[Arlington123]

Many who favor ending anonymous reporting have violations to hide. I suspect they’ve been turned in for violations before. Ending anonymous reporting will force your neighbors or others to report you. It will get very ugly very fast if you know who reported you. I know this from experience. It will pitt neighbors vs neighbors...sides will be taken and the friendliest hometown will be no more. The outcome will be less reporting overall, but is it worth it? Isn’t the right thing to do is just follow the restrictions, like we all legally agreed to? Why is this so hard?

I don’t believe there are trolls out there reporting violations, I suspect it’s your neighbors reporting you and I think you believe that to. Even if there is a troll outside your neighborhood making theses complaints, we all live in the villages and they also have a stake in maintaining our beautiful community. Should CDD 5 be our first village slum, I mean every big city has one...why not us! Really?

Where will your neighbors and others draw the line on violations before they report you, cars jacked up in your driveway, RVs and cars parked in the street for months on end, adding lean-tos or who knows what other things people can come up with.

Many of you are referring to small things like statues and yard decorations. What harm are they you ask. What if someone has 50 yard decorations in their yard, when is it too much? FYI, these small items make excellent projectiles in a hurricane or tornado and can cause massive damage and hurt folks, I’ve seen it happen here in the Villages.

If we don’t like a particular restriction then we have an avenue to get it changed through the CDD boards working with Community Standards. Why throw the baby out with the bath water?

When I first moved here, community watch was the watch dog who reported violations. Our CDD government system abdicated their responsibility by making it a residents responsibility. Who gave them the right to do this? Do the CDD boards work for you or is it the other way around. Our system of governance should work for the benefit of residents, not the other way around. All CDD boards in the Villages should demand that Community standards take back the responsibility of finding and correcting violations.

The bad news is if you have violations you will eventually be caught regardless of the method of reporting. Follow the restrictions or try to get it changed through your CDD board. It’s the right thing to do.