[Sidney Lanier]

It's a long story that I'll make as brief as I can, and I will not use names as my interactions were with the roles people occupy....

We bought a 3-1/2 year old resale last fall and left TV immediately following the closing, were back briefly over Christmas/New Year's, and didn't return till February, having spent the month of January in South America. By that point we had received two water bills--and something didn't look right. I took the two bills to the North Sumter Utility Company, where an employee took one look and said, more or less, 'Holy cow!' I said, 'Something didn't look right to me too; what's the story?' She explained that the bills showed that we were using 30,000 gallons of sprinkler water each month, in contrast to the typical usage for a property like ours which should have been 4-5,000 gallons. 'Holy cow!' indeed! She also checked back into the records and told me that although she couldn't give me copies of the previous owner's records for privacy reasons--understandable--she did assure me that astronomical sprinkler water bills on the account went back to the very first bill, at that point nearly 4 years earlier! She also immediately sent a serviceman to check the system, who examined everything and told us that the control box wasn't set for significant overwatering and that the meter was functioning properly.

I contacted TV to find out if I could get a diagram of the sprinkler system and learned that the company that had installed it at the time the house was built was still working in TV and that I should call them for further information. (I had nightmarish visions of tearing up the concrete driveway....) I reached a man who sounded extremely knowledgeable and made an appointment for him to come, figure out what was wrong, and repair it. It took him a few minutes to figure out where to dig, dug up I would say no more than 2 or 3 shovelfuls of soil, reached into the ground and pulled out a sprinkler line that had just ended in the ground, with no sprinkler head attached to it and obviously no remains of a sprinkler head broken off. It had just been left loose in the ground, apparently overlooked by the original installer of the system, meaning that whenever that sprinkler zone was on, the water simply ran as though from the end of a hose and allowed no pressure for the rest of the sprinkler heads on that zone!!! All that was needed was screwing in a sprinkler head and setting it at ground level where it belonged--and the problem was fixed! Our next-door neighbors, who are the original owners of their home and who do their own gardening, validated that there had NEVER been a sprinkler head in that location.

With the feeling that I was dealing with an original construction defect, I contacted the head of the Utility Company and, on principle, asked for an adjustment in our two months of water bill, more as an acknowledgment that the problem went back to the time that the house was built. My first email, though not returned to me, didn't elicit a response; my second one elicited an apology about not having received the first email, followed by an explanation that as far as the Utility Company was concerned, if the water had passed through our meter and the meter wasn't shown to be defective, then no adjustment was possible and the bill is mine. I did mention to her that I was troubled that no employee processing payments and/or nothing in their software would notice and kick out an exception when a house was using SIX TIMES the amount of water than it should have been.... She then suggested that I contact the Warranty Department, which I did.

Contacting the Warranty Department, I was assigned an examiner who was basically impossible to reach; other than leaving him a message, I had to wait for him to contact me, and he was polite to a fault. I made it clear that I had asked for an adjustment in the 2 months of irrigation water bills only because of a principle--that this was a defect that existed from the time of construction and had resulted from an error in construction, and that an acknowledgment of this would have been more than enough. Briefly put, he stuck to the 'party line' of the 1 year warranty, and our home was at that time nearly 4 years old. I attempted to explain to him that a defect created by a subcontractor of the developer hardly seemed to fall into the same category as a problem that first developed when the home was 4 years old, but it was pointless as he kept repeating the 1 year warranty 'mantra.' I finally said that although the previous owners were out of the picture, based on this construction defect created by the developer's subcontractor installing one line of the sprinkler system incorrectly, the developer's pockets were certainly much enriched by the astronomical water bills paid by the frail, less than competent, 90-year-old previous owners for 3-1/2 years.

Wow! Did the politeness disappear fast! For those who remember that part of U.S. history having to do with 'circling the wagons,' something the westward pioneers did when attacked by Native American warriors who objected to the settlers simply taking their land, this member of the Warranty Department jumped down my throat, making it clear that the developer had nothing to do with the utility company, that the latter is an independent autonomous organization with no relation to the developer, and that the developer is blameless and faultless. Not knowing whether this ownership question is true or not, I had no choice but to accept the statement--not that it changes anything from the original issue.

Around this time I received a phone call from the head of the Building Department for all of TV. He too was polite but with a real edge in his voice, telling me unequivocally--and essentially--'The original owners were told that they could get full instructions on the operations of the irrigation system and get all their questions answered during the first month of home ownership, and if they didn't do it, tough luck!' In other words, the 1 year warranty had now dropped to 1 month on the sprinkler system, and he assiduously defended the developer in this arrangement. The bottom line is that there does NOT exist anything along the lines of goodwill to a Villages resident and honesty in acknowledging the error made by the subcontractor. I asked him if it was still within the purview of the rep from the Warranty Department to make his own determination based on such goodwill factors, to which he replied 'of course,' that he didn't dictate to the Warranty Department reps. However, at the time of my final contact with the latter after this conversation, the rep told me that the head of the Building Department had already made the final decision. Hmmm....

Lest the question come up as to whether this was really an original construction defect rather than a problem that developed after the warranty period, this can be affirmed in 3 independent ways: (1) the utility company employee stated unequivocally that the irrigation water bills on the house had been astronomically high from the very first bill at the time the house had been built; (2) I watched the repair as it was done and plainly saw that the open line had been left in the ground; and (3) the neighbor affirmed that there had never been a sprinkler in that location after the repair was done.

Silly me, still feeling that there was an injustice done, I decided to write one more email to all parties concerned, but I could not find an email address for either the Building Department or the Warranty Department. I posted a thread on TOTV asking if anyone had email addresses for these two offices. One TOTV member known to be knowledgeable responded to me, suggesting that whatever I send, I should send a copy to the District Administrator for The Villages, explaining that this is an extremely conscientious individual who would surely have the courtesy and take the time to respond and perhaps offer suggestions. I did this, and though this email was never returned to me as 'undeliverable,' I never heard back from this individual.

Then, as a member of a neighborhood association, our email address is on a mass mailing list, and we received an email from our VHA representative asking if there were any issues that residents felt needed addressing. I decided to respond with this whole story, and I received a response back very quickly. Because it struck me as, well, I'm not sure how to describe it, I will copy portions from the response and paste them here:

"We are fortunate to have a developer that not only lives here, but is very concerned about the problems that arise and remains involved in its ongoing success. Because of this, I often hear that residents think the family should be our 'daddy' and take
care of all our problems and issues without any cost or responsibility to us. If you purchased a home in a Del Webb community or in any other development (whether a retirement community or not), do you honestly think that the parent company that developed the area would fix a problem discovered at the time of the resale of the home if it was no longer covered by the initial warranty?"

When I emailed back this this response seemed very strange in light of my explanation that this was NOT a warranty problem that evolved and became evident at the time of resale but was a issue that existed from the time of construction that unfortunately didn't come to light because of the confusion of the very elderly and shaky original owners until new owners realized that something was wrong. Here is the next response:

"Please understand that I constantly get the criticism about the owners of the development group. It quite often sounds like a teenager ranting that his parents would not
buy him a new car, even though they can afford it - hence my reference to 'daddy' since that appears to be the role many people in The Villages feel the Morse family should play. I have been told that they make too much money - well thank God for that! I don't know a corporation in this world who would continue to build, maintain and provide services if they were losing money!"

Then followed an apology from this VHA rep for such a strident response and an acknowledgment that our sprinkler problem going back to its original installation did not fall into the category of expecting 'daddy' to buy us a new car. The rep further explained that "My duties as a representative of our neighborhood for the VHA is to be a conduit of information from the CDD & developer and a voice to them of problems and concerns from the neighborhood." At that point I clearly understood that the VHA is a shill for the developer and is an organization that does many wonderful things for TV as a whole--those supported by the developer, that is--but in being "a representative of our neighborhood" [emphasis mine], there is a focus on the larger community but no support, for example, for individuals dealing with a problem such as ours. I will add that subsequently this individual did make an effort to follow through, but to no avail.

Maybe this is utterly naive on my part, but I come from the Harry S Truman philosophy of 'the buck stops here!' By this the president undertook and accepted responsibility for the errors committed by those under his authority. In our situation, what I mean is that the irrigation system subcontractor may have created the problem, but likely he reported to the house constructor, who in turn reported to the Building Department, who ultimately (however many levels of hierarchy there are) brings the responsibility to the head of the entire operation, that is, the developer. This is not to say that the developer literally overlooked installing a sprinkler head that resulted in long-term implications, but rather that the ultimate responsibility lies with him as he continues his efforts to develop this fine community.

Two things impress me: (1) There is not a job description within TV for those positions dealing with individual homeowner issues that has the latitude to include compassion, understanding, goodwill, exceptions based on, well, exceptional circumstances. (2) EVERY job description includes the requirement to participate in 'circling the wagons' as previously explained when issues such as ours arises. I am not one to knock the developer, nor am I one to be envious of his financial successes, and I have had occasion on other threads to say so. The developer took the vision of 'our founding father,' Harold Schwartz, was willing to invest his money and energies in furthering this vision, and the result is a uniquely marvelous community of which most of us are very happy to be members. (I say 'most' because there are always a small minority who are chronically and constantly unhappy no matter where they are because their unhappiness is from within....)

What do you think?