--- title: "Minutes of the Saguaro Ranch Estates Homeowners Association Regular Monthly Meeting, October 13, 2035" canonical: "https://anchor.is/docket/issue/54/futures/article/45437/minutes-of-the-saguaro-ranch-estates-homeowners-association" publication: "The Docket" publisher: "The Docket" language: "en-US" guide: "https://anchor.is/docket/llms.txt" format: "The HOA Minutes" author: "Wren Castellano" author_url: "https://anchor.is/docket/team/73" issue: 54 section: "futures" section_name: "Future Tense" published: 2026-10-16 description: "An HOA meets before dawn in 2035 Phoenix to argue over fake grass colors and pool noise, while the desert rewrites every rule they try to enforce." word_count: 2268 source_links: 4 --- # Minutes of the Saguaro Ranch Estates Homeowners Association Regular Monthly Meeting, October 13, 2035 *By [Wren Castellano]()* *October 16, 2026* [Read on the website]() **Date:** Saturday, October 13, 2035 **Time:** 4:30 a.m. **Location:** Community Room, Building C (backup cooling unit repaired October 9) **Board members present (5 of 7):** D. Kessler (President), R. Kovacs (Treasurer), L. Fontaine-Walsh (Architectural Review Committee Chair), J. Trujillo, A. Parekh **Absent:** S. Greenbaum, M. Dávila **Secretary:** Elena Ruiz, Ruiz Administrative Services LLC **Residents in attendance:** 6 --- ## I. Call to Order President Kessler called the meeting to order at 4:33 a.m. Quorum confirmed. She thanked Mr. Parekh for arranging the cooling repair and reminded attendees that, under the neighborhood's agreement with SRP, the room's primary cooling system is rated for 18 occupants and may only run between 9 p.m. and 7 a.m. *He replaced a $240 relay. She thanked him like he'd rebuilt the compressor out of scrap. It was 79 degrees in here at four-thirty in the morning in October, though, so fine. The man earned it.* --- ## II. Approval of September Minutes The board voted to approve the September 8 minutes with one correction. Mr. Trujillo noted that the distributed version recorded Unit 14's water-tank request as "denied." The item had been tabled. The secretary confirmed that her original draft read "tabled." Vote: Approved as corrected, 5–0. *Trujillo is right. I wrote "tabled." I don't know what happened to it between my draft and the version Diane sent out. I have thoughts about that. I'm a contractor, so I keep them to myself.* --- ## III. Treasurer's Report Mr. Kovacs reported September financials: - Operating account: $34,118.22 - Reserve fund: $187,440.00 - Delinquent assessments: $6,200 across four units, two on approved payment plans Mr. Kovacs reported that the association holds credits for 487 acre-feet of banked groundwater, registered with the Arizona Department of Water Resources. He described the credits as "a significant and secure water asset" and recommended continued monitoring. The contractor drilling the recovery well suspended work in July and has not returned. Ms. Fontaine-Walsh asked whether the credits could be traded to the city for a rate reduction. Mr. Kovacs said no. Without a permitted well or a transfer agreement with the city, the credits cannot be turned into delivered water. The association has neither. No action taken. *487 acre-feet is something like 159 million gallons. It exists on paper in Phoenix. The well is a hole behind Building A with a tarp over it. Kovacs said "significant and secure" with a straight face, and I know how hard that is, because I spent three years writing that exact kind of sentence for clients.* --- ## IV. Committee Reports ### A. Architectural Review Committee Ms. Fontaine-Walsh presented three items. **1. Unit 22 — Front Yard Variance (Medrano)** Mr. Medrano requests a waiver from the community requirement that front yards maintain 25% living or approved artificial plant coverage. His current coverage is roughly 8%: two barrel cacti, plus one palo verde that volunteered in his irrigation line around 2033. Mr. Trujillo said a volunteer tree is a good sign. Ms. Fontaine-Walsh noted that the tree is growing through the drip line and will eventually rupture it. Mr. Parekh asked whether palo verde is on the approved species list. Ms. Fontaine-Walsh confirmed it is, but said the tree was never submitted for review before it established itself. *The tree planted itself. Now it has to apply, retroactively, for permission to exist.* Mr. Medrano, from the audience, said he has spent $4,400 on replacement plantings in three years. "Everything dies in August now," he said. "Including the stuff that's supposed to not die in August." Vote: Approved 4–1, on condition that Mr. Medrano submit a revised landscape plan incorporating the tree within 90 days. Ms. Fontaine-Walsh voted no. *She voted no because the rule says 25%. The rule was written back when 25% was possible. That part stays out of the official record.* **2. Unit 9 — Artificial Turf Replacement (Okafor-Briggs)** Ms. Okafor-Briggs's 2029 artificial turf has degraded. Her replacement product meets the required pile weight and blade height but is gray-green rather than the specified "natural turf green with secondary brown or tan tones." She reported that two of the three manufacturers she contacted have discontinued the approved color. *Two out of three companies quit making the green. The people who sell fake lawns for a living looked at the market and decided nobody needed that color anymore. Our standard still requires it.* Vote: Approved 4–1. The committee will update the color standard. Ms. Fontaine-Walsh voted no. **3. Unit 32 — Reflective Roof Complaint (Petrosyan re: Yoon)** Mr. Petrosyan reports that the cool-roof coating applied to Unit 31 in June reflects sunlight into his bedroom and office windows from about 6 to 8 a.m., which are the hours his household is most active. *Most active at sunrise. Of course. Nobody's awake at 2 p.m. anymore. Fifteen years ago people slept till seven and worked till five and this glare would have hit an empty bedroom. Now everybody's life is packed into the early morning, and Yoon can't afford to keep that heat on his own roof, so it has to go somewhere.* Mr. Yoon, from the audience, said the coating cut his August cooling bill by 31% and complies with county building code. Mr. Petrosyan said he installed window tinting, but it blocks daylight during the only hours when daylight is usable. Mr. Trujillo asked whether the board was "really going to tell a man he can't keep his house cool because it makes the sun bounce." Discussion was extended. No vote taken. The committee will draft a reflectivity standard for the November meeting. *Trujillo's right, and so is Petrosyan. The coating doesn't get rid of the heat, it sends it next door. I took one thermodynamics course in 2009 and I think about it pretty much every week now.* ### B. Shade Committee Mr. Parekh reported. The committee was formerly the Shade Tree Committee and has been renamed. *Because the trees died and the committee kept meeting. I respect that more than I can put in an official document.* Of the 34 trees planted when the development was completed in 2019, seven survive. Four are in the interior courtyard, where they get recycled gray water from Building C. Three are along the north wall of the parking structure. Mr. Parekh described their condition as "optimistic." The committee requested $12,500 for two fabric shade structures over the east parking area, where surface temperatures reached 187°F in September. Mr. Kovacs asked whether the structures would require architectural review. Ms. Fontaine-Walsh confirmed they would. Mr. Parekh noted that state law now bars HOAs from restricting shade structures on private property and asked whether the same principle should apply to common areas. Ms. Fontaine-Walsh said the statute covers private lots only. Vote: Approved 5–0. *Five to nothing, maybe forty seconds. Fastest vote of the night. Nobody on this board has ever argued against shade.* ### C. Pool and Recreation President Kessler reported. Since June 2035, pool hours have been restricted to 3–8 a.m. and 8 p.m.–midnight, and only when the ambient temperature is below 105°F. Four units (7, 8, 11, 12) filed noise complaints about early-morning pool use, citing conversation, splashing, the circulation pump, and one "cannonball contest" at approximately 3:45 a.m. on September 14. *I was awake for the cannonball contest. My unit faces the pool. Somebody's kid did a backflip off the edge and everyone clapped. Quarter to four in the morning, 94 degrees, and people were happy out there. I won't be the one who writes the rule that ends that. I will be the one who writes down that the board discussed it, because that is literally what I'm paid for.* President Kessler laid out the conflict. The community's designated quiet hours run 10 p.m. to 6 a.m., and the morning pool hours fall entirely inside them. The board must either revise quiet hours or eliminate morning swimming. Mr. Trujillo proposed shortening quiet hours to 10 p.m.–2:30 a.m. Mr. Kovacs said this would "effectively eliminate quiet hours" and asked what recourse residents would have during the only hours cool enough to sleep. Discussion was extended and at times heated. *"Heated" is the word going in the record. What actually happened: Kovacs said "some of us still believe in standards." Trujillo said "some of us believe in swimming." Fontaine-Walsh proposed a decibel limit. Parekh asked who exactly was going to stand out there with a sound meter at four in the morning. Diane said "let's table this" three times before people stopped talking.* Vote to table: 3–2. Mr. Trujillo and Mr. Parekh voted no. --- ## V. Old Business ### A. Annual Community Cookout The neighborhood traditionally holds a cookout over the Columbus Day long weekend. On September 2, President Kessler submitted the outdoor-event permit the city now requires for gatherings during heat-advisory conditions. The city has not responded. The permit requires a heat-safety plan with cooling stations, potable water supply, on-site medical capability, and a cancellation threshold based on wet-bulb globe temperature (a measurement combining heat, humidity, sun exposure, and wind). The city's recommended cancellation threshold is 89°F. Based on the past three Octobers, the cookout would have been canceled in 2033 and 2034. *Columbus Day was Monday the 8th. The weekend came and went while the application sat in somebody's queue. And to recap: we need a permit to hold a cookout, the permit requires a cancellation rule, and the cancellation rule would have killed the cookout two of the last three years. We are asking permission to do the thing the permission process is designed to prevent.* Mr. Kovacs suggested moving the event to December and rebranding it as a holiday gathering. Ms. Fontaine-Walsh noted that December falls within the seasonal decorative-lighting period, and that community rules require temporary equipment, grills included, to be removed within 48 hours of an event. Mr. Trujillo said the board should "pick a month when we're allowed to stand outside and eat a hamburger and put it on the calendar." Vote to table pending city response: 4–1. Mr. Trujillo voted no, stating, "We are going to table this until the sun burns out." ### B. Unit 14 — Emergency Water Tank (Continued) This item was tabled in September, not denied. Ms. Nakamura installed a 500-gallon water tank in August without prior approval. The tank sits 18 inches from her property line. The setback requirement is 36 inches. Ms. Nakamura was not present but submitted a written statement. She installed the tank during the August service interruption. Relocating it would mean draining, disconnecting, and replumbing it, at an estimated cost of $1,800. Mr. Parekh asked whether the tank is full. Mr. Trujillo said yes, and added that Ms. Nakamura would "rather pay the fine than move the water." *She has water. Actual water, in a tank she can walk out and touch. It's eighteen inches too close to the line, and we spent twenty minutes on the eighteen inches.* Ms. Fontaine-Walsh argued that retroactive approval would encourage noncompliance. Mr. Trujillo noted that four more units have installed tanks since August. "The precedent," he said, "is already walking around out there." Vote: Approved 3–2, on condition that Ms. Nakamura submit a relocation plan by April 2036. Ms. Fontaine-Walsh and Mr. Kovacs voted no. --- ## VI. New Business Mr. Parekh reported that pavement temperatures on the east walkway caused two pairs of residents' shoes to delaminate in the past month. He asked the board to consider a reflective or permeable surface treatment. Ms. Fontaine-Walsh said any resurfacing would require architectural review. *Appearance approval, for the ground, so people's shoes stop coming apart. I'm writing "Mr. Parekh raised a concern regarding walkway surface conditions" and moving on with my life.* Mr. Parekh raised a concern regarding walkway surface conditions and requested that the item be added to the November agenda. No objection. --- ## VII. Adjournment President Kessler moved to adjourn. Vote: 5–0. Meeting adjourned at 5:51 a.m. Sunrise at 6:14 a.m. Next meeting: Saturday, November 10, 2035, 4:30 a.m., Community Room, Building C, cooling permitting. *Walked out to the lot. Sky going orange over the Superstitions. Trujillo was leaning on his truck finishing his coffee. He said, "Same time next month?" I said, "Same time next month." The pavement was already warm through my shoes. I thought about saying so, and then I got in my car.* Respectfully submitted, **Elena Ruiz** Secretary (Contract) Ruiz Administrative Services LLC ## Things to follow up on... - **Arizona's water bank reversal:** The Arizona Water Banking Authority is shifting from decades of storing unused Colorado River water underground to [planning how to pump it back out](https://www.azwater.gov/news/articles/2026-09-23), with 2027 expected to be the first shortage year affecting many Phoenix-area urban users. - **Cool hours, crowded hours:** CDC surveillance recorded [21,775 heat-related emergency department visits](https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/75/wr/mm7536a2.htm) during a single ten-day heat dome in summer 2026, with NOAA separately finding that September 2026 nighttime temperatures broke records across more than 30% of the country — shrinking the recovery window the Saguaro Ranch board is already fighting over. - **HOAs versus heat construction:** Arizona's 2025 emergency law allows construction to [start as early as 4 a.m. during summer months](https://www.azleg.gov/legtext/57leg/1r/laws/0181.htm), but some HOAs have refused contractors early access, and attorneys disagree on whether the statute overrides private community quiet-hours rules. - **When the school is the cooling center:** A GAO survey found that [19% of U.S. school districts canceled classes due to facility failures in 2024–25](https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-26-107970), with excessive classroom temperatures among the leading causes — the same tension between institutional continuity and physical safety that Elena Ruiz watches play out over a swimming pool. ## More - [Future Tense — Issue 54]() - [Issue 54]() - [Publication guide]()