News

Board sues residents in Carriage Park

By Bill Moss, Published: August 28, 2012

The Carriage Park Homeowners Association has sued one of the development's neighborhoods in a dispute over who must pay for maintenance of small park areas.

The dispute centers on small outdoor areas called "limited common areas." The Carriage Park board says those belong to smaller homeowners' groups and must be kept up by their fees. The defendants are owners of cottages in Carriage Walk, a 40-unit part of the overall Carriage Park development, which has a total of 470 dwellings. Two other small neighborhoods within the development could also be affected.
The lawsuit was filed Aug. 7 in Henderson County Superior Court by Craig Justus, an attorney for the Carriage Park homeowners. It was filed one day before the one-year anniversary of an effort by Carriage Walk homeowners to change that neighborhood's bylaws. The amendment, the lawsuit says, was an affort to "shift financial responsibility for the maintenance and care" of the open land from the Carriage Walk owners alone to all the development's property owners. That wasn't legal under the Master Declaration that controls the development, the suit says.
Joseph Buhr, a Carriage Walk resident, filed an amendment at the Courthouse eliminating the term "limited common area" from the Carriage Walk documents.
The amendment, the Carriage Park homeowners say, "has created a cloud on the title of all property owners" in the development by shifting financial responsibility for maintenance to them.
"We're just seeking a judicial ruling on who is responsible for the maintenance of limited common element in the neighborhood of Carriage Walk," he said. "There is a difference of opinion in the community and we decided the best thing to do on advice of legal counsel is to get a judgment to define that once and for all."
The amount of money is not great, he said.
Carriage Park contains three smaller neighborhoods that have limited common areas. The total maintenance for all of them, he said, is $11,000 a year.
"It depends on the weather," he said. "If there's a wind storm and there's a lot of tree damage, there's more. If things are relatively quiet it's less."
He said the dispute applies to the other two communities as well but the Carriage Park board sued Carriage Walk because it had filed the amendment a year ago. A one-year time frame to challenge the amendment was about to expire.
"What we're asking for is a ruling that would also apply to the other communities," Allen said. "We're not looking for excuses to make these filings."
He did not think the lawsuit had caused hostility among Carriage Park homeowners, at least "no more than usual. It's typical when people have differing opinions on an issue," he said. "My expectation is when we get a judgment people will abide by it and move on. You live with the decision and we'll all do that."