Palm Beach Post Thursday, March 29

Association green-lights fines to owners with brown lawns

By Eliot Kleinberg, Palm Beach Post Staff Writer Thursday, March 29, 2001

BOYNTON BEACH -- Like a man who is arrested for vagrancy after his pockets are picked, Don Bernstein is being fined by his homeowners association for having a brown lawn during a drought.

Board members said all but a half-dozen or so of the 83 homeowners have been able, as water managers have advised, to keep their lawns green with no more than two waterings a week.

Bernstein, an advertising executive, and the other neighbors who have been cited get to plead their cases at 7 tonight before the homeowners association board of the Crystal Key neighborhood, near Woolbright Road and Interstate 95.

"There may be a discussion as to whether or not it's too brown," board President David Spofford said. But, he said, "twice a week seems to be working for the majority of lawns in here."

In the region's grimmest drought on record, the South Florida Water Management District this week backed off on harsher restrictions, and even agreed to allow people to water more often by hand starting April 2 to keep their grass and shrubs green. The district, in a March 12 letter, urged local officials, homeowners groups and property managers to forgo enforcing rules "which result in the use of excessive quantities of water for aesthetic purposes."

Spofford said he first saw the water managers' letter, which was initially sent to a previous president, only over the weekend. The board's five-member violation/fine committee will take it into consideration, he said.

Bernstein says he waters fastidiously to the extent allowed by water restrictions and the few brown patches on his lawn are probably the result of direct sunlight.

"They're not using common sense," Bernstein fumed. "It's just spotty. Anywhere you drive, you're going to see brown."

Bernstein says he received a letter at the end of February from "Joshua" -- no last name -- of the homeowners group's "violation management," citing him for lawn browning and giving him to March 18 to comply.

"I did the best I could under the restrictions" to green up the brown spots, Bernstein said.

But a letter sent March 21 said Bernstein had been fined $100 for "excessive browning" but could appeal.

Paulette Ankeney, the board's treasurer, said the "Joshua" hired by the board is her son but said the board voted several months ago not to give homeowners a telephone number for the management company because homeowners "grossly abused" the privilege in the past by "barraging" managers with complaints. Spofford said some companies have quit in frustration.

Ankeney also said Bernstein, who held her job when the neighborhood first opened about four years ago, should have taken his dissatisfaction to the board, not the newspapers.

"It's just not very neighborly," she said.

-- Anonymous, March 30, 2001

Answers

I've heard this around a few HOA's and it is quite hilarious, unless one lives in the area and gets a notice I suppose.

As I said before, the front yard is browner than the backyard. I have only watered the front once with sprinklers, and it is very hard to set them all up with one hand. To only be able to use them for a couple hours twice a week makes it undesirable to do that, as I don't care to leave the hoses and sprinklers out there all the time.

The rains have managed to make it green enough that I do not fear it burning by a careless cigarette.

-- Anonymous, March 31, 2001

Tsk, tsk! And I thought that I had problems with the Secret Lawn Police. At least they don't have the power to fine me, just shake their heads over the state of my lawn in August, when I refuse to water it. I don't fertilize it, either, and yet it's always the greenest lawn in the area from mid-April to mid-July. I do use a mulching mower and don't rake either grass cuttings or leaves. That's my secret -- spreadable, natural compost.

-- Anonymous, March 31, 2001

I think you all know I covered my front lawn with landscape fabric smothering the grass and planting the whole damn thing, filling in the bare spots with pine straw in some places, pine bark nuggets in others, switching around various pots of flowers, depending on season. I've just started killing off small patches of the grass on the easement and planting various kinds of vinca minor (white flowered, variegated-leafed, traditional, light-green leafed). The shrubs and trees I planted eight years ago now house and shelter a bewildering variety of birds and other critters; the flowering plants and shrubs attract butterflies, moths and hummingbirds. The backyard is getting some of the same treatment.

Grass. Ya fertilize it, it grows, ya cut it. Ya fertilize it, it grows, ya cut it. What's wrong with this picture?

-- Anonymous, March 31, 2001

OG, you're living my dream for both front and back yards. Too bad that my budget has been a little thin for that type of makeover. I've been doing small areas each year. At some point, I'd like to go to the Midwestern equalvalent of xeroscaping (landscaping that requires little water). That would avoid the brown lawn problem in August, yet keep my water bills low.

-- Anonymous, March 31, 2001