General Discussions/Comments

We’re Not a Conventional Subdivision: CCR was developed and incorporated as a Master-Planned Community (MPC), different from most, since we offer residential properties large enough to accommodate mini-ranching as an additional benefit. Our CC&Rs emphasize the intent that we be a community, perhaps one more “upscale” than others in the area, but uncompromised by the added allowance of Hobby Ranching. This is evidenced by paragraph #1 that defines the purpose of our CC&Rs as assuring “the use of the property for attractive residential and noncommercial ranch purposes only, and securing to each Parcel owner the full benefit and enjoyment of his or her Parcel in furtherance of a common plan.” This committed all of us, as a condition of ownership, to utilize our property in a quality manner in adherence to a plan that ensures uniformity and consistency equitable to everyone. such a plan should have been provided by our CC&Rs, but ours are nowhere near adequate to do this, so we've never really had a plan. Our CC&Rs are nearly worthless in the protection/preservation of ourselves as the community we were promised to be when we all bought our properties, which we presume the majority of you still want since 92% of those that have return ballots thus far have voted “yes” to the CC&Rs upgrade. Retaining our old CC&Rs with so little meaning that it forces us to default to the generic ordinances of the County, and other governmental agencies, reduces property-owner control of our community, which someone posted was important for us to preserve. We agree that property owners should maintain control as much as possible, rather than yielding to outside agencies to decide what we should allow in our community.

Do New CC&Rs Mean the “POA Police” Will Now be Coming After Me? That’s not our intent in any way. We have nothing to indicate that the vast majority of you haven’t made responsible and respective use of your properties, so there’s no reason to suspect that these changes will have any effect on you whatsoever. Even if you’re technically noncompliant, we’ll honor your grandfather rights and offer any suggestions and help we can to remedy the situation over whatever length of time it takes. Our intent is not to punish the guilty, but rather to protect you and our community from would-be offenders in the future. Such an offender could be, or could become, your neighbor, and our current CC&Rs don’t give you, or your Board, much of a legal basis to control whatever he wants to do with this property.

New Rules? Absolutely Not! The changes we propose DO NOT add to, or change the Intent of the rules we’ve always had. These changes only clarify/definitize the rules to give them real meanings that can be easily interpreted by nearly everyone, reducing the risk of subjecting ourselves to a contest over differences of opinion, which is a lose-lose situation.

How Many Animals Constitute Hobby-Ranching & Which Ones are Allowed? Our CC&Rs do, and always have, restricted us to a “reasonable” number of cattle and horses. There is no metric to indicate how many are reasonable, and there’s no mention of poultry or other livestock, such as chickens, sheep, alpacas, etc, implying that these are either forbidden, or that we don’t care if their headcount is reasonable or not. We don’t think either should be the case, which is why we need to be more specific in what we think is reasonable for our community. We’re not an atypical ranch, so what the Department of Agriculture might allow on other properties may be more than we consider appropriate for our community. We have the right, and the obligation to stipulate that.

Invasion of Privacy Regarding Income: Our current CC&Rs don’t define what constitutes commercialization, but it forbids it, which can legally be interpreted as forbidding the sale of any product of the property that provides income of any kind. This would forbid the making of side-money by the sale of things such as eggs, garden produce, or livestock, which we think you have the right to do. To that end, our proposed changes stipulate that making side-money constitutes commercialization only if it provides the majority of an Owner’s annual income. We did this only to establish a definitive guideline for our Owners and a legal basis to enforce it if contested. We have no intention of otherwise prying into anyone’s private affairs, unless this highly unlikely circumstance mandates an Owner to defend himself, in which case they would be asked only to disclose their income to one Board member in total confidentiality.

Cost of Enforcement: Enforcement is the responsibility of the Board of Directors, as it is in all HOA/POAs, none of whom are paid or get perks of any kind, so the cost to the POA of any level of enforcement is of little, if any consequence.

Jurisdiction: There is nothing in the current, or proposed CC&Rs intended to give us any control over permitting, survey maps, or easements, which are solely under the jurisdiction of the county. Some statutes and ordinances of the government may be repeated for emphasis, but that is not intended to imply that we have any jurisdiction.

Ongoing CC&Rs Election: According to our attorney, there’s no time limit on how long it takes to achieve a quorum, so we’ll continue the election process to that end. Any previous ballots cast by voters who no longer own the property have been duly-noted in our POA database.

Our Bylaws are “Reaching”: Yes they are, which they must be since we’re legally classified by law as a corporation, requiring your Board to manage the POA as such. Our Bylaws, as with those of any corporation, are intended to establish processes and methodologies to guide and control, the practices of the Board. You should embrace this since such detail in our Bylaws provides transparency of our practices to our property owners, while also allowing us to pass-on methodologies and lessons-learned to future Boards to assure minimal impact when transitioning to a new Board, and continued growth thereafter. This should be welcomed as a product of thorough and proper management, intended solely to serve the best interests of the POA. Why would a Board spend so much personal time to do so for any other reason?