaking my old car to pieces.

You could get the same results with a few well-placed boulders, piles of gravel, large potted plants, or some abandoned cars on concrete blocks.