Disappointing Lack of Progress On Creekside Solar Guidelines
December 28th, 2009
As Burt reports in his reporting from the 12/9/2009 HOA meeting, the HOA board chartered a Ad Hoc Solar guidelines committee, lead by Don Wildfang, the new Chairman of the Creekside, Architectural Review Committee (ARC), to recommend a set of solar guidelines to the HOA board. As of today (Jan 5, 2010) there hasn’t even been a first Ad Hoc Solar guidelines committee meeting scheduled.
I find this lack of progress disappointing. I’ve now been working on getting approval to install solar panels on my home for 6 months. I submitted my request to the ARC on June 29 of this year and my solar project was disapproved on July 10. On August 27 I pointed out that the ARC disapproval action on my solar project was illegal due to the Oregon law ORS 105.880. The Creekside legal council apparently agrees.
As of November 9, when the Energy Trust reduced cash solar installation incentives so to date all these delays have cost me $1,500. That is, if I installed a solar system today I’d get $1,500 less cash incentives from the Energy Trust than I would have back in June 2009. Furthermore, there is a real risk of reductions in Oregon tax credits as installation of solar is delayed.
Compared to the business environment I’m used to operating in, the HOA and ARC seem to carryout business at a glacial pace. Much of this preliminary guideline proposal and objection etc. could even be done online ahead of a face-to-face meeting. It now looks like it will take a month to even schedule the first meeting. This pace is slow by any one’s standard!
Is the adoption of solar installation guidelines really this difficult? The research that I’ve done on HOA solar guide lines indicates that virtually every HOA in the the US that has solar guidelines has about a paragraph in their Architectural Guidelines that are simple and basic. The guidelines that we proposed to the Creekside HOA in October 2009, are a compilation of many of these guidelines from other HOAs.
