Manager’s Report President’s Message

Manager’s Report

By Kathe M. Barnes, CAAM, LSM, PCAM Executive Director

Why are you receiving poor Verizon cell service when there are cell sites located in Scottsdale Ranch?

I am often asked this, especially for those living on the east end of our community.

I have been in contact with various Verizon representatives over the past several months. They have stated that their engineers have tested the sites and am told they are working as expected. Well, I know that does not help when your service is not working as you expect it to. I do know some homeowners have reached out to Verizon as well to no avail. Some say this seems to have started when the network switched from 4G LTE to 5G.

I have been told that it’s possible to boost your cell phone signal using either a Verizon Network Extender or a signal booster. These technologies are intended to give you a stronger Verizon signal wherever they’re set up. Unfortunately, I have also heard that these don’t always do the trick.

Frustrating to say the least. I am encouraging all homeowners that are experiencing poor signal to contact Verizon. The more people that complain in a specific area, the more attention is received on the matter. There is power in numbers.

The official way to report dead spots on the Verizon Wireless network is to

call customer service at 1-800-9220204 from a landline or *611 from your phone and request they open a trouble ticket to investigate your location.

I have not heard from anyone using other cell providers, so I have only addressed Verizon in this article.

I would be interested to hear any feedback that you receive from Verizon on your reporting the problem to them. Feel free to email me at kbarnes@ scottsdaleranch.org.

By Matt Metz SRCA Board President

One of the hottest topics in the news these days is short-term rental (STR) properties, and the adverse impacts these can have on single-family communities.

STRs involve renting a home for just a few days up to several weeks or even a month. You may actually have used a short-term rental yourself, if you traveled to another city on vacation and found your accommodations through a service such as AirbnbTM or VRBO®.

The problem is that this kind of property is often associated with “party houses.” The owners of these properties often allow many people to use the home for a short stay, and these people may cause parking problems, excessive noise, noise late at night, or other issues not usually associated with our quiet and peaceful single-family neighborhoods.

Unfortunately, a few years back the Arizona legislature passed laws that are friendly to the investors who set up these STRs (and arguably UNFRIENDLY to the homeowners who live nearby). These laws severely restrict the ability of cities (such as Scottsdale) to limit short-term rentals.

This year, the legislature gave the cities a few more tools to enforce the few permitted restrictions on STRs. But the fact remains that under state law, cities may not outright prohibit STRs.

That’s why we should appreciate what homeowners’ associations, such as Scottsdale Ranch, can do to protect its members. Because the Arizona law that prohibits cities from banning STRs does not apply to homeowners’ associations.

Scottsdale Ranch does prohibit short-term rentals in all its single-family neighborhoods – SOMETHING THE CITY CANNOT DO. Our HOA prohibits any single-family rental for fewer than 30 days, and we prohibit more than two rentals in any 365-day period. To help head off problems, we even prohibit advertising STRs for single-family homes in Scottsdale Ranch.

Rules, however, are useless unless they are monitored and enforced. You should be delighted and proud to know that SRCA actively and strictly monitors and enforces our STR regulations. Our staff spend many hours every week looking for violations, sending violation notices, and enforcing our STR prohibitions. This is a significant effort; we have to monitor many web sites, monitor our neighborhoods, and respond to concerns of neighbors. But this enforcement effort is important; so important, in fact that next year (2023) we will be contracting with a service to assist us in identifying STR violations.

Fining violators of our short-term rental policy is only effective if the amount of the fine is significant, compared to the hundreds or thousands of dollars per day charged by the owners. For that reason, SRCA’s daily fine for STR violations can be up to the actual advertised daily rental price.

To date, SRCA’s active efforts to protect the quality of life for our homeowners has resulted in shutting down at least 15 short-term rental homes. As this article is being written, we are monitoring five more possible violations.

Scottsdale Ranch’s rules against STRs – and our active monitoring and enforcement of those rules – are more examples of the benefits of living in an HOA. If you lived outside Scottsdale Ranch, you could very well have a “party house” short-term rental property next door, with little ability to protect yourself from the noise, traffic, parking, and other negative effects of STRs.

This is yet one more reason we should all be appreciative of the protections and benefits provided by your SRCA membership!

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