Common Discussion Items

As with many homeowners associations, there are a number of topics that come up pretty often.  This page provides some basic background on several of the topics.

Parking

There’s a lot of discussion about the number of cars on the street in Rio Crossing, compared to some other communities.

Frankly, when we’re had discussions about parking at board meetings and other venues, we find that homeowners are “split” across the two main opinions:

  • Anti-Parking: people who want parking on the street severely restricted
  • Pro-Parking: people with many cars in use by the residents who need places to park

A lot of times speeding enters into the discussion, and while the topics of parking and speeding seem related, they’re dealt with differently.

The Association has not yet found a viable way to enforce “restricted parking”, even though current Arizona statutes (see ARS 33-1818) don’t restrict HOAs (referred to in the statutes as “Planned Communities”) built after 2014 from attempting to regulate parking.

While we agree that speeding is often an issue in Rio Crossing, it’s not possible for the Association to take any direct action on speeders. We highly recommend calling Avondale Police whenever you see unsafe driving in the community.  Even though they may not be able to catch the people as you report them, our collective community calls will prompt Police to drive through the community more often — and eventually they’ll get’em!

Becoming a Gated Community

Some people have suggested that Rio Crossing should become a gated community — for a variety of reasons, ranging from allowing more effective control of parking to a perceived increase in the security of the community.

To become a gated community, the Association would have to take over ownership of all of the roads in Rio Crossing, and the maintenance responsibility would likely require a significant increase in the Assessments paid by owners.  So far, that one fact alone has stopped most people from wanting to move forward on this concept, because the price isn’t cheap.

Disbanding the HOA

You might not know that our governing documents (CC&Rs Section 11.2) have a provision that allows us to terminate CC&Rs and the Association.  Unfortunately, this process requires the approve of 90% of the members of the Association, and entails giving over all of the common property over to the City of Avondale (or someone else willing to maintain it).  After talking this through in a number of open discussions, the disadvantages of disbanding the HOA always seem to outweigh the advantages.

It sounds nice: there would be no Association to send violation notices, no assessments to pay.  But the property taxes for homes in the community could go up for the city to take care of grass and park areas, and they likely wouldn’t maintain them to the same extent as the Association has in the past.

Also, see this blog post for a sign of the times.