I had plans to meet up with MOH Vicky, her boyfriend, and James last nite for dinner. But as I was starving and still had another hour and a half before meet-up time, I put a marinara sauce and some Italian meatballs on stovetop at a low simmer, took out some pasta, and went to get my mail. At the mailbox, I was confronted by a large, very angry biker who looked like he may have been a Hell’s Angel.
He stormed up to me and towering overhead, huffed, “Is there an association here?!”
I told him there is.
He went on a rant about how his bushes were chopped down and who the hell authorized that and left a mess in his yard, blah blah. I was lost for awhile until I asked him enough questions for him to realize I had no idea what he was talking about. Turned out he’s the next-door neighbor of the other units in my Association, and he shares a block wall with them. A dense ivy-like shrub with hard branches grows over this shared wall on both sides, ending 2 feet above the wall like a high hedge. Apparently, one of the older neighbors (a single woman) unilaterally called for some tree trimmers to come yesterday morning and chop off just the portion of hedge in front of her unit. Now, if you look down the walkway, it’s green, then a brown square with no leaves and a huge square gap of overhead shrub, then it continues as it passes her house. The angry neighbor said he’d knocked on her door but she didn’t open it. I told him I couldn’t imagine that our regular gardener had done this as the rest of the shrubs on the wall were neatly trimmed back, and told him I’d talk to our Association president to see if anyone authorized for tree trimming of this portion. He said they’d left branches and debris on his side of the yard, too.

I called the Association president and asked him to meet me between our houses, and quietly explained the issue to him. No one on that side of the project typically uses the walkway, their primary ingress and egress being through the garage facing the opposite side of the buildings, so he was as shocked as I and the angry neighbor were when he walked around back and saw the ridiculous gap. He rapped on the older female neighbor’s door and now she was home and answered it.

And very proudly announced that she had indeed spent $220 of her own money to have this chopped down. Our president (with my intermittent attempts to help talk to the female neighbor) spent almost a full hour explaining to her that she shouldn’t have done this, that this was not her property to alter, that it was shared association property, and one that was shared with another neighbor who was not part of the association. She was stuck on that the shrub, 18 years ago, was planted on our side of the wall and hence belonged to us and that gives us the right to chop it or whatever we want, regardless of the fact that now, 18 years later, it half grows out of the other guy’s yard. She also claimed that she’d spoken to our president and requested that the shrubs be trimmed closer to the wall as she’s scared of potential lizards or whatever (altho I know she uses the garage on the other side as her main entry/exit, too), and that he’s done nothing. Our president was like, “You told me this weekend! It’s TUESDAY and this morning you already had the shrub chopped down! You didn’t give me a chance to discuss this with the gardeners!” I told her trimming back against our wall is one thing, taking two feet of height off the center of a wall that half belongs to someone else so that his yard now has a giant gap in the middle, which decision she made unilaterally on shared Association property, was wrong. We’re just hoping that the guy doesn’t want to sue the Association. He was really ticked off.

When I got back in my house, the sauce was dried and burnt and my house stunk. And I was late for meeting up with everyone for dinner. But I still had to quell this fire.

I called the guy back after taking the sauce off the stove and explained to him that we’d spoken to the female neighbor whose house the tree trimming was in front of, and that she did indeed call the tree trimmers but that she’d done it without Association permission or knowledge, and that we apologize for his inconvenience on behalf of the Association (since I’m still Secretary). I asked what remedy he’d like, and said we can pay for additional trimming to be done to even out the hedge or leave it and let it grow. He said he wanted to sit on it and calm down and think.

He called me half an hour ago. He wants to add a length of chain link above the wall to give it the height back, cover the chain link portion with green tarp, and let the hedge grow over it or not, but he wants his privacy back up. He said yesterday, he was able to see the older neighbor’s walkway light which glared from the gap into his living room, and he could see people walking up and down that walkway if they’re tall. Plus, it’s cosmetically displeasing to see that 10-, 12-foot gap in the middle of his shrub. I told him that technically, legally, the height of a block wall between property lines is as high as a dividing wall is permitted to be, and that to add height would likely be against City laws. He said, the shrubs grew 2 feet over that, so what’s the difference? I said the difference was that the shrubs were not permanent additions to the height and no one had a problem with it so no one complained to the City, but to add permanent height to a wall would require City permits. Plus, now we know that this neighbor apparently has a problem with the height of the wall. Not to say the way she addressed her issue was correct. (I can still hear her wailing, “So he likes privacy. But what about ME? *I* don’t want it that high. So it doesn’t matter what *I* want?” Well, it’s not HER wall. And even if she did live there alone and it WERE her property and not an Association’s, she’d still have to deal with that neighbor before changing shared property. The difference is that *I* wouldn’t have to deal with it then.) I was SO NICE to the neighbor during this phone call. I put it out there that I believe the city would prohibit the wall addition, but I surrounded it with sugar and understanding and commiseration so that he’d swallow the pill, and he was pretty nice to me in return, altho he was obviously still upset about the whole thing. I thanked him for his brainstorming idea, promised to bring it to my Association so that we can work on a compromisable solution, and told him I couldn’t tell him yea or nay because 11 other units share that wall and may have opinions on how they’d like it to change or not change. He said he understood and knows I can’t give him an answer, and expects there to be some back-and-forth for awhile. I said he may be right, but it has to start somewhere and his open communication with the Association through me is an important and appreciated action, and promised to keep him in the loop.

I’ve passed the neighbor’s requests to my President, who’s going to look into City laws and if it’s as clean as, “No, you can’t alter dividing wall height,” then that’s easy. But we’d still have a ticked off neighbor.

Mr. W thinks the older female Association member should pay for anything we’re gonna have to do now to remedy the problem she caused.