Reporting Rules Violations

I did a lot of research on this. Most residents want to remain anonymous and would never sign their name to anything that can come back to them.
If you have a Property Manager, they should take the complaint and investigate the stituation themself or if you have committee, such as the ACC, they should check it out.
The bottom line is, who ever signs the violation letter should be the one seeing it.
I would take this one step further, take pictures during the drive through inspections. If you are going to start imposing fines you need to have as much information to support your findings. ALSO, this is a BIG one!!! Do not go and inspect one complaint. You need to make sure the entire street, section or block in inspected. You do not want to have someone accuse you of singling them out. If they try to take you to court, you need proof that you were not bias. Trust me, it will happen and you need to protect yourself and the association.
We had this happen. An African- American family received a violation letter. They contacted the Board and wanted to file suit, claiming the were singled out because of their race. Our attorney asked for all of the inspections that were done that day. We had proof that they were not singled out and could show that other residents received letters for the same infraction.

I guess what I need to know is if the homewoner sends an email to report a violation is that ok?

For us, e-mails are 100% accepted. They're printed and kept on file. But we do require that the sender identify themselves.

Emails are absolutely okay.

And we not only do NOT require people to identify themselves, (just as none of our local regulatory authorities like animal control, zoning enforcement, police department don't), we will always ALWAYS strip any identifying information off the report once we load it into our database.

Because the second step of our process is to always have a board member confirm the alleged violation, homeowner identification is not necessary or needed.

A violation is a violation, regardless of who points it out. And since it must first be confirmed (we do not sent letters blindly), it's entirely moot.

Renee,

The PM does not have the authority to fine violators, only the BOD has this authority. However, the BOD may pass on this duty to the PM, but IMO the violation notice should be signed by the board Pres or stamped "By authority of the BOD" or some such other statement to show that it's coming from the board.