The Klamath River Country Estates

The Information In This Section is Public

My Comments are Based on My Experience With The KRCE and the KRCEOA

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In the mid-1960's the logging industry in northern California had 'peaked' and was starting to decline. Pacific-Cascade Lumber Company was among the many companies operating in the area. All companies were under pressure to rid themselves of land that would not produce timber in harvestable quantities for another 20 to 40 years. So, the management decided to 'subdivide' their large tracts of land into home lots. The perceived market for such lots would be those people with great jobs in the southern parts of California who could afford a second home for vacation purposes. Pacific-Cascade Land Company of Delaware (PCLC) took over the work of creating what has come to be known as a Planned Unit Development (PUD), a sub-division.

Starting in the early months of 1967, PCLC began to write the legal documents and had surveys completed to create the Klamath River Country Estates (KRCE). The plan was to create the KRCE in five stages - UNITS. PCLC would create a network of 'suburban' streets by converting old logging roads into paved streets and by building new roads. The last documents, for Unit #5, were filed in July 1969. Everything was designed to meet the then-current regulations and standards for public road-building. The lots had to be large enough to accomodate a house, a septic system and a well with the necessary 'safe' distances from each other to avoid contamination of the underground water supply. KRCE was perceived to be a rural development with greater spacing between houses for privacy. If you take the time to read the brochures of the sale offerings from those days and can interpret the various comments made on the survey cover pages correctly, you may come to believe that they thought the KRCE might become an incorporated town at some point, with a couple thousand homes and several thousand residents.

An Owners' Association (KRCEOA) was established that would provide some control over land uses and structure design to ensure a cohesive and pleasant environment for all. The plan included ten (10) lots, including a campground, lodge, office and swimming pool to be held 'in-common' by the 2000+ lot owners and maintained by the KRCEOA with funds derived from an annual assessment on each lot in the KRCE. The KRCEOA would be managed by a Board of Directors (BoD or Board) composed of directors elected by the owners. PCLC did the marketing of the lots and KRCEOA managed the maintenance of the roads that were to be maintained by the KRCEOA and the 'in-common' properties.

I first learned about the KRCE in early 1968 when I was stationed as a student at the U.S. Navy Electronics 'grad' school at Treasure Island in San Francisco Bay. I found a bi-fold brochure about the KRCE on the "Interesting Things To See and Do in San Francisco" literature rack near my barracks. It described a place that I simply 'fell in love' with from a great distance. I found the area on my road atlas maps, but in those pre-Internet days that was it. The map and the brochure were always in my notebook from that point on. As we approached the Memorial Day weekend I devised a plan to surprise my wife with a 'road trip' to northern California to see Mt. Shasta, Lava Beds National Monument and make a grand sweep back to Reno, Bodie Ghost Town State Park, and Yosemite - ALL in 3 days! And, to see the KRCE, if we could find it.



 
 

We left Friday evening and headed north. The seven of us were crowded into a Dodge van that I had just converted into a 'camper' designed for two..... Overcrowded to be sure, but we had tents and bags for all and tossed my sister-in-law and a friend out onto the ground at night. We got to Weed very late that night. We drove out into the forest somewhere in the area just north of Weed and slept after eating some fast-food hamburgers bought hours earlier. In the morning we doubled back to Weed to get directions to the KRCE. Everyone we asked would scratch their heads (or other body areas) and then they gave us conflicting directions. And, since I wanted to surprise my wife about the KRCE, she was naturally curious why we were trying to find this KRCE place in the first place... I explained, but she was adamant that she never wanted to ever, for one second, ever live in California again. She was 'sick of the go....mned' life in the cities, etc.. Long story shortened, we skipped around the KRCE and continued with our now truncated trip. I would not get to see the KRCE until 2008, and then only by 'accident'.

When Liza and I found the KRCE again in 2010, it was with a Realtor's property list in hand and a poor map of the subdivision. Our first reactions were: "failed development", bad muddy roads, trashy trailers (read 'red neck') and yards, lots of deferred maintenance, and some lots with 'drop dead' views, but mostly we had negative reactions. The Realtor made this reaction even more sharply focused when he told us that the KRCEOA BoD had recently lost a major lawsuit-counter suit to 'the developer' and were struggling to pay the court costs... To say we were not impressed with the KRCE would be inaccurate. The few lots we saw with great views might be acceptable IF the KRCEOA BoD situation might be better understood.

I am not a 'hopeless romantic optimist'. The KRCE and KRCEOA problems that we saw and heard about were daunting. We felt some could be dealt with by simply ignoring them. The roads and trashy condition of some homes and lots could be 'avoided' by taking an alternative route to 'our lot', assuming we could/would buy one there. Other problems, like the BoD, might be changed IF we could stage a palace coup, or simply by voting others onto the Board, but that was a large IF. We preferred lots closer to Mt. Shasta and Weed. The interesting thing about our Universe is that 'it' often throws us a set of circumstances that at first seem dangerous to enter but becomes the 'best' option after rejecting all of the previously-thought 'better' choices. This was one of those times.

After more than a week of looking at and 'deselecting' 35 'better' lots nearer to Weed, we were ready to give up and leave, never to return. But our Realtor called with a 'last minute' available lot. We reluctantly agreed to look at it. It was in KRCE, one we had not seen, and we had not been on that street during our drive-around tours. The Universe was providing us with one of those "AHhhhh" moments, when we knew we had found what we were looking for. For us that turned out to be 13242 Mountain Street, a vacant lot on a hillside that has one of those 'drop dead' views of Mt. Shasta, Black Mountain and the Shasta Valley. We bought and started planning our new home.

We decided to get close to the people on the Board and learn more from them about the issues in play with the KRCE and the KRCEOA. We talked with County officials, office staff and local professionals in the building trades. We talked to local residents in and around the KRCE. We soon developed a sense that our 'fall back' position of 'ignoring' some issues might be the best. We would vote, but we were informed that it was mostly a 'worthless hope' to think we could bring about changes through elections that could never seem to get a minimal quorum of owners to 'show up' and/or 'vote'.

We did our best to play 'turtles'. We started developing our land. We cleared the brush and weeds, raked and rolled rocks into piles and made 'walls'. We experimented with various plants and trees to see what might grow/die and basically to learn as much as we could before investing lots of money into wrong ideas. We hired the architect/engineer, the well driller and the septic system contractors who did their work and got us to and through the building permit stage. In March 2011, I 'pulled' the building permit and started the process of building our storage sheds, vineyard buildings and the house.

We learned a lot by observing and listening to everything and everyone. We avoided Owner meetings, mostly because few of them were held in the summer months and we were gone in the winters. Other meetings were simply at the 'wrong time' for our travel schedule. We voted each year, but as predicted, nothing changed. When the Board passed an anti-camping, anti-development, anti-water from the campground, anti_________ (fill in the blank) type of ordinance in the spring of 2014, I knew it was time to become militant. I decided that I had to get my name on the deed to our land and try to get other people on the Board who I considered likely to think more like us.



 
 

I am a peaceful warrior. I fight within the rules of the game and the community around me, but I fight hard and am not afraid of breaking YOUR eggs or bruising my own. I control my anger, sharply focus it and then direct it on the 'enemy'. I do get even. The KRCEOA had gone too far in Spring 2014. As bad luck would have it Liza's dad had suffered a series of strokes in late 2013 and was likely to 'die at any moment'. We returned to Dubna Russia so Liza could be close to her Dad and Mom and help them. During our time in Dubna I did research online and read all of our KRCE documents that we were given when we bought the land. I had read them all in 2010, but in 2014, I read them looking for the rules of the game that I could use against my 'enemies'. I found plenty of rules and 'bad' actions to be explored for explanation and used as leverage to force issues into the open and bring about change. I had found glaring errors in a 2003 re-write of the Covenants, Conditions and Restrictions (CC&Rs) for the KRCE. I found the records for the lawsuit that had started in 2003 and ended in 2009, costing the KRCEOA over $200,000, that was apparently not covered by insurance. I detected errors in the annual accounting statements that had been sent out with the annual auditors' report.

I prefer having others who can help carry the fight to the 'enemy'. There is strength in numbers. As good luck would have it, there were already others who had been 'gored' by the Board's actions. They were as incensed as I. Acting independently from me, they were quietly taking action to get a quorum and to get proxies in hand to bring about a change in membership on the Board.

Liza and I returned to the KRCE in August 2014. I quickly learned that ALL of the documents I had given to the secretary in 2010 to place in our lot file were missing. I had 'filed with her' a power of attorney from Liza to me to conduct all business in her absence for our lot, a letter about our building plans and a set of large blueprint drawings for our house that were required by the Architectural Control Board (ACB). No one in the office could explain how they became 'missing'.

I then handed the new office person our newly-executed and recorded deed with my name on it. I stated that as a bonafide OWNER, I was now going to be very active in the meetings and other fora - to their collective detriment. In short, I was going to be the 'horn in their gut'. Many years of working for government agencies have taught me the need, and the most effective ways, to gore.

I volunteered then to help provide the necessary information to correct the problems I had detected in the CC&Rs and to identify the other errors I noted in the accounting. About this same time, the Annual Meeting of Owners was coming up. I was aware of the 'rebel' group wanting to be elected. I sided with them and supported their goals. I told them about my research into the CC&Rs and the accounting problems. Then, the Universe provided, again. Three new members, from the rebel group were elected to the Board, a peaceful coup had happened. I attended the follow-up meeting and loudly voiced my findings about the CC&Rs and accounting problems. A few days later I was asked by one of the new Directors to do a complete analysis of the set of past and present CC&Rs and how to rectify them.

As of this moment (January 2015), the 'new Board' has a majority (3/5ths) from the rebel group. There is beginning to be a rapid change in the activity of the Board. The anti-camping, anti-development ordinances were repealed. We are getting a website, a FaceBook page and soon electronic card gates at the campground and debit/credit card payment systems...and that's just the beginning. A 'holdover' Board member resigned after an 'argumentative' public and later executive session of the Board in late November 2014. The changes will continue only if Owners stay aggressively active in the meetings and in the elections. Stay tuned here for more as events unfold.



 
 

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