Speed Bumps

Started by AnnaA • 20 replies • 2136 views

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AnnaA (California)
Posts: 15

Posted:

I have lived in a small association with 140 single family homes since it was built 22 years ago. It is a gated community in the hills away from businesses. Our Board is talking about putting in Speed Bumps. It has come up once in the past and most people did not want them. This new Board said that they have received some request for speed bumps because of speeding in the neighborhood. This request, they said, came from letters and verbally. This issue came up in our 1st newletter from this Board on the second page. THE FIRST PAGE TALKED ABOUT RAISING OUR DUES! The board is requesting that we put in writing why we do not want speed bumps if that is our position.

I think they are ugly, bring the property values down and do not stop teenagers from speeding when they are under the influence which is the only time I hear speeding in the neighborhood, in the summer on Saturday nights (we just call the poice). Some of use are also afraid that there could be a liablity if someone gets hurt because of them.

Has anyone had any bad experience with Speed Bumps in their association?

Thanks

KirkW1 (Texas)
Posts: 1,665

Posted:

I would recommend that you put together some information on speed bumps. If you search Google you will find quite a bit of information on the subject.

To be honest, there are questions of how well they work and the intrusiveness of them in making them effective.

DanaB1 (Connecticut)
Posts: 319

Posted:

Anna,

You bring up several items that I'd like to touch on.

You mention that your "new" board is talking about installing speed bumps AND raising fees. Question is.......what happened to your "old board"?

Does this "new" board want to raise fees due to the fact that your association has no money saved for expenses forthcoming due to the associations age? (Read into this lack of reserves.)

As far as the speed humps go......... you are a gated community so this one is easy. You have found the enemy and they are "you". Believe me when I say it's not just the young kids on Saturday night that drive too fast. Put a lawn chair behind some shrubs and watch your neighbors "fly by" on their way to work, soccer games, grocery shopping, etc. Everyone is guilty of driving fast and those that complain the loudest about speed humps going in are the ones that don't want to be slowed down.

Note that I said speed humps and not speed bumps! Speed humps are a gentle rise and fall of asphalt over about a 3 to 5 foot length tapered up to a height of about 5 or 6 inches and tapered back down. These "humps" don't ruin a car nor are they jarring like a "bump" is. They work so well that we have towns in our state that are using them because they work.

There are times when boards have to make decisions and do things that people don't like but the board has to do it for good of the community as a whole. Putting in speed humps or raising fees are two of them.

In our community many years ago a speeding car hit a child on a bicycle, now a couple of years ago the speed bumps were taken out for good. Now here we are with a "new" board and we owners are complaining of speeders; since we are a cut thru road we are also looking at gating off one end.

My choice is to put the humps in. You are right, insurance companies feel they are a liability; but I have yet to hear of a car that lost control going over a speed hump. But I do know of speeding vehicles hitting people.

Good luck,

Dana

AnnaA (California)
Posts: 15

Posted:

Danna,

Thanks for the info. To answer some of your questions...I am not sure why the Board is raising the dues. I am on the Architechal Committee and go to all the meetings. We have over $250,000.00 in reserves. At the last minute they cancelled the annual meeting last month so we didn't have a chance to ask nor can we figure out at what meeting they discussed speed bumps since we go to all of them. This is something that should of came up in an open meeting, correct? By the way, they want speed bumps, not humps. I live right in front of the main gates and I am home most of the day. There is very little speeding at my position in the neighborhood, I do teens not stopping at the stop sign in front of my house and they also speed off, also the UPS guys do the same. I couldn't tell you what goes on in the middle of the community. We have a very lacks Board that wants a "sense of community" and doesn't want to fine CC&R violators, so we have a lot more problems to solve than speeding. Just to give you an example, we found out that the Board was trying to have our community go private so the police would stop patrolling at night because 2 of the Board members liked to park on the sidewalks and got 3 tickets. When the community found out letters poured in to stop them from doing that because we wanted has much police exposure as possible. Again, the discussion to go private never came up in an open meeting, the only reason I found out is that our rep happened to mention it to me when we were discussing an ARC situation. Very Strange.

SusanW1 (Michigan)
Posts: 5,202

Posted:

Yikes - why was the Annual Meeting canceled? The Board had no right to do that, and the Members could have met without the Board being present, anyway.

We have had the speed bumps, then took them out, then put them in, and now don't have them. They wrecked the road along the edges and the installation and removal for snow plowing was an issue for us, too. They did not seem to help with the issue of speeding, at all.

We called the local police and asked for additional presence on the roads. We also had one of those big speed indicators on the road for a few days. That seemed to help. We also encourage people to call in the license plate number of speeders

Clearly, your board would be smart if they polled the Membership and really found out how it feels about the issue.

MaryA1 (Arizona)
Posts: 7,043

Posted:

Anna,

I don't like speed bumps and whether or not they slow traffic is really unknown. There are other methods of doing this which can be discussed with the traffic engr. dept of your city/co govt. In some jurisdictions, installation of speed bumps must be approved by the F.D. as they can be a medical danger to patients being transported in emer. vehicles. Because of this, the newer type speed bumps have an opening in the middle for emer. vehicle access only. B/4 sending out surveys to the members I would suggest checking w/local govt about other methods to slow traffic and also if approval is required b/4 installing speed bumps.

DanaB1 (Connecticut)
Posts: 319

Posted:

Anna,

See, I learn something new everyday. I would have thought that your roads were private and not public. Here in my town all of the condo's roads are private and the police do not patrol them.

Dana

AnnaA (California)
Posts: 15

Posted:

Danna, I am not sure exactly how it works, but I know that we are not completely private. We have opt to put a sign outin front at the gates that states the all applicable laws apply within our community and that gives the police the right to patrol, which we want. We still have to take care of the streets and curbs on our dollar, but not the city lights. We can go private and take the sign down about law enforcement, but then we get no police patroling. Maybe someone else in CA may know the legality on this....Anna

MaryA1 (Arizona)
Posts: 7,043

Posted:

Anna,

I don't understand how you can say you are not a private assn since it is a gated community with private streets. IMO, any s/d that is gated is private, meaning access is only granted at the gate. If entry is by key there is usually a way for police and emergency vehicles to enter. If the entry is guarded, I'm sure the guard would wave the police or any emergency vehicle through w/o first stopping them.

AnnaA (California)
Posts: 15

Posted:

Mary, I am not sure how it works. All I know is that when the Board wanted to stop the police from patroling and giving out tickets, I called the Police Department and talked with a Sgt. He told me that some Associations opt to go private in which case the police do not patrol them or give out tickets. We are not private in that sense. We want the police patroling and giving out tickets in our assoication. Maybe I am using the wrong terms or CA has different rules, not sure.

MaryA1 (Arizona)
Posts: 7,043

Posted:

Quote:

Posted By AnnaA on 11/06/2008 7:38 PM
Mary, I am not sure how it works. All I know is that when the Board wanted to stop the police from patroling and giving out tickets, I called the Police Department and talked with a Sgt. He told me that some Associations opt to go private in which case the police do not patrol them or give out tickets. We are not private in that sense. We want the police patroling and giving out tickets in our assoication. Maybe I am using the wrong terms or CA has different rules, not sure.

Anna,

Sorry, but now I'm really confused! First you said: "All I know is that when the Board wanted to stop the police from patroling and giving out tickets. . ." then you said: "We want the police patroling and giving out tickets in our assoication." So, which is it? Is the police patrolling or not? IMO, an assn cannot just "opt to go private"! If the streets are public the assn cannot be private and erect a gate. The key to the whole issue of whether or not the assn is private depends upon who owns the streets.

AnnaA (California)
Posts: 15

Posted:

Ok, lets start again. I guess I am confusing everyone. At a meeting we found out that our Board did not want the police patroling our neighborhood and giving out tickets. The only reason we found out is because it was on the agenda for that meeting. The Board never got to that item on the agenda and closed the meeting. I then asked about it before we left and the president said it was tabled for that meeting. I had to ask again what it actually meant. He said about keeping the police out of the community because some people were getting tickets. The next day I called the Police Dept and the segt. told me that if an assoication goes private and takes down the sign which states that all applicable laws are enforced within the gates, they cannot patrol that community. The few homeowners who were at the meeting immediately emailed their neighbors and the word spread that the Board was considering keeping the police from patroling. The Board received letter objecting to the keeping the police out and wanted the exposure of the police in our neighborhood. It was off the agenda at the next meeting and I asked what happened to it, the Board said they dropped it.

Because this was never discussed in an open meeting either way (discussing doing it or dropping it) I never got all the facts on how it actually works. We do own our streets but not the street lights. Maybe the police laws in CA are different than where you live and in CA they still have the right to patrol if the associations wants them to. Maybe the term "going private" as the Segt. stated was a term that the police dept. used for their internal patroling rules and has nothing to do with the association terms. Remember, the more police exposure the less crime...that is a fact in CA.

Anna

DonnaS (Tennessee)
Posts: 5,671

Posted:

Anna,

Once a community is gated, the police do not patrol or ticket within those gates unless they are contracted by the association to do so. We have a contract with our county sheriff's dept to patrol and ticket. In order to have them do so, we had to increase our speed limits from 20 mph up to 25mph, which is the county standard speed for residental streets. They are patrolled by off duty deputies, in uniform as they are not on regular tax payers roadways . The standar traffic laws are what they follow and at their total discression for enforcement.

I can tell you that this has worked a thousand times better than speed bumps and is a whole lot less expensive. We contract for 10 hours a week at $25.00 per hour. They have ticked several members and we have spent less that $800.00 and they come and go without any prior notification, not even to the Board.

DonnaS (Tennessee)
Posts: 5,671

Posted:

I should add, that yes, they can enter any gated community to enforce any felony problems or respond to emergency calls, like tresspassing, robbery or that type thing but they will not enter gates to traffic control.

DanaB1 (Connecticut)
Posts: 319

Posted:

Anna,

In a nutshell, your main complaint seems to be the way the board handled this situation. It was on the agenda, but held to the next meeting. In the meantime the board received so much flak about it that they didn't even bother to bring it up again at the next meeting.

To me they should have at least brought it up, discussed whatever they wanted to about it and then put it to bed.

Did I sum it up correctly?

Dana

AnnaA (California)
Posts: 15

Posted:

That sums it up for keeping the police out. But we have the same situation with the speed bumps. Never came up in an open meeting, then we get something in our first newsletter, in over 3 years, that they are raising the dues $15.00 a month (on the first page) and then on the second page states they want to install speed bumps. The last Board did a survey a few years ago and got a NO from the community. My orginal question was asking if anyone has had any negative results with speed bumps....then it kind of got off the subject. Thanks Danna

DanaB1 (Connecticut)
Posts: 319

Posted:

Anna, it got off subject due to the fact that you have some very interesting side bar items going on also. LOL

You brought up the raising of the common fee, not me. Is $15 a big deal? I mean all costs are going up shouldn't your budget follow suit? Do they use anticipated actual costs in their budget preparation?

There I go again getting off subject........................NO, there have been no negative ramifications from the speed bumps.

Anna, please realize that owners will say no to two things........... raising fees and speed bumps; but the board might need to do both for the good of the community.

The fact that your board doesn't seem to want the cops patrolling due to their illegal parking I have to admit does not shine a pretty light on your board.

When are you going to move up from committee member to board member?

Dana

AnnaA (California)
Posts: 15

Posted:

$15.00 is not a big deal to me, but it seems that we are having a lot of people not paying their dues on time, not to mention the 3 forclosers. We have people who are over 6 months behind and the rep has to pull the presidents teeth to get him to start proceeders to collect. Very hard times in CA right now. A lot of us feel that if the dues need to go up the Board should only be spending money on what is needed, not to be concidering things like speed bumps since there is no reason to do that right now.

Thanks for your help.....Anna

MaryA1 (Arizona)
Posts: 7,043

Posted:

Anna,

Why is enforcement left up to the Pres alone? This is a board issue and the decision to take action should be made by the whole board, not just the Pres. In fact, there should be a collection policy in effect so that the board does not even have to be consulted until it gets to the point of taking legal action. All the P.M. has to do is follow the policy til it gets to that stage.

AnnaA (California)
Posts: 15

Posted:

Well, that is a long story. To keep it short, let's just say that some people get on Boards because they had issues with other Boards and think they are going to change things, like fines. This Board was kind of hand picked by the president and he calls most of the shots. They are "let us keep a sense of community" Board. Everything has to be run through the Board. The rep cannot automatically send out violation letters after her walk, they need to go through the Board and she mostly get a "no" on sending out letters....so you can see how fining someone would be like pulling teeth. To make it short, everything goes through them, nothing is on automatic. Sometimes our meetings get pretty heated for violations not being taken care of for months and months and months. They say they are sending out letters, but nothing every is corrected.

I wrote a subject on this web site regarding this before and someone came up with a great idea of asking for a talley, ie. 1 letter send for ------, 2 second notices sent for ---, etc.
I wrote the Board asking if we can get a talley of violation letters to calm down some of the heated meetings, but haven't recieved an answer yet, our meeting is tomorrow night. I will bring it up then.

MaryA1 (Arizona)
Posts: 7,043

Posted:

Anna,

Some people just can't get away from micro-managing!!!

Good luck with your meeting.

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