enforcing trash policy (Virginia HOA)

If your Governing Documents do not explicitly empower the Board (or whatever the governing group is called) to develop, publish, and apply equally a schedule of fines, compliance assessments, or whatever term may be used, you may not have any enforcement "teeth".

If your association has an attorney, and presuming you are a member of the board and the board agrees, I recommend you put your question to the attorney. If you are comfortable reading legal documents, you may be able to find language which empowers the board yourself. Regardless, I recommend consulting with the association attorney, or retaining one.

In general, if the language is there, the next step would be to develop a schedule of compliance assessments, test with the attorney they are appropriate and reasonable, publish the document, and put it into practice.

In general, if the language is not there, you will have to amend the governing documents to have it inserted. Again, consult with the attorney.

BTW, seek out an attorney who specializes in homeowner association "law". Most general law or real estate lawyers are not conversant with the little niche of heaven which deals with with homeowner or property owner associations legal matters.

Donna,

Being in VA, you are aware that § 55-513 supports monetary penalties providing the CC&Rs or adopted rules authorizes monetary penalties as an enforcement method. Typically, CC&Rs in Virginia do not contain such authorization.

Therefore, you correctly pointed out that enforcement can be difficult for minor violations.

Some things that do help are:

Newsletters reminding individuals that trash can only be set out between x and y hours.

If inclined, direct intervention. I recall shortly after moving into my development, a pile of trash on my front door step with a note asking that I put the trash in a container vs. plastic bags as they were tired of picking up my trash (worked for me, might just tic others off).