SIDE STREETS: Canturbury HOA off life support as neighbors rally

Canterbury has a pulse after all! I’m shocked.

In fact, it seems the little neighborhood of 55 homes within Ridgeview at Stetson Hills may recover and be healthier than ever. We’ll know in a couple weeks.

I’ll be honest. I thought the Canterbury homeowners association was a goner when resident Dietmar Voitel called me in September.

Maybe you remember the story. Canterbury’s HOA board had evaporated due to utter apathy. But it didn’t die.

That’s because the last HOA president in 2010 signed an automatically renewing contract with Associa for financial management services.

Associa collects annual dues of $150 from each family and pays the neighborhood’s taxes, insurance and common area maintenance bills. But Canterbury residents are getting little else for the $3,000 it pays Associa each year.

Canterbury is floating along like a HOA Ghostship and Dietmar is outraged.

He wants an active HOA to enforce covenants so yards don’t turn to weeds and houses deteriorate.

But he’d accept a decision to dissolve the HOA.

Anything, he says, is better than paying $150 a year for little in return.

At the time, HOA attorney Jack Scheuerman said he’d never seen such apathy in an HOA. If folks didn’t get involved, he said Associa might be forced to seek receivership for Canterbury.

I suggested Dietmar contact the Council of Neighbors & Organizations, or CONO, for advice from its experts Dave Munger and Jan Doran. They met and brainstormed a strategy to resurrect the HOA.

A key to reigniting interest was a letter Scheuerman sent each resident asking them to vote on a handful of options, which included taking control or beginning the difficult legal process of dissolving the HOA.

“Doing nothing is not an option,” Scheuerman said.

Munger praised Scheuerman for getting involved.

“Jack’s letter was a good wake-up call for everyone in the neighborhood,” Munger said, adding that he and Doran are trying to put Canterbury residents on a path toward controlling their own destiny.

“A home is the most important investment most people will ever make,” Munger said. “These folks have realized it’s worth the time and effort to restore their neighborhood association and protect their investments.

“We’re just helping to empower them.”

At a last week meeting, about a dozen homeowners gathered. Some went door-to-door to rally voting in Scheuerman’s poll. 

“This is your chance to make things right,” Dietmar said of his message to neighbors.

Votes are piling up and Dietmar believes a majority wants a new HOA board. If Scheuerman’s tally confirms it, an HOA board election would be next.

Dietmar is thrilled and stresses he doesn’t want to run things. He just wants things to run.

“This is amazing,” he said of the renewed interest in the HOA. “I’m so happy.”

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