Members of Homeowner Group Call It a ‘Land Grab’ : Deal With Schools Triggers Renewed Rancor in Ramona

San Diego Country Estates residents choose to live in their exclusive community near Ramona because of the wide-open spaces in the backcountry and the availability of starting times on the resort’s golf course.

So, when some of the homeowners found out that their community association had “given away” some of their open space to the local Ramona school district, tempers flared.

The Ramona Unified School District, which serves Country Estates, now has one elementary school with more than 1,000 students in buildings designed for 700. The school district and homeowner association settled a 12-year-long “friendly” court battle that awarded the schools title to two other school sites.

Dispute Heats Up

But the rancor failed to end with the settlement last fall. In fact, it heated up when Country Estates residents found out that the school district planned to build a much-needed school on a site that required 2 acres or more of adjoining open space belonging to the property owners’ association.

Then, on March 1, when a deed was filed showing that two SDCE Homeowners Assn. officers had approved turning over the tract of open space--more than 9 acres--to the school district, some of the homeowners revolted and demanded that the “land grab” be stopped.

Judy Endeman, associate superintendent of the Ramona school district, verbally shrugged off the demands of Country Estates residents as “overreaction” to a situation that could be settled amicably.

“We had hoped we could do this by working together,” Endeman said, “but I guess not.”

In a meeting earlier this week, the homeowner group voted to file suit against the school district to rescind the agreement that gives the schools the right to develop the homeowners’ acreage. James Danow, attorney for the homeowners’ group, was instructed to sue the school district immediately to regain the community’s open space.

Danow said that the lawsuit has been filed.

Endeman explained that one school site is on an 11.3-acre Country Estates tract split by a stream bed, requiring the district to acquire “about an acre and a half” of the homeowners’ adjacent open space to create a state-approved site without cutting down a stand of venerable oaks or disturbing the creek bed.

A few residents are offended at the expansion, she said, because “they don’t want an elementary school located on their street or kids playing ball near their houses.”

But Bill Benson, a spokesman for the dissident group, which calls itself SOS--both for Save Our School and for Save Open Space--feels that the matter goes deeper than that. It violates the homeowner association’s restrictive covenants that require approval of 75% of the Country Estates’ property owners before any of the community-owned common space is sold or given away.

“No one is opposed to an additional school. In fact we are all for it,” Benson said, “but not at the expense of our open space.”

Crux of Issue

At issue is the signing of the deed that turns over the homeowners’ land to the school district. Godfrey Tudor-Matthews, president of the homeowner association, and board member Charles Lemenager signed the stipulated agreement for the land transfer.

Lemenager, a former employee of Country Estates’ developer Ray Watt, could not be reached for comment and reportedly is out of the country. Tudor-Matthews conceded that he had failed to read the document thoroughly and thought that it simply confirmed what the friendly lawsuit had determined--that the school district should gain title to about 2 acres of the homeowners’ property to create a school site without a vote of the property owners.

The finger-pointing began in earnest when residents learned that the school district had recorded a deed that gave them, not only the school site and the 2 acres or so of common land needed to flesh out their property to state standards, but the rest of the homeowner association’s open space flanking the site.

Tudor-Matthews sighs when he concedes that he signed the deed transferring homeowners’ association land to the Ramona school district.

He said he thought it was a shortcut to achieving what more than 15 years of discussion and friendly lawsuits had sought: creation of a proper elementary school site for Country Estates. When he read the document more closely, he realized that he had given away the entire open-space area--about 9 acres of homeowner group’s property around the school site.

But Tudor-Matthews pointed the finger of guilt at the school board, which, after agreeing not to file the faulty deed, went ahead and did so. He may not have been too smart in signing the agreement without reading it closely, he said, but the school board members are the ones who violated the residents’ faith by breaking their promises not to file the deed until it could be amended.

Tudor-Matthews, looking back at the convoluted and emotional issue, thinks he would have acted differently.

“I think, if we had it to do over again, we would have put it to a vote (of the Country Estates property owners),” he said.

Now that the school district has snatched the land, Tudor-Matthews doubts that a vote would be worthwhile. “I don’t think that they trust the school district now,” he said of Country Estate property owners. “I’m just hoping that our attorney develops a strong enough case to get our land back.”

Arvie Degenfelder, president of the Ramona Unified School Board, agrees with Tudor-Matthews that a vote of SDCE property owners would be fruitless.

“Nowhere in the world” would the measure pass by a 75% majority required under the Country Estates’ laws, Degenfelder said.

Degenfelder has yet to be served in the latest lawsuit about the disputed property and admits that she does not look forward to further delays in building the 700-pupil elementary school in the planned community.

The school, which would be completed by 1991 at the earliest, is needed now, she said.

“It’s so absurd,” she said. “The homeowners and the school district want the same thing. I am sure it will all be worked out eventually. But when, I don’t know.”

People who buy land in a planned community expect that such land disputes will be worked out by the developers, Degenfelder explained in pointing the finger of blame at Ray Watt, the developer. But, when Watt finished his part and turned over the assets to the homeowners’ association, “they also inherited the liabilities, too,” including the school site controversy.

After the school district has state approval to build its school on the slightly expanded site, it will turn the rest of the open space back to the Country Estates property owners, she said.