Cameo Community || Email: Info@Cameohoa.org
Villageway Management || Gavin Kuehn, Property Manager || Email: GavinK@villageway.com
2 Venture, Suite 500 Irvine, CA 92618 || PO Box 4708, Irvine, CA 92616
Phone: 949.450.1515 || Fax: 949.585.0146 || 24-Hr Emergency Phone: 949.450.1515
Copyright © 2007 Cameo Community Association. All rights reserved.
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Gating Cameo
Extracted from the February 2007 edition of the Cameo Tidelines Newsletter
For those of you that attended the 2006 Annual Meeting in Roxbury Park, you probably took note of several homeowners emphatically advocating some action on gating the community. The Board has also received several emails through our web site that asked questions about gating Cameo. This article is intended to answer some of your questions on this issue without taking any side.
Gating the community has been discussed by our association board of directors numerous times over the last ten or fifteen years. The Board even had a reserve study done about 6 years ago to look at some projected costs. Unfortunately, the real issues on gating the community are not the cost or security issues (there is also some debate as to whether gated communities have lower crime rates) but rather seemingly insurmountable legal and regulatory obstacles.
First, according to our CC&R’s, gating the community would require 75% of all our homeowners to vote in favor of doing so. Also, a 75% vote would be required to enact an assessment to fund the construction of gates and fund a substantial deposit to the reserve fund that would be required to provide for future repairs to the streets, sidewalks, street lighting and parkway trees that Cameo would acquire from the City. In the last 20 years, there has never been 50% of our homeowners vote on anything.
There is also a significant number of homeowners that are adamantly opposed to gating and it is doubtful that even if we got a 100% voter turnout that we could achieve a 75% vote in favor. Even asking for a vote from our homeowners would essentially be a waste of time because two other issues would most probably block any chance of gating Cameo.
These two seemingly insurmountable obstacles are getting the City and the Coastal Commission to approve the gating.
City approval is required because they own the streets, sidewalks, street lighting and parkway trees that would have to be deeded to Cameo. The City’s proposed Local Coastal Plan (LCP), which is pending approval by the Coastal Commission, would probably not allow them to approve gating of Cameo. Here is what the proposed LCP says regarding gating.
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54. 3.1.5-1. Prohibit new development that incorporate gates, guardhouses, barriers or other structures designed to regulate or restrict access where they would inhibit public access to and along the shoreline and to beaches, coastal parks, trails, or coastal bluffs
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55. 3.1.5-2. Prohibit new private streets, or the conversion of public streets to private streets, where such a conversion would inhibit public access to and along the shoreline and to beaches, coastal parks, trails, or coastal bluffs.
There are a couple of former Board members that think the City could be persuaded to approve the gating, using the argument that there is currently no public access to our beaches and bluffs. However, the Coastal Commission has told us that public parking on Cameo’s streets for people walking over to the State Park is considered public access to the shoreline.
Cameo’s recent discussions with the Coastal Commission to obtain a Coastal Development Permit for the PCH entrances and wall has led those of us involved in those discussions to believe that the Commission would reject outright, any request to gate an existing oceanfront community, thus leaving us with the only option of appealing the decision of the Coastal Commission to the California courts. Many famous people and large corporations have taken on the Commission through the courts in the past and most have lost, after expending huge sums in legal fees.
Both the Shores and Highlands are within the boundaries of the zone that requires Coastal Commission approval for projects such as our entrances and gating of our community. In addition, our Coastal Development Permit granted to Cameo by the Coastal Commission to refurbish the entrances and build a new wall along PCH contains a clause that requires Cameo to seek Coastal Commission approval for any future changes to the entrances.
It is not as if the Board has been remiss in not considering the issue; Gating our community does not appear feasible now or in the foreseeable future.
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Cameo Community Association
Gem of ♦ Corona del Mar ♦ California
A Coastal Residential Community Since 1960