DATE: Thursday, March 6, 1997               TAG: 9703060313

SECTION: BUSINESS                PAGE: D1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY DAVE MAYFIELD, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: CHESAPEAKE                        LENGTH:  124 lines

CONDO ASSOCITIONS HAVE UPPER HAND IN DISH DISPUTES - FOR NOW

When a satellite-TV dealer told Cindy Potter late last year that her condo association couldn't stop her from putting a small dish on her roof, Potter reacted apprehensively.

``I said, `Yeah, well, you don't know these people,' '' Potter said.

The Kings Ford Owners Association has a rule book three-quarters of an inch thick. It dictates everything from the color of porch light bulbs - clear only - to the type and size of flag one may fly - United States only, no bigger than 3 to 5 feet.

Satellite dishes, Potter warned the dealer, weren't exactly welcome.

Three months and lots of acrimony later, it turns out she was right.

Last week, the condo association sent a contractor to Potter's home. He removed her 18-inch dish, as well as a TV antenna that had been attached to the back side of her duplex roof.

The association's attorney calls the removal an unfortunate, but necessary, response by a community trying to preserve an aesthetic standard.

Potter calls the association's action heavy-handed and typical of the way that Kings Ford, which is in Chesapeake's River Walk section, is governed. ``I've told people I would have more freedom if I lived on base housing,'' said Potter, a Navy lieutenant commander who works as an operating-room nurse.

What the condo association did is perfectly legal. Until the Federal Communications Commission finishes guidelines for the placement of satellite dishes and antennas, condo and apartment complexes are free to severely restrict them.

But the Kings Ford case illustrates a trend. Across the country, a growing number of such conflicts are arising over TV-reception devices - none more so than the small dishes that have recently hit the market.

Up until a few years ago, satellite dishes were a rural phenomenon. Most people who bought dishes - which once spanned up to 16 feet in diameter - did so because cable TV wasn't available.

Now, however, dishes as small as 18 inches in diameter are being mass-marketed to American consumers as cable alternatives.

``For the first time people in cities and suburbs have a real choice of multi-channel video,'' said Margaret Parone, a spokeswoman for the Alexandria-based Satellite Broadcasting and Communications Association. ``It's causing a great deal of consternation for homeowner associations, in particular, that are used to dictating the ebb and flow of their communities.''

In its landmark telecommunications-reform legislation last year, Congress directed the FCC to remove restrictions on viewers' ability to put up dishes of one meter or less in diameter. That covers several of the new satellite services like DirecTv, Primestar and Dish TV that combined have picked up about 4.5 million U.S. subscribers over the past three years.

The FCC's first wave of rules issued last August for the most part covered people in single-family dwellings. Essentially, the agency overruled prohibitions against the smaller dishes, as well as antennas. But it allowed municipalities or community associations to restrict where and how the dishes can be placed - so long as they didn't impede the dish's reception or burden the homeowner with an ``unreasonable'' cost.

The FCC didn't define what is unreasonable. Morgan Broman, an agency spokesman, said requiring the owner to paint the dish a certain color or mask it with shrubs would be considered reasonable. ``Making somebody put up a thousand-dollar fence around it would be a different story,'' he said.

Likewise, a dish owner can't be forced to put a dish in the back yard if only a front-yard location would allow good reception. Generally, dishes must have a clear line toward the southwest sky.

Hampton Roads dish dealers say that, for the most part, community associations have complied with the rules - though rarely ecstatically.

``Most of them realize that they can't stop people from putting them in,'' said Lee Whedbee, president of Chesapeake-based Domes Satellite.

But Keith Wheelhouse, marketing director for dish dealer National Communications of America Inc. in Virginia Beach, said several of his customers in Virginia Beach and Chesapeake have been ``hassled'' by their associations.

He said Chesapeake's Las Gaviotas Homeowners' Association has been particularly tough. Among other things, it requires a dish to be mounted on a metal pole no more than 3 feet high in the owner's back yard and to be surrounded by ``sufficiently mature shrubs'' to block its view from the street or homes.

Wheelhouse complained that such requirements add several hundred dollars to the cost of installing dishes and potentially will force owners to put them in places where reception is poor. The dishes themselves generally run about $200. Most users pay another $30 to $100 a month in monthly program fees.

Richard Pelletier, a Las Gaviotas resident who chairs the association's architectural and maintenance requirements committee, said the community isn't trying to prevent dishes. He said that three residents, including the president of the association, have dishes in compliance with the rules.

But putting dishes on the roof or sides of homes will not be allowed, he said, noting that the association will likely seek legal action against three owners that fall in that category.

Disputes in communities of single-family dwellings will likely pale in comparison to conflicts in condos and apartment complexes.

The FCC postponed a final ruling on the location of dishes in these multi-family complexes because issues there aren't as clear-cut.

Broman said in the absence of rules, anything condo associations or apartment complexes say goes - with one exception. The FCC did stipulate that dishes and antennas should be permitted inside ``limited common elements'' such as patios that are for the exclusive use of the dwelling's owner.

But in a typical condo or apartment complex, most of the rest of the exterior of dwellings - from roofs to outside walls - is claimed as the common property of every owner within the community.

That's where Kings Ford resident Cindy Potter ran into trouble. On the advice of Wheelhouse's company, Potter agreed to have her dish put on the roof.

That kicked off an exchange of letters, starting in January, between Potter and the association, which claimed that she'd violated its rules against attaching TV-reception devices to common areas. Only after Potter filed a petition with the FCC did she learn last week that the association was within its rights.

Michael Inman, Kings Ford's attorney, said he's advising the roughly 100 Hampton Roads community associations that he represents to avoid such conflicts. They need to inform their members of changes in federal rules governing satellite dishes and adopt regulations that accommodate the safe placement of them, he said.

One of the best things community association leaders and satellite-dish vendors could do, he said, is to sit down and talk. ``It would be better if we try to understand each other.'' ILLUSTRATION: MARTIN SMITH-RODDEN

The Virginian-Pilot

MICHAEL HALL/The Virginian-Pilot

GRAPHIC

DISH OWNERS

ASSOCIATIONS

[For a copy of the graphic, see microfilm for this date.]

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