Subdivision rule enforcement will be up to homeowners’ associations
By Jennifer Eisenbart
Staff writer
While Burlington has to enforce its own municipal code, the members of the City Council really don’t want to take on anyone else’s problems.
The City Council on Tuesday shied away from any involvement with homeowners’ association (HOA) restrictive covenants – which regulate everything from above-ground pools to sheds to siding on homes.
But while the council acknowledged that restrictive covenants help preserve property values, the aldermen also agreed that enforcement wasn’t the city’s responsibility.
“I think we shouldn’t be involved,” said Alderman Bob Prailes, adding that if people had issues, they should go to their subdivision’s HOA.
Alderman Katie Simenson said, though, “Rarely do covenants ever work.” Examples include Shiloh Hills, where no one seems to be enforcing any particular set of rules, to the current issue at The Glen of Stonegate – where someone recently put in an above-ground pool.
Alderman Tom Vos, who owns several buildings in the city, also declined to get involved.
“This situation is – these people need to go back and talk amongst themselves,” Vos said. “We should not get involved. We’ll be in quicksand.”
There was also the question of what, if any, city ordinances the covenants cover. Mayor Bob Miller pointed out that an above-ground pool is a “permittible addition to a home.”
But when discussion of how to block any further covenants came up, the council realized its collective hands were, in essence, tied as the city has no power to stop them unless they are, as City Attorney John Bjelajac said, “crass.”
Since none of the current problems equal, say, the racial restrictions of the 1930s and 1940s that Bjelajac cited as an example of “crass,” there was very little the city could do to regulate covenants.
That said, Bjelajac has seen just about everything with covenants while working in Racine, from them not being enforced at all to a SWAT team responding to take down a fence.
When Miller called for the consensus, and asked if the city should not get involved, there were no dissenters among the aldermen.
“Let’s move on,” Miller then said.
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