Sanctuary

Records Inspection
Recent high demand for records inspection has made it necessary for us to emphasize the procedure for obtaining The Sanctuary’s official records. The procedure was set by Florida law to prevent confusion, misinformation and duplication of effort, while ensuring that homeowners have reasonable access to records. It also saves both your management company and HOA Board of Directors from having to drop everything to respond to a request.

Pinnacle Property Management, your management company, is the custodian of our official records. You should contact PPM in writing to request an appointment to view a document. “In writing” can be a written letter or an e-mail and you should expect to be able to view the documents at their office within 10 business days of their receipt of your letter/e-mail.

Records not available for inspection by homeowners include lawyer communications, information about an individual homeowner’s account and other personal information. Florida Statutes 720.303(5) and 90.502 provide the Florida law about this, if you’re interested.

Our Governing Documents (Covenants, Community Design Standards, By-Laws, Florida Statutes) are also freely available on The Sanctuary Website. By law you should have received these documents from the seller (with the exception of the Statutes) when you bought your home, but often this was not the case. You can save time and money by making copies of these directly from the Website. Better yet, save a tree and read them on line.

Conservation Easements
The Sanctuary’s common areas include large tracts of land regulated by law as conservation easements. A conservation easement is a legal agreement designed to preserve open space, groundwater recharge areas, environmentally sensitive lands, wildlife habitat and historical features.

If your property backs up to a wooded area, except in a few small areas you can be pretty certain the area is one of these easements. The St Johns River Water Management District governs these easements and the HOA is responsible to them for maintaining the land in its natural state.

Any activity that alters the easement area is typically prohibited. Such prohibited activity includes dumping of yard trash and lawn clippings, destruction of vegetation and any other activities that change the land. Exhibit B(6) of our Covenants has specific language prohibiting this. St Johns monitors these easements and can levy fines on homeowners discovered dumping yard or other trash on protected areas.

Essentially, except for official inspection by authorized personnel, these conservation easements are no trespassing areas. They are not play areas for your children and their friends (think wild fires) and you should warn them that trespassers are subject to arrest. We have asked the Oviedo Police Department to look out for trespassers and to deal with them accordingly.

Valerie Williams (4/15/2009)