I've watched all these emails come by and read all the posts here on this subject quietly but now I'm going to vent. All this huffing and puffing about property values, safety issues and liability is ridiculous. We have a trampoline in our back yard and I was given permission by the developer to do so. Now, it was verbal permission that was given during one of our visits to the sales office where we met Damon a couple of times....but that's not good enough now, I'm told. We specifically asked Mr. Olson about the restrictions and he basically said, "No big deal as long as your neighbors don't mind." Anything to help Ken get the sale made, I guess.
Property Values? Trampolines are portable and do not effect the long term value of a home (let alone an entire SUBDIVISION as has been suggested by the uninformed alarmists). There is no data out there that supports any other conclusion - I challenge someone to find a study and post it. I've already researched it and found nothing. Dog runs, greenhouses and/or sheds are more permanent fixtures and do decrease property values. Different issue completely - what you need to worry about is what the ECONOMY is doing to our property values right now. Safety? You don't want your kid on a tramp....then do your job as a parent keep him/her outta my back yard. My kids are both well educated on the do's and dont's of jumping and they are both still alive (despite the email in another post from some high and mighty health care worker saying they'd have their brains hanging out of their heads if they so much as touched one). Liability? That's MY problem to worry about, not yours. Butt out of my financial matters and we'll all get along much better. I work in the industry and your HO policy cannot be cancelled that easily in KS. Once again, uninformed alarmists spewing disinformation on subjects they know little or nothing about.
Basically the "option" we've been presented is to pointlessly collect a ton of signatures by going door to door so we can fall well short of the 2/3 vote required. I'm a realist and I know that there's no way we're going to get enough signatures so the "solution" we were handed isn't a solution. Good God, it only took 37 votes to elect the HOA Board but it takes 2/3rds to make a change to the restrictions? That's ABSURD when you think about it. The people who are now telling us what to do were elected by around 14% of the votes -- compared to the 66% it takes to make any change to the documents. Rather than try to work with us and grandfather in those who were allowed to do this before or present an alternative....they get nasty and threaten to cut off our trash service and pool access. Unlike the delinquent scum who don't pay their HOA dues and deserve to get their service revoked, I paid mine and I paid them early as requested at the HOA Board Election meeting (yeah, I was one of the 14% who actually cared enough to show up).
In response to the various snippy comments about "why don't you people just read the restrictions?? That ticked REALLY me off. I did read them and I got approval from Damon. Don't make it sound like we're ignorant of the rules. We are not - we did what we thought was sufficient by running it past the Developer but like I said....now, that's not good enough because there's nothing written down. So that's MY FAULT?? All in all this is a complete BS situation. We had other subdivision options when we were considering plunking down the lot deposit and building our house here. The fact that we were able to have a trampoline (according to Mr. Olson at the time) was one of the deciding factors. 6 years later it's looking like we got jobbed then as the set up to getting screwed now. This whole situation has really made this community feel snobby. This isn't Hallbrook and we don't live in $2.0 Million dollar homes. Hell, most of you don't even live in $500,00 homes anymore with the real estate market taking a dump on us.
