Article Courtesy of The News Press
By MARK S. KRZOS
Published December 19, 2008
In one Southwest Florida gated community the bright and cheery colors of Christmas are not welcome.
Residents living in Villagio at Estero were told recently that Christmas decorations were against the community’s bylaws and they faced $100 in fines if Christmas lights and other decorations weren’t removed immediately.
“We bought a place in Villagio in April 2007,’’ said resident Wayne Cox, 61. “We put up decorations last year. This year we did the same thing — we put up holiday lights and then we get this letter stating that they weren’t allowed. ... We were blindsided. It’s a shame, because Christmas was always a special holiday and seeing the smiles on my grandkids.”
Tom Ferguson, president of the Villagio at Estero Condominium Associations, said he’s left with no alternative.
“We’re just enforcing our documents,” he said. “We’re not singling out one person or another. If people want to decorate their lanai, they can do it. They just can’t decorate the common areas.”
This is not a crackdown on Christmas, Ferguson added.
“We decorated the town center, the boulevard coming into Villagio,” he said.
Putting a Christmas wreath on the front door also is against the bylaws, but Ferguson said an exception is being made this year.
“It was sort of a compromise,” he said. “Things got really out of hand last year with these blow-up things and a lot of it looked really tacky. So at our January board meeting, decorations came up and we said that next year we have to be more careful and said we’d allow just the wreaths.”
“It sounds like we’re being Scrooges, but we’re not,” he said. “I love Christmas lights, and I was one of the first people here to put up a wreath. We’re just enforcing our rules. People wanted to put political signs in their yards — but they can’t do that, either. It’s just about enforcing the documents. Residents told the board that they wanted more enforcement.”
But Cox and his daughter Michelle Tifft, who is also a neighbor, said the board was changing the rules in the middle of the game.
“They released an updated rules and regulations handbook a few weeks ago and there was nothing in there saying anything about not allowing Christmas lights,” he said. “And there was nothing in any of the documentation we signed when we moved in here. If it had been there, we wouldn’t have moved here.
“The rule book states that there is to be no signs, posters or displays in the common areas,” Cox said. “I don’t see where displays means lights. When we got the letter, they pointed to that section and added the word, ‘decorations.’ That word was never mentioned anywhere.”
Ferguson, who maintained Christmas lights are a display, did say that the community could revisit the rule next year.
Joe Adams, an attorney and partner at the Fort Myers law firm, Becker & Poliakoff — and real estate columnist for The News-Press, said condominium associations are within their purview to make such rules.
“If you’re in a condominium association, you don’t own the exterior of the building,” said Adams, whose firm represents 700 condominium associations throughout Southwest Florida. “They have no legal right to install holiday lights on the exterior of a building that everyone owns.”
While Adams agrees that the word displays means holiday lights, decorations and political signs, he didn’t see Villagio’s policy as being out of bounds.
But, Adams said, most condo associations do allow minor decorations for the holidays.
“They are an elected board and can change the rules at any time,” he said.
Some residents may have gone overboard last year with blow-up displays and that could have caused the crackdown, guessed Tifft.
“Still, why couldn’t they have put this in their newsletter and saved us from putting them up in the first place?” Tifft asked. “We’ve had these decorations up every year in the three years I’ve lived here. I’ve had a tough year and was really looking forward to a nice Christmas.”
For Cox, not having Christmas lights in front of his home is like getting coal in his stocking.
“I get sick to my stomach when I think about it,” he said. “I feel like the whole holiday is being stolen from my family.”
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