Sherri Dew has been living next door to a pile of mud ever since she moved into her home in the Hills of River Meadows.

Last winter due to water run off from the property next to her home, owned by builder Mark Clark, Dew and her family had to go outside often and chip away at the ice, so they could safely get into their house.

“Last winter it was really bad because the water was making an ice rink in front on our driveway,” Dew said.

Fortunately it’s better this year. The constant stream of water that caused moss to grow on the street, making it slippery and dangerous is gone. Clark fixed that. What remains is a muddy, goopy mess that Clark still has yet to clean up. Dew said she just tried not to turn her head toward her neighbor’s house.

Another neighbor, Kim Adkins, can’t turn away from the site. It faces her house. She sees it every day as she sends the kids off to school, eats dinner in her dining room or goes to work.

“When I walk out there and see silt fences half ripped out, and water that trickles down the street once in a while and mounds of dirt and rocks, it’s unfinished. It doesn’t look nice,” Adkins said.

The city can’t make a builder sod his lawn, but a homeowners association can. River Meadows has a homeowners association. It had become dormant for a few years but came back to life this year. The board of directors began collecting association fees. Then it addressed the problem.

Homeowner association president Nick Roberts sent two letters to Clark, informing him of subdivision rules, asking him to sod his lawn or face punitive enforcement. In the River Meadows Declaration of Restrictive Covenants, the association has the power to take a violator to court to recover damages and put a lien on his house.

Builders in River Meadows have six months to get the outside of the house up and sod in the ground. It’s been nearly two years for Clark, and there is still no sod. The construction took much longer than six months.

Adkins said they also sent letters to Artech Construction about putting sod on the lawns of the houses it was constructing. Artech complied.

Community Development Director Dave Pavlich said that homeowners associations often had rules that superseded the law.

“Some of those homeowner restrictions go beyond the law, so we as a city can’t enforce them,” Pavlich said.

For example, the city has an ordinance restricting parking vehicles on a lawn. When someone from the city sees a violator, Pavlich sends a letter informing the homeowner and instructing him to get the car or trailer off the lawn.

If the homeowner has a trailer on the lawn and then parks it in the driveway, the city is fine with it but the homeowners association may not be.

If the subdivision rules state that trailers must be parked inside a structure, the city can’t enforce it, but the homeowners association can. A homeowners association can also take violators to court over the matter.

There are nine homeowners associations in Kearney: Dovecott, Hills of River Meadows, Hills of Westwood, Oakwood Estate, Oakbrook, Shadowbrook, Meadows of Greenfield, Villas of Marimack and Westwood Village.

Homebuyers need to find out if there is an active association before choosing a neighborhood. While some don’t like restrictions on what

they can park in the driveway or whether they can run a home-based business, others, such as Adkins, welcome the force a homeowners association has.

“More than anything it’s aggravating that people keep getting away with not following the law,” she said. “There’s nothing the city can do to make them sod. That’s for our homeowners association.”

The Details

To find out if your subdivision has restrictive covenants, visit the Clay County Web site at recorder.claycogov.com and click on the online access link.

Kearney Editor Emily Hoffman can be reached at 628-6010 or ehoffman@npgco.com.

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