BRIARWOOD GLEN, Ohio — The president of the Briarwood Glen Homeowners Association, who was elected in 2024 on a promise of “no more feuds,” entered the seventh month this week of what he calls a hedge operation and what his neighbors call a feud, according to association minutes and several residents who were present for most of it.
Gil Stokes, 64, took office after the neighborhood’s 2019 hedge dispute, a six-year disagreement over a property-line hedge that cost the association $11,400 in legal fees and led to the placement of 41 yard signs. His campaign promise, printed on 300 door hangers, read “NO MORE FEUDS. NOT ONE.”
In March, Stokes began trimming the hedge shared by his property and that of his neighbors, the Pembertons. He has since trimmed it to a stump, then ordered the stump removed, and has directed the association’s maintenance crew to keep a ladder in his driveway “at the ready.”
“This is not a feud. A feud is when two sides want to keep it going,” Stokes said Thursday, standing beside a 24-foot ladder that he said was “for emergencies.” “I want it over. I want it over so much that I’ve put in 11 hours a week.”
Asked whether the hedge operation required a vote of the five-member board, Stokes said a vote “would only send the wrong signal to the hedge.” The board’s secretary, Phyllis Arden, said the bylaws state that the president may “trim shared plantings, in consultation with the board,” and that the board had not been consulted. Stokes said he had consulted it “in spirit,” and that “consultation is a feeling.”
Supporters, who have organized as Neighbors for Peace Through Pruning, said the president had done nothing inconsistent with his campaign. “He promised no new feuds. This one is from 1998,” said Carol Tuttle, 61, the group’s chair. “It is not new. It is old, and he inherited it.”
In 2019, according to association records, Tuttle’s group, then called Neighbors for Accountability, demanded that the previous president hold a board vote and publish an exit plan for the hedge dispute, and described his refusal as “reckless, lawless, and expensive.” Asked on Thursday why the group now opposed a vote, Tuttle said that a vote “signals weakness,” and that an exit plan “is a feeling you get when it’s over.” Asked what the difference was between the two feuds, she said that the first was “a feud” and the second was “a hedge.”
“He said it would take two weeks. It has been 31. That is what two weeks means in hedge,” Tuttle said. “It will be over soon, one way or the other. And if it isn’t, that proves how hard the hedge is, which proves we were right to start.”
The group’s literature describes the president as “the most peaceful man in the neighborhood, which is why he owns so many ladders,” and says that anyone who questions the operation “is rooting for the hedge.” A flyer circulated Wednesday asks residents to “support the ladder,” and warns that criticism “gives comfort to the shrubbery.”
Costs have risen for everyone, according to residents. Hedge trimmers at the local hardware store are up 22 percent since March, and the neighborhood’s lawn service has added a surcharge it calls “the situation.” Tuttle said the increases were temporary and “nobody’s fault,” and that residents who raised them had “chosen a side.”
Dr. Marjorie Teller, director of the Center for Measured Outcomes, said the Center had studied the use of the word “feud” in homeowners associations since 2009. “A feud is a feud in 100.0 percent of cases, except when it is the president’s,” Teller said. “In that case it is a ‘matter,’ an ‘operation,’ or a ‘clarification.’ We have not found the point at which it becomes a feud again. Further study is needed.”
Dr. Chad Brickhouse, a senior fellow at the Institute for Common Sense, said the supporters’ position was straightforward. “It’s not a feud if you finish it,” Brickhouse said by phone from a hardware store. “It’s just common sense. A man who ends a feud, by definition, has to start it first.”
The Pembertons, who declined to say anything critical, said in a short statement that they would like it to stop, and that they would like their hedge back.