There was nothing to argue about. Then in the spring of 2019, the HOA elected a new board president. Her name was Diane Cowworth, and she arrived at the position the way certain people arrive at minor authority with tremendous energy, a detailed vision, and a fundamental misunderstanding of where her authority actually ended. She drove a white SUV with the Mesa Pines HOA logo on the door. She wore blazers in the desert heat.
She carried a tablet and a clipboard simultaneously, which I have always found to be a particular kind of statement. Within 60 days of her election, she had launched a beautification initiative, proposed a gate at the subdivision entrance, and sent her first certified letter to my address. The letter was dated April 14th, 2019. It cited section 4.2 two of the Mesa Pines CC&Rs which governed landscaping standards and aesthetic compliance within the community. It informed me that my property my property on the other side of the fence line was creating what the letter called a visual disruption to community standards, specifically referencing the airstrip and the wind sock I had mounted on a 12-foot pole near the approach end.
The letter requested that I remove the wind sock, cease aviation related activity during community quiet hours, and submit to an HOA property inspection within 30 days. It carried a fine schedule, $200 for initial non-compliance, escalating to $500 per month thereafter. I read the letter twice. I set it on the kitchen table next to my coffee cup. I looked out the window at the airstrip, quiet and level and exactly where it had always been, and I thought about section 4.2, which I had read four years earlier, and which applied to lots within the subdivision plat, not to adjacent private property.
I thought about the fence line. I thought about the deed in the filing cabinet. Then I got up, refilled my coffee, and called my attorney. His name was Gerald Foss and he had been practicing real estate and property law in Ridgerest County for 31 years. He was not a dramatic man.
He spoke in complete sentences build by the hour and had the quality of a person who has read a great many documents and is therefore very difficult to surprise. I drove into town the following morning and put the letter on his desk. He read it without expression. When he finished, he looked at me over his reading glasses. She's citing a covenant that doesn't apply to your parcel, he said.
That's what I thought, I said. Your land isn't in the plat. No. He picked up the letter and looked at the fine schedule. $200, he said in the tone of a man reading a word he finds mildly interesting. He sat it down.
I'll send a response. Standard letter, certified mail, citing the plat boundary and the recorded deed. That should be the end of it. It was not the end of it. Gerald's letter went out on April 29th, 2019.
It cited instrument 1983-441, the recorded plat boundary, and the specific limiting language of section 1.1 of the CC&Rs, which defined the association's jurisdiction as the lots depicted on the recorded subdivision plat of Mesa Pines. It informed Ms. Cowworth that my property was not subject to the association's covenants that the fine was without legal basis and that any further enforcement attempts would be considered a legal nullity. Diane Cowworth sent a second letter 11 days later. This one cited an amendment to the CC&Rs that the board had passed in February of 2019, 2 months before her first letter to me, which purported to extend the association's aesthetic and compliance jurisdiction to properties within 500 feet of the subdivision boundary.
I read that sentence three times. Then I called Gerald. Can they do that? I asked. There was a pause.
No, he said. An HOA cannot unilaterally extend its jurisdiction to property it doesn't own and that was never subject to its covenants. That's not how any of this works. Another pause. But she apparently believes otherwise.
She sent a crew out last week. I said walked the perimeter of the airstrip with a measuring tape. Did they come onto your land? They stayed on the access road easement. Barely.
All right. Gerald said, "Let me pull the amendment and let's get a current survey ordered. I want a fresh boundary confirmation on record before this goes any further. " I hired Tanner Land Surveying out of Abilene. The crew spent two full days running the boundary and produced a sealed survey confirming every line exactly as recorded in 1983. The airstrip sat entirely within my parcel.
The access road easement was 20 feet wide, exactly as recorded, and granted no rights of inspection, regulation, or aesthetic authority to anyone. The survey cost me $3,400. I considered it money well spent. Gerald filed a certified copy with the county clerkk on June 9th, 2019. Diane Cowworth's response arrived in early July.