HOLLIS BEND, Wis. — The board of the Prairie Vista Estates Homeowners Association voted 4-1 Wednesday night to ban all weather within the subdivision that has not been approved in advance by the association’s Architectural Review Committee, following what board President Marlene Oakes described as “a summer of unauthorized sky.”
The vote came at 8:47 p.m., 2 hours and 17 minutes into the board’s regular monthly meeting in the Prairie Vista clubhouse. All five directors were present, establishing a quorum, along with 23 residents and one cloud. Resolution 2026-14 was moved by Vice President Stu Pinckney and seconded by Treasurer Deb Frawley. Secretary Ted Lomax also voted in favor. Member-at-large Nadine Corso cast the dissenting vote.
“Nobody is against weather. We are against weather that hasn’t gone through the process,” Oakes said. “Every other exterior element in this community has to be approved. Mailboxes. Shutters. The height of a birdbath. Then you look up and there’s a cloud shaped like a pelican over Lot 31, and nobody filed anything.”
Under the resolution, all weather occurring over the subdivision must be submitted to the Architectural Review Committee at least 30 days in advance on Form ARC-7, with a drawing to scale. Approved sky colors are limited to Morning Linen, Harbor Mist, and a blue the committee identified only as “the blue from the brochure.” Clouds are limited to three per lot and must be cumulus or “tasteful.” Breezes are permitted from the east between 9 a.m. and 8 p.m., consistent with the association’s quiet hours. Rainbows must use the community’s approved palette of beige, taupe, and Prairie Sage, in that order. Sunsets must conclude by the start of quiet hours and may not be “showy,” a term the resolution defines as “more orange than the clubhouse.” The committee began enforcement immediately and had issued 14 violation notices by the end of the meeting, including one to a sunset on July 2 that was found to be in Ember Coral, which is not on the palette. The cloud named in the pelican complaint attended the meeting, hovering at about 2,400 feet over the clubhouse parking lot from 6:30 p.m. until adjournment, and did not speak during public comment. A fog that had been cited Tuesday morning complied with the notice and lifted by 9:02 a.m.
The board recessed for 11 minutes at 7:58 p.m. after a resident asked who would pay the weather’s fines, which are set at $25 per unapproved cloud per day. When the meeting resumed, Oakes ruled that fines would be assessed to the lot over which the violation occurred. Corso, the dissenting director, objected that “the sky never signed the covenants.” Oakes ruled her out of order, citing Article VII, Section 4, which binds each property “and all appurtenances thereto, above and below.” Lomax confirmed for the minutes that the association’s attorney considers the sky an appurtenance.
Prof. Desmond Achterberg, who holds the Prewitt Chair in Comparative Annoyance at Ellery State University, said the resolution belonged to a long tradition. “The scholarship shows that homeowners’ associations have attempted to regulate the sky since at least 1611, when a parish committee in Kent fined the moon for being visible from a neighbor’s garden,” Achterberg said. “The moon paid. It’s in the records. It paid in moonlight, which the committee then also fined.”
The board’s next meeting is Aug. 12. The agenda, posted Thursday morning, includes a hearing on the moon itself, which the committee says has been left out overnight on 19 consecutive nights in violation of the association’s ban on overnight parking.