By Deborah Goonan, Independent American Communities
Rosedale Place, located in Bossier City, Louisiana, is a gated community of 361 tidy homes. According to the HOA’s website, monthly assessments of $59.40 include lawn care to front and side yards (but not back yards), a small community pool and playground, and a clubhouse. The community covenants prohibit parking on the street over night, and encourages residents to park on one side of the street during the day.
But lately, according to the Shreveport Times, some owners are upset about the number of residents parking their cars on the street, rather than in their driveways. In fact, the HOA board is so concerned that they have approached Bossier Parish Police Jury, to see if they would consider an ordinance to ban parking on streets in Rosedale Place – and then ticket violators.
Bossier neighborhood takes parking complaint to parish government
Sarah Crawford , sarah.crawford@shreveporttimes.com Published May 5, 2017
Fed up with street parking they say causes safety and convenience issues, residents of the Rosedale Place neighborhood in Bossier City have taken their grievances to the parish government in hopes of finding an enforceable resolution.
Representatives from the Rosedale Place Homeowners Association (HOA) spoke to the Bossier Parish Police Jury on Thursday to ask for possible solutions, including a potential ordinance banning parking on the streets in the neighborhood.
“We have some that habitually park on the streets when their driveways are vacant, and we feel it poses a problem for all of the residents – not just their neighbors, but anybody that tries to travel the street,” said Pat Colvin, a member of the Rosedale Place HOA board of directors. “It poses a problem sometimes for our school buses, they cannot get through, or an emergency vehicle. We’re just concerned about the safety of our neighborhood.”
Read more (Video)
Ah, yes, the perennial parking controversy in a homeowners association. Curiously, video coverage of Rosedale Place, taken while driving down the street, shows only one car on the street.
But it is also clear from the video that streets in Rosedale Place are narrow. And it is clear that no vehicle can easily pass when cars are parked on both sides of the street. On the other hand, the community has sidewalks and a basically useless strip of grass between the sidewalk and the road, on both sides of the thoroughfare.
The article notes that, when originally built, Rosedale Place was marketed to older residents, most with grown children, and only one or two vehicles. However, now that families with children have moved into the neighborhood, garage and driveway space is sometimes insufficient, especially for households with three or more vehicles.
Anyone who has ever raised children knows that sometimes adults have to remove their cars from the driveway so the kids can play there – perhaps riding a bike or scooter, roller skating, bouncing a basketball. In an ideal world, all vehicles could be stored in the 2 car garage. But in the real world, the garage barely has room for one vehicle, if any vehicles at all, when it is chock full of outdoor toys and sporting equipment, lawn and garden supplies, and a myriad of other items that may not fit inside a full house.
The point is, neighborhoods evolve and change. As older adults move to senior housing or to live with family members, younger adults with children move into the neighborhood. Why wasn’t this part of a long-term plan for Rosedale Place?
It seems to me that the roads could be made considerably wider by eliminating the green lawn strip on either side of the street. Maybe a sidewalk was only needed on one side of the road.
But, unfortunately, now that Rosedale is completely built, it is highly unlikely the members of the HOA will ever come to a consensus that would involve rebuilding wider roads to accommodate parking and vehicular traffic.
Instead, residents of Rosedale Place, like those in thousands of other HOAs in the US, will continue to fret and bicker over parking on public streets. Will Bossier City agree to a street parking ban, and then begin to enforce the ordinance by ticketing drivers? Or, worse, will the City bring in a towing company to haul vehicles away, requiring the owners to pay hundreds of dollars to retrieve them? Or will Rosedale Place work out a realistic compromise, allowing parking on only one side of the street?
That depends on the true reason for objections to street parking. If the concern is one of safety, then a parking compromise is possible. But if the underlying concern is that some homeowners simply do not like the way the neighborhood looks with cars and trucks parked on the street, ticketing and towing are more likely to be enforced.
Reference – Rosedale Place HOA website:
A much more significant problem for Rosedale Place is that $60 a month isn’t nearly enough money to provide for all of the “services” the owners receive and to also include enough money to fund a reserve account. So after 25 years or so that clubhouse, parks and pool will start to fall apart and they won’t have the money to renovate or repair the facilities. We see it every day as reserve study providers…when these communities reach the tipping point, which is generally around 25-30 years, they are unable to maintain the facilities under their control because they haven’t planned properly and almost never do they have enough money that has been specifically set aside to pay for the capital repair and replacement spending that is needed to maintain the community-owned assets.
Out of that $60 month most of it is probably spent on landscape maintenance. Whatever is left is most likely gets spent insurance and all of the ancillary costs that are associated with the administration of the HOA. Their saving grace may be that it appears they do not employ a “professional” manager/management company because if they did then there certainly wouldn’t be any money left over to contribute to a reserve fund, or even to maintain the common areas on a day-to-day basis. The operating costs associated with the pool and clubhouse probably eat up any money that may be left after paying for landscape maintenance and admin costs, which means there isn’t any money available to fund a reserve account.
It’s a 20 year-old gated community based on information the HOA Detective has dug up. So, in addition to the pool, clubhouse, lawns and at least two separate park/playground areas, they also maintain two access-controlled gates and a nominal amount of common area landscaping. There is also a building of some sort that is situated on a 1/2 acre parcel within the community. Don’t know if it is a municipally-maintained structure or something that is owned by the HOA but it certainly isn’t a house? If it is HOA property then that’s another expense they have to deal with…
You can pretty much rest assured that $60 a month isn’t enough money to pay for all of association operations AND fund the reserves, because the original governing documents from 1997 established the monthly dues at $55 per lot; which means the dues have only been increased $5 a month over the last 20 years.
Ask yourself this question: Is there any other expense that would have cost you $55 in 1997, which only costs $59.40 today? Answer: NO!