Summary

The Villages at Rancho Del Oro (VRDO or just RDO for short) is a planned development in the city of Oceanside, California.

RDO has a Homeowner’s Association responsible for maintenance and upkeep of the common areas, which is managed by the Prescott Companies.

Accessing the HOA’s management site requires a login, see the “Resources” page for links to that.

During the development of RDO, decisions were made to use a different variety of streetlight than is normally provided by the city of Oceanside.  These lights were made of metal (not concrete) and more “decorative” than the normal Oceanside lights.

Unfortunately, these special lights were installed without completely considering the longevity of putting a metal object, held in place by bolts, out in the environment 24/7 (in my opinion, as also reiterated by an engineer involved in the project during the 5/1/13 Oceanside City Council Meeting.)

There have also been comments made that a specific maintenance plan was needed to prevent rust, and that plan was not followed (although as far as I know this is just an assertion.)

The lights lasted quite a long time, in excess of 20 years, likely a testament to the mild, generally dry weather and infrequent rainfall in Oceanside.  Eventually, however, the bolts attaching them to their bases began to rust away.

As they rusted, eventually the lights were no longer able to stand up.  Rumor has it that some fell over before it was determined necessary to start inspecting them and do something, however I did not witness this and have not been able to verify any specific failures.

Regardless, for safety reasons once the problem was identified it became obvious that the lights that were in precarious condition would need to come down.  Removal of the questionable lights was done in late 2009/early 2010.

Now began the process of determining how to replace them – and who would pay the bill for that.

The HOA felt that streetlights were the City’s responsibility, as they are in most of the rest of Oceanside.

The city of Oceanside felt that these specific lights had been put in at the developer’s wish, had failed specifically because they were not the standard lights the city would have installed, and as a result the homeowners of RDO would need to pay the replacement cost, through their HOA fees or special assessment.

Lawsuits happened, and in a recent ruling it was determined that the city’s view prevailed.

My understanding of that ruling (and I’m not a lawyer…) is that the judge ruled pre-emptively that the City was not responsible for providing streetlights anywhere – much less the RDO neighborhood.

Accordingly, since the City is not responsible for putting streetlights ANYWHERE unless they choose to, any cost for putting streetlights into the RDO district could legitimately be assumed to be the responsibility of the residents.  The court case ended there, no ruling was made on the actual claim by the HOA that the City should pay for the lights as a result.

Barring future lawsuits, at this point it appears if the city wanted to they could require the cost of replacement lights would have to be born by the residents of RDO only, not absorbed into the city’s general fund.

Current status

On about 9/1/15 the VRDO sent out a letter as a part of their normal monthly newsletter updating the association members on current plans.

There is a special meeting planned to discuss this amongst the HOA members, on October 22nd, 2015 at 6pm..

That meeting will be held at the HOA offices – 4055 Oceanside Blvd, Suite J, Oceanside CA (this is roughly across the street from the Albertson’s shopping center near the corner of Oceanside and College Blvds)

The actual document is Rancho Del Oro Streetlight Update 20150901.

Current plans are for the City of Oceanside to establish the special “overlay” tax district applying to only the residents of RDR, which would raise property taxes in this area for a specified period – 5 years – to pay for the replacement of the streetlights.

A copy of the proposed ballot language is on the Documents page of this site, as is the draft engineer’s report, which details the costs and how that relates to possible assessments.

According to the draft report the total assessment would be approx $530 per residential dwelling unit (page 14 of paper, page 8 of PDF).

The special tax district would be established through a vote of residents in the proposed district, to be made (apparently by mail) in November 2015.

HOA Fees

There is some contention that the HOA has been assessing homeowners for this cost “since the beginning.”  The general idea would be that the HOA knew that replacement would be needed at some point (which would seem prudent for any fixture in the HOA, so that makes sense) and has been accruing for this cost since the beginning.

I have not investigated the financials of the HOA “from the beginning of time”, however I was able to work with the HOA to obtain statements going back to 2008 (before this issue began) and have not seen evidence that there was a large amount of money reserved for this at any time.

The HOA has been very accommodating in providing me with this information.  Those statements are on the Documents page here.  I’m not quite done yet – I have a few questions in to them, but when I’m done with that examination I’ll post the results here. [9/19/15]

10/21/15 Update – since the above notes, I have not seen any evidence of mishandling of past dues, although it is still a bit unclear as to the use of the $341K that had been in the streetlight maintenance fund in 2012, which became $75K in 2013.  The HOA says that was used for appropriate purposes and I would guess that’s true but I have no detail on that.

Regardless, of course the $270K would have been a drop in the bucket compared to the amount needed….