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Man Jailed For Neglecting Lawn

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Man jailed for neglecting lawn: Don't do the crime if you can't do the time!

Bruce Watson

Oct 15th 2008 at 2:30PM

 

Filed under: Extracurriculars, Home, Real Estate, Relationships

 

Forget California, Arizona, and even Jerusalem. For a lot of people, Florida is the promised land. Whether because of its famously mild climate, its extensive beaches, or its huge retirement communities, "Death's waiting room" has a reputation as the place to go when one tires of city living and harsh weather.

 

In this context, it's not all that surprising that Joseph Prudente, formerly of Holtsville, New York, decided to move there when he retired. What is surprising is that he ended up spending a night in the slammer recently after his finances soured and he neglected to care for his lawn.

 

How is this possible? Prudente lives in Beacon Woods, a wooded, planned community built around a golf course. He purchased a four bedroom house for $128,000 in 1998, and settled into a well-deserved retirement. However, as times got tougher, Prudente's stepdaughter moved in, along with her husband and two kids. Once again, tasked with supporting his family, Prudente found his pension getting stretched to the breaking point. Scrambling to keep food on the table and the mortgage paid up, he began neglecting the yard. Big mistake.

 

The Beacon Woods Civic Association, the community group that polices Prudente's neighborhood, noticed that his lawn was no longer measuring up to the standards set forth in their rule book, and began sending warning letters. Faced with a choice between paying the mortgage and fixing his sprinklers, Prudente chose to ignore the lawn situation and the letters. As the situation got worse, Beacon Woods proposed mediation and, ultimately, took the retiree to court. A judge ruled that he had 30 days to re-sod and get his sprinklers fixed.

 

When Prudente ignored this warning, the judge declared him in contempt of court and gave him another 30 days to comply. After a second failure to fix the lawn, Prudente saw the writing on the wall: he was going to have to go to jail. Rather than have his wife, daughter and grandchildren witness the spectacle of grandpa being dragged away in cuffs, he turned himself in.

 

Ultimately, the situation was resolved by the actions of a kind neighbor. Andy Law, a former resident of Beacon Woods, gathered helpers, supplies, and a sodding machine, and proceeded to fix the yard. The Pasco County Commissioner, Jack Mariano, joined in, and somebody else repaired the sprinkler. Neighbors contributed checks, planted flowers, and laid down mulch. The following morning, Prudente was released from jail.

 

The Beacon Woods Civic Association's President, Robert Ryan, responded to this public relations disaster with an open letter, in which he offered the lame response that "The association does not send people to jail. It is the homeowner who ignores our efforts to help people in hard economic times and leaves us no other option." He goes on to note that, after other people fixed the problem, "I went to court to attest to this fact and the judge lifted the complaint. Mr. Prudente was released immediately." Thus, although Mr. Ryan absolves his organization of responsibility for this situation and claims that it was out of his hands, he also notes that he was able to quickly secure Prudente's release after the lawn was fixed.

 

As a kid, I lived down the road from Reston, Virginia, a community notable for being the deathplace of Tennessee Ernie Ford, the only place outside of Africa to have a strain of Ebola virus named after it, and the first development in America to have neighborhood covenants. Although many of my friends used to complain about the endless rules that regulated everything from toys in the yard to heights of hedges, they also bragged about the sense of community that Reston had.

 

As times get harder and foreclosures become more and more common, it will be interesting to see if Civic Associations across the country will maintain their sense of community or will hide behind their massive rulebooks. Ultimately, the question is if neighborhoods are composed of people, or if they are merely a collection of rules and the occasional legal mandate.

 

Yet another example of some Homeowners Association thinking that they are a dictatorship. Shame on them and shame on the judge who wasted the court's time with such nonsense.

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When you move into those places you sign a contract - no one forces you to do it. It is a problem in some places like Virginia where you don't have any options - you either live in an association or live in another state. But there is also the other side of it - when you move into a residential community you are at the mercy of your neighbors and the contract guarantees you won't find yourself living next to a junk yard.

 

And, I know it's radical idea, but if his sprinkler broke he could have sent some of the freeloaders out with a hose to water his lawn.

 

Or there is the even more serious issue - there should have been a no watering ordinance in Pasco county since the state has a low water table and very little rain. And I am very much irritated by all the snowbird communities that insist on lush green lawns under such circumstances.

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When you move into those places you sign a contract - no one forces you to do it.

 

If you refuse to sign the contract, does the law (the real law, not the Homeowner Assoc. rules) prevent you from buying the house? If so, then in reality you are forced to sign. The good part is that most if not all of the rules of a typical Homeowners Assoc. cannot be enforced in an actual court of law. This has been proven in many cases of an individual suing the Homeowner Assoc.

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No one forced him to move in areas that have HOA. It is made very clear that house in HOA. There are many areas that trying to buy a house that is not HOA is getting harder and harder.

 

That being said, HOA trying in theory, to protect housing values. When people are elected to a position within HOA they let it go to their head.

 

Sorry, if he has problems with payments and can't keep up with his agreements it is time to move.

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its all part of the HOA it really is, yeah if you dont like it dont move into one, one of our neighbors had a fire and after taking too long to fix the porch got fined for it sometimes its ridiculous but people choose to move into associations and if everyone really was against it then no one would move into them and there wouldnt be as many. yeah aasociations are all over the place here in southern orange county its hard not to live in one if you wanna live here

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