Anonymous Complaints
 

Are anonymous complaints serving the best interest of Village residents?

Not when one person submits 50+ complaints. This becomes selective enforcement.
I say sign your name and you must live in the District where the complaint is filed.

If I have a violation and someone complains, anonymous or not, I will fix it. Period. Why not just follow the rules?

NEITHER -
Community Watch should enforce the rules and take residents out of it

How would that eliminate complaints? There is no way Comminity Watch could enforce all of the rules. There are probably at least 20 violations on my street alone.

Exactly !

That did not work back in 2005.

I recall a neighbor asking my father to complain about the back yard bushes of the home owners across the street even though we cannot even see those bushes unless we are in those houses or in their back yards.

Worth noting that when District 5 eliminated Anonymous complaints, total number of complaints went down.
Maybe the trolls were eliminated……

I do not believe that enforcing these matters is the mission of community watch. I thought it was to provide a presence and patrol in order to keep us safe. Adding extra duties would probably mean needing more employees. So far I’ve been very happy with the watch. I was stopped at 2am by the watch while outside waiting for the groome van and was happy for encounter.

Agree, but if the violations are 10/15/20 years old - how much of a violation was it?
One of the violations was the driveway was INCHES too wide.

you’re house is pink, your birdcage is over the setback, yup.
BUT, the seller should be liable for previous improvement not in compliance with ARC.

Neither. People complaining should be identified to Community Standards, but their identifying information should be confidential, and not available to the homeowner of the house being complained about.

In this way, there can be a standard of accountability imposed on the people making the complaints in addition to the people being complained about.

If you have to live in the same CDD as the property you're complaining about, that means Community Standards has to know who you are. I think this should always be the case.

Or folks can stop complying and feel empowered to trash the neighborhood. Won't matter until it's time to sell your house.

Question? Why hasn't anyone taken photo's of the 'trolls" they claim to have seen?

Were the violations eliminated or do they still exist?

This same thought has been posted several times."There are probably at least 20 violations on my street alone." Rules and how to enforce them in a planned community are always an issue."
They can and do turn into neighbor wars. Do we want that?

I will bet on any property someone can find something in violation. An acquaintance of mine not The Villages, not even Florida was fighting over a tree. He had had the tree for years. He being stubborn AS I AM. Went to war over his tree. His legal bills last I herd were over 20,000.
He passed away. His daughter inherited the home and sold the property to the worst trash she could find.

A picture of the two old biddies in a golfcart with clipboard was posted on here some time ago

This one is a toughie - I could argue merits for both sides of this coin. I vote yes, keep,them anonymous, as I can see times where that might be the best option for a “serious” violation in a situation that could turn very comfortable or even hostile towards the person making the complaint. I do believe, however, that there needs to be some control over people that make frequent complaints about rather trivial infractions.

Can’t answer.
But, maybe the neighbors don’t feel little landscape violations (?) really aren’t violations.
Turning in 50+ complaints across ALL villages were probable WAG guesses any way……..by a troll.

This would get my vote. Maybe the Poll can be re-run with this as one of the options.

Fake News.

Per your quote from McCain, "truth and transparency". To me that means only legit and verified violations along with "verified and eligible source"* of complaint named on written copy of the complaint will be issued to the accused.

*"verified, eligible source" = "person or persons residing in the same village (perhaps) where the violation exists".

Not voting is a "neither" vote.

Not voting is a "you won't know if I think neither, or if I think one, or the other. I'm not telling you."

There are how many members of Talk of the Villages who didn't vote? And you're assuming every single one of them thinks "neither?" I dunno - I think most of them think "I didn't even read the thread and don't know it exists."

Meanwhile, we have a policy right here on this forum, and on most forums on the internet. If someone is reported, and is shown to be violating a rule, that violator is infracted or otherwise given a heads up that they did something wrong. But they are NOT told who reported them. The admin of the site, however, knows our handle, our e-mail address, and our IP address. And if they really wanted to, they could find out who we are. So we are not anonymous to the forum admin. Our reports, however, are anonymous to the person who violated the rules.

I think that's 100% fair and legit.

I have thought about this several times, especially after our neighborhood was hit with around 3 dozen complaints, over the phone.

Here are my thoughts about how to change the existing system to maintain the anonymous system and at the same time eliminate the "trolls".

1. Anyone desiring to file complaint would be required to get a form from Community Standards (either online or at the office). Community Standards will design the form. Phoned in complaints will no longer be accepted.
2. The complainer would fill out the form, which would include the nature of the complaint, the location of the infraction, and whether it is a serious infraction. Serious infractions would involve, buildings, water flow/drainage, infraction of build lines, permits, etc. Minor infractions would typically be signs, lawn ornaments etc.
3. One (1) complaint per form.
4. The completed form would need to presented in person, with complainer’s village photo ID to the VCDD. The photo ID would NOT be recorded. The reason for this is that going forward, only people living in the same village would be allowed to file complaints in that village.
5. There would be NO identifying information on the person filing the complaint.
6. There will be a charge to be paid for each complaint filed, cash only. The charge could start at say $10 per complaint and be adjusted as necessary to limit “troll” activity. To maintain anonymity, there will be NO receipts or records of the payment.
7. If the review board finds the complaint to be valid, then the existing procedures will be used to get the property into compliance.

I am sure there would be some tweaks needed to ensure that the identity of the complainer is not recorded or revealed.

Wont work in Florida - they have very open sunshine laws.

I don't remember that but assume no identification or more would have occurred.

Not all complaints come from residents. I had a realtor stop me while I was out doing yard work. She is trying to sell a house two doors down from me for months. The house in between has an owner who is MIA. The yard is dead, half the trees and bushes are dead or overgrown, plenty of weeds and lots of mold. She told me she was going to report them.

Unfortunately the worst cases of neglect never get rectified until the home is sold, usually by the bank that owns the property. We have one on our street where the owner is in a nursing home and there are no children or relatives interested in the property.

Complaint Suggestions
 

I LOVE IT!! Good for you!!

Not sure how the clipboard people are remaining annonymous but solution... the 40 plus people file class action suit against the enforcement of rules not enforced for the past 25 years.

Complaints ONLY from within the villa neighborhood itself OR each small named neighborhood within the district. Not even whole district.

T V should be doing waivers for any infractions not reported within say 2 -3 yrs from receipt of installation as neglect of reporting. This would stop the current selective enforcement that is happening.

T V should evaluate the infractions for beautification (ie brick boarder wall and flower beds not permitted but would have been approved in the long run vs removal) vs homeowner neglect and previously installed items that lack cohesiveness in the overall theme of the neighborhood.

They check for aggregious offensiveness based on the overall neighborhood aesthetic cohesiveness (when you know you know if something is beyond acceptable).

Is the annonymous status due to emailing complaints? You call on the phone they take names.
T V should disregard ALL emails not properly identified as being unjustified harassment- no name and contact info email is trashed. Homeowners deserve the right to know as discovery as threat for staulking.

T V community standards should be forced to do their jobs. They should be the clipboard people and neighborhoods should have been checking neighborhoods monthly from day 1 by inspecting themselves.

The vigilante vendedeta policing sometimes 25 yrs after installation should be called harassment and staulking and complaints should be treated as such with an eye toward legal basis.

I say to those hit the way they have been by mass email scandal lawyer up. Set a precident, it's about time. This is problem that is the fault of T V start there.

Photo of the trolls...?? really?? they're like ninjas.....better chance of getting a photo of Bigfoot.

Two old “ biddies” on a cart ! Lol
That should bring it down to just about 40,000 suspects

IMHO, complainers should NOT be anonymous.
However, the only complaint should come from an abutting property owner or an owner from across the street.

ALSO, if a complaint is filed, and found not to be legitimate, the complaintant should be fined $100.

It may not solve the problem, but may ease it a bit.

Not that simple!

Excellent starting point!

I like some of the suggestions in here

VT suggesting you pay some fee to file the complaint- even $1 or $1 per complaint will curtail some

I also like having different categories of complaints - the house with the overgrown weeds and car on cinderblocks vs the home that is 6” over the setback

Some sort of grandfathered absolution - i.e. if the improvement was done over 3/4/5 years ago it stays.

None of the above.

There needs to be a third choice; i.e. have the powers-that-be in THE VILLAGES take over the responsibility of assuring, through regular monitoring, not only that standards are met, but fixes applied. The current system is akin to having the average motorist report speeders, with the cops following up only once the report is received. What kind of GAWDforsaken "reasoning" led to this current muddled mess is anyone's guess, but it smacks suspiciously of the selfsame powers-that-be deciding to shirk their obvious responsibility of assuring that standards are met and enforcing the rules if they are not, in the interests of--what? Profits? Image? I don't know. In any case, it is a mess and this "poll" will only result in a specious "answer" (i.e. the majority of respondents say....) that once again sidesteps the entire issue of where the responsibility OUGHT to rest.

That said, the fixes, even if those powers-that-be own up to their own responsibility in this matter, are neither simple nor easy. Nor will those fixes be quick: it has taken years to get is into this mess and it will probably take the same amount of time to get us back out.

In the interests of "no complaining without suggesting remedies", my suggestions are as follows:

1: Have the powers-that-be take over monitoring for compliance as soon as possible, according to a set schedule and pattern that is impartial in nature but which includes ALL of the various villages according to the standards in place in each Village. Doesn't have to be Community Standards doing the monitoring (though that is the glaringly obvious place for it) but a dept. set up for this purpose only.

2. Concentrate (at first, anyway) on only the glaringly obvious stuff, and have that list formulated and made public before monitoring is begun: Broken and duct-taped windows. Serious mold issues. Lawns overgrown with weeds. Cars up on blocks for weeks at a time. Dead trees. Broken siding. Garishly painted houses. Things like that. Forget the picayune bee ess such as inappropriate lawn ornaments. Those have little or no bearing on neighborhood continuity or property values anyway and serve merely as bones of contention for the hair-splitters.

3: Formulate a policy that ALL properties sold to buyers of homes in The Villages, if it can be proven that the property was sold by The Villages personnel with any of the egregious violations mentioned in (2) above not corrected by the time of sale, are grandfathered in if the sale date is more than five years before the date the infraction was first noted. If the sale date is less than five years before the date the infraction was noted, then absolve the homeowner of any responsibility to bring the property back into compliance and assure that The Villages, NOT the homeowner, is financially liable for the fix, if any. This does not apply if the violations were the result of things done to the property, or homeowner neglect, on the part of the homeowner, that occurred after the date of sale to the homeowner in question.

4: Start with a clean slate. Any infractions found by Villages personnel, if found to be the responsibility of the owner to correct (see #3 above), regardless if the infraction was reported before by Villagers or not, shall be given a generous window of time to correct: say 90 days to begin, another 90 days to complete. Levy fines ONLY if the work is not completed as ordered, and levy them in a totally impartial manner.

5. No fine forgiveness.

6: Establish a system where, in cases of disputed decisions regarding infractions, the issue shall be heard promptly by a board of arbitration consisting of three members: one acceptable to The Villages, on acceptable to the complainant, and one chosen at random. The decision of this board regarding the resolution of the issue shall be final.

This list is composed on the spur-of-the-moment and undoubtedly contains loopholes that the more legalistically-minded among us will equally undoubtedly point out, but that aside, the SPIRIT of how things should be handled remains the same. Details can always be hammered out, if the will to actually fix things in an equitable manner is sincere.

A posted noted a couple of weeks ago that "rules without enforcement are merely suggestions". The mess we're in is due solely to the powers-that-be shirking their responsibility in this matter, with all too many people ignoring those suggestions with impunity and fixes, if and when applied, are done so in a totally arbitrary manner. Time to face the issue squarely and take fair and responsible actions to get things back on track.

Those Community Watch people have a whole page or two of daily duties that need to get done during their tour. Rules are rules no matter who reports them.

The complaints went down but I doubt the infractions did. You would pit neighbor against neighbor. Terrible situation. Keep it anonymous.