Issuing Fines

Our HOA mandates that garbage cans cannot be visible from the street. A resident was given a warning in February, and then the issue was marked as resolved in March.

Today during the drive-around, that resident had their garbage cans out again. They were immediately issues a second violation notice and fined.

I am a newer member to the board and personally, I don't think this is right since the initial violation was marked as resolved.

Eric

We treat recurring, identical violations (such as trash cans left out) as a continuance of the last violation and we increase the fine accordingly. Also if only a warning letter was sent the 1st time, we will then commence fining upon the 2nd violation even if months apart.

I think fining anyone over a visible trash can is in most cases ridiculous, unless a homeowner is blatantly and repeatedly disregarding the rule and doing things out of spite. Trash cans could be on wheels; they move around; wind and weather move them; kids mess with them; people forget; of all things to be concerned about and with the craziness of things nowadays, a slightly visible trash can ranks pretty low for me.

That said, what does your violation and fine policy say about recurring instances of the same violation?

Personally I think that if the policy and HOA documents are silent on that concept then it has to treat recurrences of the same violation as it would an initial finding of any other violation; with a warning letter and opportunity to fix the problem. The Board/MC can't just decide that it now makes sense to start issuing fines each time the same issue occurs. If that's the desire, then it needs to become part of the policy. That said, I do totally agree that recurring instances of the same violation do warrant an escalation of penalty, it's just that I feel the policy needs to explicitly indicate this for it to be known by all and enforceable.

Do you have a covenant enforcement fining policy? Most declarations aren't going to get as granular as defining how many times in a certain period a violation counts as the same violation. But boards can expand on what is in the declaration with a policy that spells out the sequence of letters and fines, and the window in which a second occurrence of a violation is considered separate or a continuation of the first.

Where is this listed? CC&Rs, a separate Board-adopted policy, rules & regs doc, somewhere else?

As presently written and if it is the only applicable excerpt from your docs, then yes I agree with you that once the situation was initially corrected (and indicated as "resolved" by HOA/Board/MC), then if this violation were to reoccur, then it needs to be considered a new violation which starts the clock and process again.

To your point, since there is no time frame presently on repeat occurrences of the same violation, then in theory this homeowner shall forever be hit with a $25 fine at each instance of them leaving their trash can visible.

Sounds like its time to talk to your fellow board members about adopting a policy regarding what constitutes an ongoing violation.

Thanks for the comments everyone. Our management company goes around to check for violations and then does the follow ups if the violations aren't resolved. After discussion everyone seemed to understand the point I was making about timeframes based on how it's written in our declaration documents (and R&Rs). I believe we will close the grey area on repeat offenses

What exactly do you mean by visible from the street? Are they on the side of the house, or in front of the garage or by the front door? Since our garbage collection went to a single driver picking up trash, our provider gave everybody two cans, one for waste and the other for recyclables. With that changeover, county and local laws changed allowing homeowners to place the trash cans on the side of their house because the cans are wider than 16 inches. Check with your local ordinances before you act.