Click here to read or download the analysis document.

January 5, 2024
TO: SROA Board of Directors

Please thoughtfully review the attached analysis of the proposed rules limiting owners’ ability to protect native plants on their own property.

If you read this analysis with an open mind, you’ll see that adopting the proposed rules would create a “train wreck.”

The rules have serious unintended consequences in addition to flouting the Consolidated Plan of Sunriver’s policy regarding native trees and wildflowers.

Numerous of the rules are so poorly written that there is no way for owners (or the Board) to even know what is allowed and what is prohibited. (And, as you’re aware, the SROA staff have not been prepared or forthcoming in providing clarifications.)

Numerous of the rules cannot be complied with or are patently unreasonable.

Numerous flaws in the rules would likely be unenforceable for a variety of reasons if one or more owners were to challenge the SROA.

And, to whose benefit? Not the vast majority of Sunriver owners; but rather only a handful of owners who have no cause other than they 
just don’t like seeing protective fencing on other owners’ property.

For some inexplicable reason, these vocal owners have not objected previously to the thousands of feet of substantial fences all over Sunriver, including fences that are arguably hazardous to deer
(e.g., around the Owners’ Pool).

There is really not a problem with limited use of protective fencing on perhaps 200 or so single-family lots. No evidence has been presented to support such a claim.

Instead, the whole basis has been premised on hypothetical, hyperbolic projections of hundreds of lots filled with massive fencing and little fawns entangled or their mothers impaled.

And, as I will shortly submit for your consideration, the so-called “Justifications” submitted for these rules are filled with falsehoods, misrepresentations, “red herrings,” and other irrelevant or unreliable assertions.

Tellingly, the “justifications” don’t mention our founding
document, the Consolidated Plan of Sunriver, even once.

And, if there were a problem with a relatively few owners’ plant protections, the long, property-line fences around condominiums, the fencing around 36 golf greens, the quarter mile of fencing along the east of Mary McCallum park, and many other examples of extensive fencing in Sunriver would be a hundred times the problem, both visually and functionally.

Someone of you has got to speak up and stop this insanity.

It would not be difficult at all to arrive at a simple, clear, reasonable set of rules that would prevent extreme overuse of fencing, abide by the intent of the Consolidated Plan of Sunriver, and respect the right of Sunriver owners to expand and protect the highly beneficial native trees, shrubs, and wildflowers.

Most of the work is already done. Just look at: https://sunriverneighbors.org/draft

Thank you for your consideration.

Paul Conte
7 & 8 McKenzie Lane