Las Maravillas residents seek split from VIA

October 21, 2009

Blowing sand from vacant lots. Leaning streetlight poles that look like they might topple over. Cracks in streets. A roadway to a neighborhood that’s sometimes overgrown with weeds, never having been landscaped.

These are some of the complaints from several Las Maravillas residents, who, upset by a lack of services and adequate upkeep of their neighborhood, are seeking to split from the organization that’s supposed to be supporting them.

The Valley Improvement Association (VIA) oversaw the construction of their neighborhood, called Unit 3. The neighborhood is nearly 160 homes, located north of older areas of Las Maravillas, called Units 1 and 2.

VIA assesses a yearly fee on the more than 600 homes in the entire community, collecting over $50,000 to provide it with what VIA president Bob Davey calls “amenities,” things like parks and common area upkeep.

Jake Forest, an outspoken Las Maravillas resident working to improve what he thinks is a neglected neighborhood, explained that his neighborhood, or Unit 3, was the most recently platted. Unit 3 is still under construction some 12 years later, with vacant lots and undeveloped common areas.

He said VIA has made promises they haven’t kept. He said plans VIA announced that excited residents never came to be. He said VIA is misusing its money to the detriment of his neighborhood.

The problems with VIA have upset him and his neighbors so much, they have formed the Good Neighbor Association, a nonprofit corporation that’s collected petition signatures to demand out of VIA.

“That’s the point we’re at,” he said. “We want out of VIA — ‘Let us go. Leave us be. You’re not doing what you’re supposed to do. We’ll take care of ourselves.’”

Residents’ complaints

“It’s much easier when you see it with your own eyes. You get a better understanding of where we’re at,” Forest said, as he hopped into his car with two other Good Neighbor Association members for a tour of the neighborhood.

Near the entrance to the community is a huge pile of weeds. He gestures to a “dirty, abandoned, unused” coffee shack across the street.

“Nobody in the area is happy about this. This is not what the VIA proposed to build. This is VIA land. This was supposed to be their new headquarters. It was supposed to include a retail center. There’s supposed to be a community center. And this is what they put out here,” he said of the shack.

In the same area, along the boulevard into Unit 3, is dirt. Both Unit 1 and 2 of Las Maravillas have well-developed, landscaped entryways with trees, shrubs, flowers and grass.

“The Valley Improvement Association talks about all the money they put into Las Maravillas, and they do,” Forest said. “It’s over here, though, in Units 1 and 2. The money is not evenly distributed throughout the area.”

His neighborhood’s entryway is a paved road surrounded by dirt, other than a few tiny cacti planted by a 65-year-old resident. That senior citizen isn’t alone; other residents have taken it upon themselves to clean up litter and even pay to have it cleaned.

Forest said VIA has a problem with priorities and allocations when Unit 3 residents have to plant and clean common areas themselves, while the other two units are cared for by VIA.

Unit 3 is also filled with vacant lots because of the housing market downturn, with the sand in those lots blowing onto neighbors’ properties. Some neighbors have surrounded their yards with special fencing to keep the sand from damaging their yards and homes. Some have to sift through the sand to recover their gravel yards.

Forest noted graffiti painted over on a wall by VIA, a violation of Unit 3′s protective covenants, he said. He indicated wall footings in common areas are exposed by rain erosion. He pointed out piles of construction debris from VIA projects that have never been hauled away.

Another Good Neighbor Association member is peeved by the weeds.

“Their idea of cleaning up was to mow it, cut all the weeds and stuff, shoved it over here and leave it. That’s been here for over two months,” Ria Russell said, pointing to a pile of weeds. “Eventually the wind will blow it away.”

Unit 3′s protective covenants regulate many of these problems, but the covenants are enforceable only on the residents, not on VIA. Forest believes his neighbors have done more than their part to care for the neighborhood.

VIA to hold election

The members of the Good Neighbor Association have communicated about their concerns with VIA for years, speaking repeatedly with VIA’s management and board. They say they’ve gotten little reaction from VIA.

VIA on the other hand thinks its been responsive to the needs in Las Maravillas. Davey said VIA is taking the calls for a split seriously and has plans to hold an all-mail election to ask Las Maravillas residents if they want self-determination, or to “take control of your own fate.”

VIA wants to mail out ballots before the end of the year.

“We’re still working on wording,” he said.

Davey doesn’t want VIA to oversimplify what impact a “yes” vote on self-determination will have on Las Maravillas, where residents will begin to pay a duly-constituted neighborhood association an assessment for services, including architectural controls. He expects the independent neighborhood association to have the proper structure in place to handle potentially more than $50,000 in assessments.

“VIA staff and board members will not campaign for either option,” he wrote in an email to Las Maravillas residents. “For more than 20 years, we have sought to foster and promote the orderly and beneficial growth and development of this community. This issue of self-governance is a natural outgrowth of all that we have worked on together. It needs to be decided openly and fairly by the people who will be most affected.”

The problem for the Good Neighbor Association and Unit 3 residents is that the ballots will go out to all Las Maravillas residents. Unit 3, which is bound by covenants independent of the rest of Las Maravillas, is the only unit with a clear desire for a split. They also have a sometimes rival neighborhood association in the two other units: the Las Maravillas Homeowner’s Association.

Forest said the covenants don’t provide for an election on self-determination. The covenants say the only way to break away from VIA is to have “an instrument signed by not less than ninety percent (90%) of the owners of the lots.” That’s why the Good Neighbor Association gathered signatures on a petition to get a split, garnering support from almost all the lot owners, he said.

Ninety percent is a tricky number, however, because many lots in Unit 3 remain undeveloped and owned by VIA.

In his conversation with Valencia!, Davey dismissed the Good Neighbor Association, saying it hasn’t had an impact on the continuing dialogue about self-determination. That association has never presented the petition to VIA, he said.

He said even with changes to Unit 3′s covenants VIA would have control of Unit 3 under the indenture, an overarching document produced in 1971 that assigns additional control to VIA and encompasses all of VIA’s land.

Finances are not the issue

Davey said VIA is having financial problems because it’s collecting fewer assessments from residents who are struggling in the economy. He said VIA isn’t selling lots because of the downturn in the housing market. He said the crash in the stock market in late 2008 meant a nearly 30-percent loss in VIA’s investment portfolio.

“All of that has had an immediate effect on our revenue,” he said. “We’ve got to watch our budget.”

He said VIA is fulfilling its duties to Las Maravillas, spending more money there than VIA brings in through assessments. He said it has provided every service it budgeted for during the current fiscal year but can’t do more than what’s budgeted because of the economic situation.

He also said some of the requests from Unit 3 residents have been unreasonable. Residents, for instance, requested park playground equipment, which Davey said could cost VIA up to $30,000. The residents say VIA has been promising playground equipment for 10 years.

Another financial issue resulted when VIA expanded to include subsidiaries — Belen Sand & Gravel and South Valley Development — before the economy tanked.

“They take half of our assessments and pour them into companies that are losing money,” said Forest, who’s looked at VIA’s finances.

Davey admitted the subsidiaries are experiencing financial problems. VIA’s September newsletter calls the subsidiaries “weakened.”

“That expansion turned out to be too quick; the sale did not materialize in the face of the national downturn,” the newsletter explains.

He said neither of the subsidiaries are a threat to VIA. One subsidiary has since posted a profit and another cut losses. VIA expects both to be profitable in 2010.

VIA also owes back property taxes on much of its land, even though it has an ongoing dispute with the county and state over exactly how much it owes, with estimates in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Even if the economy recovers, VIA’s financial situation could get worse. VIA’s ability to assess property owners is beginning to expire. Davey said VIA already can’t collect on some properties as of this year, but the association could be hit hard starting in 2011, when mass expiration of assessments begins.

Las Maravillas residents will still pay assessments. Under the covenants for Unit 3 approved around 1998, for example, assessments can be collected for nearly 20 more years.

VIA continues assessments in that way, by developing lots and creating neighborhoods, allowing new covenants to be put in place with a new assessment timetable, which under current VIA covenants for Las Maravillas, add 30 years of assessments with automatic 10-year extensions.

With the election the only option VIA’s discussing for self-determination, the Good Neighbor Association is frustrated, seemingly out of options other than an expensive legal battle.

“To be honest with you, if we could sell we’d get out,” Forest said, acknowledging the tough housing market won’t allow them to sell. “We don’t want to live under them. What do we do? We’re stuck.”

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