Why the Missing Tail Language in the

1975/76 Deed Matters

Overview

A key point in the Sky Harbour document analysis is that the 1975/76 common-area transfer / warranty deed repeats much of the same basic duration structure seen in the original deed restrictions, but does not include the extra tail sentence that some people now try to treat as the engine of perpetual continuation.

That omission matters.

It does not “prove everything” by itself, but it strongly undercuts the claim that the tail sentence plainly creates an automatic evergreen covenant regime.

1) What the two document types have in common

Both the original deed restrictions and the later 1975/76 deed appear to share the same basic architecture:

• a 10-year lockout

• an owner-driven mechanism to reduce / release restrictions after that

• a January 1, 1990 endpoint

• effectiveness tied to the date of recording of a valid instrument

That means the repeated core structure is:

lockout → owner release mechanism → 1990 endpoint

That repeated structure is important because it shows what the developer kept reusing when describing the scheme.

2) What is missing from the 1975/76 deed

What the 1975/76 deed does not include is the extra tail language found in the deed restrictions:

“All restrictions and covenants affecting lots herein dedicated from such date for successive periods of ten (10) years each…”

This is the very language some people now point to as though it were the “real” continuation clause.

But if that sentence were the true evergreen engine of the whole development scheme, its omission from the later related deed is difficult to explain.

3) Why the omission weakens the “evergreen” theory

If the developer intended a perpetual or self-renewing covenant scheme, one would expect one of two things in the later 1975/76 deed:

• either the same supposed “evergreen” tail sentence would be repeated, or

• the deed would use clear words such as:

  • “automatically renew,”

  • “continue beyond January 1, 1990,”

  • “remain in force thereafter,” or

  • “renew unless terminated.”

Instead, the later deed repeats the 1990 endpoint and the owner reduction mechanism, but leaves out the one sentence now being relied on to argue indefinite continuation.

That strongly suggests the tail sentence was not understood by the drafter as the universal duration engine.

4) A more natural explanation: the tail sentence is lot-administration language

A more plausible reading is that the tail sentence exists in the original deed restrictions because those instruments govern many separately owned lots.

Under that reading, the tail sentence is not a secret perpetual-renewal command. Instead, it functions as a lot-administration clause describing how restrictions operate after a valid recorded owner release/change instrument becomes effective.

That fits the surrounding text:

• owners may act after 10 years,

• by recorded instrument,

• such instrument becomes effective from the date of recording,

• and then restrictions affecting the lots run from such date within the clause’s framework.

In other words, the tail sentence makes more sense as a clause about how modified restrictions run across affected lots, not as a sentence that silently erases the earlier hard stop date.

5) Why that same tail language would not be needed in the 1975/76 deed

The 1975/76 deed is different in a key way:

• it is not functioning as a multi-owner, lot-by-lot restriction scheme in the same sense,

• it transfers common areas / common property interests to one entity,

• and it does not need the same kind of language for administering restrictions across many separately owned lots.

So if the tail sentence is specifically about how restrictions operate among affected lots after a recorded release, it makes sense that it would appear in the deed restrictions but not in the common-area transfer deed.

That difference is perfectly consistent with the two documents serving different functions while still sharing the same basic duration structure.

6) What the developer repeated is more important than what was omitted once

The strongest repeated signal across both kinds of documents is not “successive ten-year periods.”

It is this:

• 10-year lockout

• owner release/reduction mechanism

• January 1, 1990 endpoint

That repeated pattern suggests the developer treated 1990 as a real stopping point within the scheme, while allowing owner-driven changes before then.

By contrast, the supposed perpetual force of the tail sentence appears only in one document type and is absent from the later related deed.

7) The Boy Scouts / Girl Scouts clause creates another internal-consistency problem

The 1975/76 deed also appears to contain a serious consequence: if the common-area property is not maintained or used as required, it is supposed to pass to the Boy Scouts / Girl Scouts.

That matters because the same deed framework also appears to state that the relevant covenants / conditions run until January 1, 1990.

So the deed seems to do two things at once:

• create a real consequence for failure to maintain the property, and

• place that consequence inside a framework structured around a 1990 endpoint.

That is hard to reconcile with the idea that the developer intended an evergreen system of perpetual HOA control over lot owners.

8) Why the Scouts clause matters even without claiming the Scouts own anything today

The point is not that one must prove the Scouts automatically received the property in 1990.

The point is this:

• if the deed’s own covenant framework ended in 1990,

• then the deed’s built-in maintenance incentive also appears tied to a finite scheme.

Even if the Scouts clause required some later enforcement step, the existence of that clause still shows the developer built the common-area arrangement around a structure with real conditions and a real endpoint, not a cleanly drafted perpetual regime.

So even without saying “the Scouts own it now,” the clause still helps expose the dysfunction in the HOA’s modern theory:

• lot owners are supposedly burdened forever,

• while the reciprocal common-area consequence side of the same framework either expired, became stale, or was never meaningfully pursued.

9) Why this makes the modern “zombie document” problem worse

If the HOA or its defenders want to argue that the whole subdivision scheme automatically continued forever, they have multiple explanation problems:

• the later 1975/76 deed still uses the same 1990 endpoint

• it still uses the same reduction / release mechanism

• it omits the supposed evergreen “tail sentence”

• and it contains a dramatic upkeep consequence that either should have mattered by 1990, or else became stale inside a supposedly still-living scheme

That makes the modern “evergreen” reading look less like a plain reading of the documents and more like an attempt to keep the burden side alive while the reciprocal condition side is ignored.

10) Safer conclusion

The missing tail language in the 1975/76 deed does not by itself prove every legal point.

But it does support this narrower and stronger conclusion:

The omission of the tail sentence from the 1975/76 common-area transfer deed shows that the developer did not treat that sentence as essential to the basic duration structure of the development scheme. What the developer repeated across both documents was the 10-year lockout, the owner reduction mechanism, and the January 1, 1990 endpoint. That makes the 1990 date look deliberate and scheme-wide, while making the tail sentence look more like a contextual lot-administration clause than a clear evergreen renewal command. The additional Boy Scouts / Girl Scouts consequence clause reinforces the same point by showing that the common-area framework also appears to have been drafted as part of a finite experiment with real conditions, not a neatly perpetual control mechanism.

Bottom line

The 1975/76 deed matters because it shows what the developer repeated when restating the scheme:

not “automatic renewal forever,” but 1990 + owner reduction mechanism + finite common-area consequences.

That makes the missing tail sentence more than a curiosity. It is a drafting contrast that helps explain why the tail sentence should not be casually treated as a magic perpetual-renewal clause.