Accidental Politician

I accidentally began my political career today.

It all started a couple of years ago when we first built and then moved into our home.  I attended our first Home Owner's Association meeting a few short months after moving in and it felt like the entire group, which consists of 8 homes, was angry with us.  One of our neighbors contended that our purple door was a clear violation of the CC&Rs though the CC&Rs made reference to a color palette that did not exist and had nothing more than vague guidelines.  The president supported their stance.  The road maintenance guy claimed we owed him $500 for extra road repairs made because our contractors damaged the dirt road leading up to our home (despite the fact that our builder had graded the road and added gravel on 4 - 5 occasions throughout the building process at our expense and the HOA never followed the established process for informing us that we were in violation).  It was not a pleasant experience--"...welcome to the community, we don't like your door and you messed up our road and you owe us for work we did without your knowing that you were in violation...."

Various issues arose in the months following.  My perspective became that everyone in the little subdivision had their pet ideas on which CC&Rs should be enforced and which should not.  Several other neighbors had built large barns off of their specified building pads--a clear violation of the code.  Others violated various other rules with smaller issues (e.g., no plaster on the stem-walls of their homes, storage of RVs and heavy equipment in clear view.)  Frankly, I determined that I was willing to let the others do as they pleased as long as they left me and my alleged violations alone.

I determined that sometimes it may be best to become the president of the HOA, even if you don't have political aspirations.

And that's how I became the chairperson of the new Water Planning Committee in our larger community.  Several wells in our immediate vicinity have gone dry.  We have two developments going in adjacent to our property right now.  One of them drilled their well right next to our property line.  Water is scarce here and the drilling company knew that our well produced a reasonable amount of water so they located theirs as close to ours as possible.  Now, we get to share with a whole development of 10 homes, two of which have large open spaces that could be used for grazing livestock where they are likely to irrigate.  Their well is larger in diameter than ours and at almost the exact same depth.  This means that their well is likely to create a "cone of depression" that will almost certainly affect our water flow in a negative way.

My perspective is that our county planning commission has not required enough due diligence of developers in terms of ensuring that existing homeowners will not be negatively impacted by new development.  Rather than wait for someone else to act, I volunteered to fill one of the chairs on the newly formed water committee.  When I wasn't paying close enough attention, the group voted me in as the chairperson.

That's enough for tonight on that subject--more to come.

I managed to squeak out a few minutes to get this shot of the office park where I work at sunset just to work off a little stress from work:

55mm, 1/3rd of a second, f/11, ISO 400, polarizing filter.  My passion for photography keeps me sane.  Period.

Comments

[emptyness]

I would have voted for you to be the chairman. That is where the power is.....use it. Wake these dodos up and get them on the right track. I hope you can do something about your HOA. Usually these are people who want everyone else to obey the rules, but they need the exceptions for themselves to be happy! Fight back!!!!

[lazyeye]

We've had issues with our builder developing a parcel at the end of our culdesac, breaking a 20 acre lot into smaller lots in order to build 4 houses--after his representative used the fact that the lots around us couldn't be broken into smaller parcels. Irony. Of course the availability of water is a much more serious matter. Drilling deeper ain't cheap. Luckily we are on good terms with our neighbors who all hate our builder (they're builder too). CC&Rs are interesting things.

[John Deere]

Wow, I never thought my own son would get involved in politics, but way to go1! Sounds as if you have some real issues to deal with. I'm sure you will do well. Maybe you will be the next mayor of Wanship.