As promised sometime *last* weekend, this is my understanding of the
conflict in what will soon be my own neighborhood.
The property we're building on was developed by a company called
Bluegreen. They divided some land formerly used for ranching into
plots, mostly around 1 acre, although there are some that are 5 acres
(but they're in the flood plain of the creek), they built roads, and
they put in the lines for utilities (water in, phone, electricity,
cable).
One of the people who bought property claimed that he was told by a
representative of Bluegreen that they were going to set aside a lot for
a park, and that they'd have a baseball diamond there. No one else
remembers being told this. *All* the lots were sold, including the
supposed baseball lot, so there was no baseball diamond in the
neighborhood.
The man figured that this was something the neighborhood needed, and
took it upon himself to turn the back half of his acre lot into a
baseball field. There's not much outfield, but it's good enough for
Little League practice.
As part of making this practice field for neighborhood children, he put
in some lights so that practice could continue after nightfall. The
lights became a point of contention.
When I first heard about the lights, I was a little upset -- one of the
reasons I want to be out there is because there's a lot less light
pollution at night, so I'll be able to see the stars a lot better. Many
of the other residents felt the same way, and went to the head of the
property owners association. But he'd been planning on using the lights
only about 2 weekday nights a week, and not past 8PM.
There wasn't anything in the deed restriction that specifically forbade
lights like those he was using. In fact, he challenged the association
to point to just where in the deed restriction it said he couldn't do
what he was doing. They might have got him on the poles holding up the
lights, I'm not sure. All I know is that sometime after they threatened
legal action, he took the lights down.
Julia
who is excited that they were finally able to start work on the septic
system this past week, because that was the latest holdup in the
building process
