Not a letter this time, but a formal notice of HOA enforcement action on letterhead bearing a seal I had never seen before. It informed me that the board had voted to engage a contractor to bring my property into compliance, beginning with removal of what the notice called the nonconforming aviation infrastructure along the eastern boundary of the affected zone. It was signed by all five board members and it included a line I read with the particular attention I reserve for things that seem impossible. The board has determined that the access easement provides sufficient legal authority to conduct maintenance and compliance activities on adjacent parcels within the affected zone. I set the notice on the kitchen table next to Gerald's survey and looked at them side by side.
The survey was a sealed legal document filed with the county reflecting 41 years of recorded ownership. The notice was a piece of paper produced by five people who had apparently decided that a 20-foot access easement gave them the right to pave over someone else's airstrip. I was not angry. I want to be clear about that. I was something quieter than angry.
The kind of still that comes when you realize the other party has made a decision that will cost them considerably more than it costs you and that the only thing left is to let the record catch up to them. I called Gerald that afternoon and told him to file for a temporary restraining order. The TRO application was filed on July 22nd, 2019 in the 142nd District Court of Ridgerest County. It cited the recorded deed, the fresh survey, the limiting language of the original CC&Rs, the legal nullity of the February 2019 amendment as applied to non-member property, and the specific text of the access easement, which granted ingress and egress only, and contained no language authorizing maintenance, improvement, or compliance activities of any kind. Gerald attached certified copies of every document and built the file the way you build a fence, one post at a time, each one set deep enough that it does not move.
The court granted the TRO on July 24th. It prohibited the HOA, its board, its agents, and its contractors from entering my property or conducting any activity on my land pending a full hearing. The order was served on Diane Cowworth by the Ridgerest County Sheriff's Office on the morning of July 25th. I was told she received it in the parking lot of the Mesa Pines Community Hall beside her white SUV and that she read it twice before folding it and going inside without a word to the deputy. I went out that afternoon and walked the airstrip from one end to the other.
The turf was dry and firm under my boots. The wind sock moved in a light southwest breeze. Everything was exactly as it had always been. The TRO bought time, but it did not buy peace. The weeks before the September hearing were quiet on my land, but not quiet in the broader sense.
And I learned most of what was happening through Earl Dunar, who lived a half mile east of my fence line with his property abutting the Mesa Pines's development on its northern edge. Earl was 71 that summer, a retired diesel mechanic who had spent 40 years rebuilding equipment in conditions that would have broken younger men, and he had the quality of a person who pays attention to things that do not announce themselves. He drove into my yard one morning in early August in his old green pickup, the one with the cracked passenger mirror he had never gotten around to replacing, and sat across from me at the kitchen table, and told me what he had been hearing at the feed store and the diner and the county extension office. She's been telling people the TRO is temporary, Earl said, saying the court will side with the association when it hears the full case, saying your airstrip is a nuisance and a safety hazard. She's entitled to her opinion.
I said she's also been talking to the county. Earl said he set his cup down. Someone filed a complaint with the county zoning office. Claimed the airstrip was operating commercially. It's registered with the FAA as private-use.
Has been since 1997. I know that, Earl said. I'm telling you what she filed. Gerald already knew. The complaint alleged that 7TX4 was being used for commercial aviation purposes in violation of the county's zoning ordinance.
It cited as evidence that aircraft other than my own had landed at the strip on multiple occasions. This was true. It was also entirely lawful. I had hosted three other pilots over the years, friends, a veterinarian who flew his own Cessna, and once a crop duster who had declared a fuel emergency. None of that constituted commercial activity.
Gerald pulled my FAA registration records, my fuel logs, and the county's own definition of commercial aviation use, which required compensation, hire, or the carrying of passengers or cargo for remuneration. There was none of that in my records. Gerald responded on August 19th, citing the FAA registration, the private-use designation, the county's own ordinance definition, and the absence of any evidence of commercial activity. He noted that the complaint had been filed anonymously and that the strip had operated lawfully since 1997 without a single prior complaint. The county zoning office closed the matter without action on August 28th.
I placed the one paragraph closure letter in the manila folder alongside everything else. The folder was getting thick. What I did not know until Gerald pulled the full file for the September hearing was that the February 2019 amendment had not been properly passed. The CC&Rs required a 2/3 majority of all association members to amend the foundational governance documents. A 2/3 majority of 47 lots was not five board members voting among themselves on a February evening.
It was 32 homeowners voting in a properly noticed meeting with a quorum present and ballots recorded. Gerald had requested the meeting minutes through a formal discovery request. What came back after 2 weeks and a motion to compel was a set of minutes showing five board members present, five votes cast, and no record of any membership meeting, any notice to homeowners, or any ballot of the general membership. The amendment had not been passed. It had been declared passed, which is a different thing entirely, and the difference tends to matter a great deal in a courtroom.