RE: RDO Street Lights

[abergara@cox.net]

To my fellow neighbors living within the RDO HOA:

Like you, my husband and I are homeowners and residents within RDO, the 
Miraval community specifically, and I also wrote to our elected city 
officials regarding this matter. I wanted to let you know (and perhaps 
you can help spread the word) that if indeed it is determined that the 
RDO HOA bears some responsibility for the maintaining of streetlights 
within our community, there is no need to for the board to raise our 
monthly assessments to cover this cost, as there are currently dues that 
could be shifted from an existing, unnecessary cost center to this one, 
if need be. Currently our assessments are going toward a parking and 
towing policy within our community that my fellow homeowners/residents 
would love to see abolished with those costs going elsewhere. A portion 
of our RDO HOA dues go toward paying a private security company to 
patrol our particular neighborhood daily, not for security, but to 
rather cite and call in tows for our guests' vehicles not displaying a 
"parking pass." Each household within our community is issued just one 
parking pass for the lifetime of the household. It's a contentious 
policy that my neighbors and I have been protesting to the Prescott 
companies and the RDO HOA board for years to no avail. We even started a 
petition that's been basically ignored by the board, of which I started 
but couldn't complete because our daughter became severely ill (every 
household I went to signed the petition and wanted the policy abolished, 
by the way). I have also personally petitioned the board on behalf of my 
neighbors regarding this matter a year ago in a board meeting; the board 
president curtly dismissed me, would not allow me to express my 
viewpoint on the issue and told me to "be quiet." This whole issue 
results from a poorly designed community (Miraval), which was approved 
by the city of Oceanside, where there is parking on only one side of the 
street. The Prescott companies and the RDO HOA board say the parking 
policy is in the interest of safety for the community to protect 
children who play in the street and to prevent accidents. However, there 
is no record of any such incidents within our community that would 
actually require such a policy. It was a reactionary developed policy 
that might have sounded good to the board in theory, but in practice is 
not.

I really don't know whose responsibility the streetlights are--our 
community's or the city's. I realize there are usually two sides to 
every issue. My ultimate hope is that our assessments are not increased 
to go toward paying for streetlight maintenance. So, please know there 
are funds currently taken from hour HOA dues going toward this parking 
and towing policy within Miraval and one other RDO community. Perhaps if 
all of our communities could come together to request the board divert 
these funds to something more productive, they'll listen. Also, if you'd 
like to see your monthly assessments to go down overall, perhaps you can 
help us in Miraval to get the parking/towing policy abolished. The 
amount of our dues going toward paying for the enforcement of this 
policy are significant.

Amanda Bergara


On Wed, Mar 17, 2010 at 9:16 PM, Esther Sanchez wrote:

> To:  Lee Brandt, Tom Picard, Kelly Schlitz, Gabriela DelValle, Morgan 
> & Rachel McGuire, Patricia Kostial, Philip Morin, Amanda Bergara, 
> Harry Tatarian, Tom Phillipp, Lance Pine, Manuel Alvarez, Ed Kulik, 
> Lori Chollar, Haytham Faraj, Christian Johnson, Jennifer Stevens, 
> Deleise Collins, Kevin Wilson, George Alves, Mark Lewis, John Hoffman, 
> James & Elise Hartmann, Rick & Kim Logan, Chris & Amy Brown, Reuben 
> Roshon
>  Dear Rancho del Oro residents,
>  Thank you much for your e-mails regarding this very critical issue. 
> We have been working jointly with your HOA board to come up with a 
> solution on how we can help replace the neighborhood's street lights. 
> I am very anxious to avoid any possible public safety issues.  I care 
> very much about our children and their safety.
>  This evening, the city manager addressed this issue at the city 
> council meeting.  Although he talked during a period of time on the 
> calendar entitled, "public comments on items not on the agenda," we 
> wanted to make sure you knew that we are all working on a solution.
>  Again, thank you for all your e-mails.  I will be following up with 
> our city manager and city attorney to ensure this problem is taken 
> care of.
>  Best regards,
> Esther
> 760-435-3057