By Ann Craig-Cinnamon
There’s a strong wind blowing through the Fishers neighborhood of Windermere and it feels a lot like mutiny. That’s where I live and not a day goes by that I don’t hear a neighbor complain about the strong-arm, harassing tactics of our Homeowner’s Association.
The issue is over replacing dead or missing trees along the streets between the sidewalk and the roadway. Apparently the HOA covenants, written 21 years ago, mandate that homeowners replace the trees in front of their homes, despite a recent HOA meeting in which people were told they didn’t have to. There are probably as many as 100 trees that are missing, including ours. Many people, like us, don’t want another tree. We already have more than 20 in our yard.
We took our dying ash tree down at a significant cost and a few weeks later, received a threatening letter about replacing it. The next week another one arrived admonishing everyone to trim their trees. The third week was the best one yet: A five-page diatribe mailed to all 1,083 homes from our HOA President, an attorney and fellow resident. My favorite part of the letter was when he stated that none of the letters were intended to be threatening or harassing. That was just three sentences before he threatened legal action. So, the HOA spent $500 of our HOA fees to mail us all a threatening letter.
In big bold letters, the missive quoted the covenant as saying we must replace our tree with the same species. Since ours was an ash tree and that’s on the “do not plant” list because of the emerald ash borer, I’ve already broken that covenant.
The letter also refers to maintaining the uniformity of the tree-lined streets. The problem with that is there is no uniformity anymore after 20 years of replacing trees. They are a hodgepodge of species and sizes.
Then there’s the sidewalks – in some places they’re uneven and possibly dangerous. Can you guess why? Tree roots! But to add insult to injury the letter warns that, we, the homeowners are responsible for the sidewalk in front of our house and any potential liability. Let me get this straight: You are forcing me to plant a tree that I don’t want and then when it creates an inevitable problem, it’s my fault and my responsibility?
It is good to know, though, that the HOA does take some things seriously. When I called about the dead, rotting deer in a neighbor’s backyard this past winter, no one answered the phone, no one returned my call and no one took care of the deer.
Well, we spent part of our Labor Day at Allisonville Nursery where they helped us find the cheapest species-acceptable, 2 inch caliper tree on the lot and it is now planted in front of our house. Numerous others haven’t caved-in like we did. It should be interesting to see if our HOA fees are used to take legal action against our neighbors. Not very neighborly now is it?
