Injustice?

Totally agree L, the Sun City Foundation is underutilized and undervalued. Here's where we part ways: If Sun City's future is tied to how many widows we can force to pay the PIF a second time (even though they never moved), we simply have no future.

But back to the Foundation. I asked the question regarding the "collection guy" for a reason. If his goal is to find and charge as many members as possible, then why direct members to the foundation at all? If he's a salaried employee, he has a vested interest in working to find workable solutions. If he is on commission, his vested interest is in making as much money as he can off of the backs of members, many who can't afford to pay what they are being forced to pay (oh no, another sob story, eh Rich).

 

Can't help wondering if this is actually a RCSC policy or simply a shake-down operation by a few corrupt employees?

 

Nope, nothing corrupt about their actions, it's the rules...that virtually no one knew or understood. They were buried in Board Policy 24, three pages of attorney generated garble. Now they live on as gotcha moments where long time members pay up or if they are feeling really generous (because the member doesn't have the cash in hand), they let them make minimal monthly payments with interest charged and legal fees attached. Since i mentioned this at the exchange, i now know there are three more beyond Betty. One was resolved after months of battling and finally finding a cancelled check. Damn; the one that got away.

There's a reason i have been so blatantly outspoken on the importance of building a sense of community. When you reduce members down to "card holders" and every transaction is just another business decision, we all lose. When board members abdicated their authority and responsibility to the general manager, Sun City as we know changed. Those same board members argued the community was better off when an expert was making every decision. Really?

How did that work from a technology standpoint? How did that work from a member involvement standpoint? Oh wait, lets listen to another former board member chirp away about the insidious small group of Sun City haters just waiting to pounce and put Sun City down. What freaking rubbish. Yet this same former board member is almost gleeful following the last budget and finance committee meeting. A committee where he has been a member for years and was the self-proclaimed expert...yet did nothing to keep us from where we are today.

Here's why i cringe every time he spouts off: Apparently the former, former GM's quest (along with many of the board members) was so enamored with proclaiming how cheap it was to live here, they put off preventive maintenance. After 7 years of squirreling money away, rather than spending it on the needs/wants of the community, the bills are coming due. The former GM (Cook) wasn't wrong about what we needed to do, he simply didn't have the capacity to tell us we were going to be paying for the sins of our past. He would have had explain our shortsightedness was going to be a very costly fix.

If the former, former general manager was more Pope-like, you know, infallible, we would have been just fine. Instead she was a mere mortal who are prone to error, just like all of us. Exactly why Sun City's history was so valuable; it taught us the more we involved the membership (often time real experts), the better the decisions that would be made. Consolidating control into the hands of a few was utter nonsense. The reasoning for it: Loyalty to the corporation. The board had no choice because that's what the bylaws said. By the way, the GM wrote them into those bylaws. How convenient was that?

Life goes on, Sun City will survive nicely, it will just be a longer road back than if we hadn't taken that diversion into a failed top-down model of governance. I know this, if we continue to use long time members as piggy banks, because of filing errors, it will make it an even slower slog.

 

I hope the RCSC directed Betty and the others to the Foundation for help paying the money that RCSC determined they owed. I have attended a Foundation meeting or two and they had more Seniors for Santa dollars than they could use so it was decided to put the extra gift cards in the safe and save them for next year. It is my understanding they have more money than they have applicants. Those Members do a commendable job helping our seniors that need financial assistance and I am sure they would step up to the plate to help.

 

Nice of you to refer to me Bill, but unfortunately, I'm not 3genSCAZ. I don't hide behind nicknames...I use my pic and my name. And I'm sorry, but I haven't been around here in quite some time. I actually just got back from St. Louis and spent a week with my granddaughter going to plays (she's an budding actress). So, if you were referring to me in the quote, understand that wasn't me. If not, then accept my apologies.

 

Thanks for clarifying Rich. It seemed like we were hitting it off on another blog as your demeanor has improved considerably once you had left the board. I've been trying to be less caustic myself but this latest effort to squeeze a member for another PIF has me miffed and quite frustrated. I'll do a quick cleanup on my comments. Hate to attribute anything to someone who doesn't deserve it. Now if only 3genSCAZ would step from the shadows we could have a straight up conversation.

Congrats on your granddaughter. Clearly there are things way more important the stuff we discuss here; family being one of them.

 

No problem Bill...actually, I haven't been all that involved with everything RCSC lately. Once the current board did the right thing in coming to terms to get rid of the general manager, I've basically been turning my attention to family (and golf...back golfing again). The way I see it, the board has been like every other board I've watched. They do some stuff very well, and some stuff not well at all...and that includes all of the boards I was on. Seeing things from this side of things has taught me that there are indeed two sides to everything. Actually, there are three. My side, the other person's side, and the truth, which most of the time is somewhere in the middle. Having read the problem the lady is having with the PIF isn't a new one as you well know. And once the board gets over the fact that it will cost the RCSC money to do the right thing, maybe they'll have the cajones to do just that and correct the problem! Keep up the fight!

 

Thanks Rich, i really have no interest in fighting with anyone. We all learned long ago doing the right this is most often the best solution...figuring out what it is becomes the challenge.

 

Interesting to see Rich Hoffer jump in here. While he was serving on the board we had a discussion where i asked him how he felt the community and the RCSC should interact with one another. His answer was spot on; he stated it should be a "symbiotic relationship." For or those who don't know the meaning it's basically this: "where both parties involved benefit from the interaction,"

I certainly didn't disagree with his comment, but questioned whether that was indeed what was happening? By then, the general manager had become fairly well rooted in her management style and top down leadership structure. Never during our (the RCSC's) history had a GM lasted that many years and had never come close to amassing that much control. During our first 50 years, the GM ran the day to day operations. If there was any additional input, it was minimal at best.

The paradigm shift was in part driven by the changes boomers were coming to Sun City with. Clearly they were different from the greatest generation. Too many assumed they wouldn't want to be involved and by pushing away and telling them to just have fun, the challenges of running a massive community would be left to the management team and a handful of board members. Think about it in these terms, when the survey was farmed out to ASU, the soft projections were for 400 returns. Many of us snickered at the number and when all was said and done it was ten fold plus.

Those living here, at least some of them, want to be involved, want the ownership, accountability and responsibility that comes with living in our self-governed community. Imagine the potential if we actually started an aggressive educational drive of helping them understand the critical role they can play. That is one of the reasons the soon to be hired general manager will play such a huge role in our future. We don't need someone telling us where we should go, we need someone helping us get our head around how we get there.

My argument has always been the community and the members have the answers. That's overly simplistic because they need work in concert with the board and the management to bring it all together. Once that happens, we indeed will have that symbiotic relationship Rich talked of.

 

Still waiting on that answer to my question 3GenSCAZ: Is the collection guy a RCSC employee or a contract employee paid on commission? I vaguely remember this discussion when i was on the RCSC board and we were struggling with the collection process. The argument was over in-house or out-house when it came to unpaid fees. Was this a reasonable resolution? Hiring someone to work within but be allowed to run rogue/roughshod over members who were struggling?

 

The issue isn’t with RCSC, it’s with the lender, in this case, Ken Meade, as the story was told to you. I find no fault in RCSC’s application of the bylaws. Don’t try and apply only part of the rules and expect it to apply in all instances. Sure, you can be added to the deed by a single owner and qualify for an additional rec card. I’m sure it happens all the time when a spouse remarries. But transfer of ownership is a different event. You really need to stop confusing the two.

 

I'm not confusing the two at all. She was added to the deed, she was a member (before she was added to the deed BTW) and she was married at the time of the purchase. Married in 1999. Purchased the property in 2002 as husband and wife, he left her off the deed for whatever reason (Meade or otherwise) and was added on in 2005. The PIF was paid and she claims by her. They told her she had to prove she paid the PIF...and that would be why? Could you produce a check stub you wrote in 2002?

It's nothing more than a money grab from a person who just lost their spouse. Kids inherit the house; make them pay. The wife was never on the deed/title and she gets it in the will, make her pay. That's not the case and they are just trying to collect money from wherever and whomever they can. If you really want to go there Larry, then lets live up to the "CONTRACT" negotiated with DEVCO for golf to be self-sustaining. After all the capital improvements, golf is about 100 million dollars in the hole (or will be by 2028).

After all, a contract is a contract and i know the golfers want to honor it. Said tongue in cheek brother because there's always room to just do the right thing by people...both golfers and widows.

 

After reading through all the comments, understanding and misunderstandings, I truly feel for the woman being forced to pay the PIF again on a house she has lived in for 20 years as the wife.

I was in the title business my entire life and found it truly hard to understand all of the RCSC documentation that I read. I wondered why they would write something so confusing that the typical person would not understand.
We purchased two years ago and NOTHING was explained to us about how this “city” is ran. I had to read up on it myself and I admit that I missed a few things that I now understand.

I personally can’t imagine why the RCSC needs to charge the PIF again upon the death of a family member. I continue to be surprised in many different aspects in this town.
With that said, I love Sun City!

 

Thanks for your comments Cindy and welcome. As much as a handful of people like to argue we must hate Sun City because we complain, nothing could be further from the truth. Like you, we love Sun City, we are uncomfortable with the direction the GM and a handful of board members have taken us. The great news is we are on the road back.

As i wrote early on in this thread, the PIF was a scant two plus years in existence when Betty and Hugo bought the house. In 2002 there were three pages buried in Board Policy that members never would see and even if they did, i would defy them to explain what it meant or how it worked. It was clearly written by an attorney and the legalese is mind numbing. As you also noted, there is not a heck of a lot that has changed. Still today, closing on a Sun City home results in a stack of paper that is 6 inches thick and I would be stunned if signers read every page before they signed them.

This community and specifically the RCSC needs to do a better job of explaining how and why the community works. It's not rocket science but it is important that new buyers know where they live is wholly different from where they came. Again, welcome.

 

We bought in the middle of Covid, so maybe they do things better now. But each buyer needs to be better educated, which starts with the realtor. They should insist that the buyer visit the visitor center to better understand what they are buying in to. It isn’t simply a piece of real estate, it is buying into a member driven community that needs their participation.
BTW
(I can’t seem to figure out how to attach my photo. I keep getting an error).

 

Very interesting to hear from Cindy, again confirming an issue we have been talking about - that absolute need for organized orientations hosted by RCSC, not just the annual February event where clubs have a table and RCSC makes a presentation and a 10 minute video. Plus, the need for a dynamic, user friendly website with FAQs broken down by category (residents, prospective buyers and realtors) could be helpful. And, those former tours wouldn't be such a bad thing. Not everything old is bad, right?

But what really stood out - her struggles as a professional in the title industry trying to understand our documents. That truly says something about the mess that has been created.

Changing major policies obviously have consequences when they don't affect everyone equally. A piecemeal approach will bite an organization every time. Lawyers should have realized the potential hornets nest they were creating. When a policy can't be clearly articulated or understood and then applied fairly, you end up with the mess we have today. How we untangle it will be the next $64,000 question.

 

You have some great ideas Linda. I conducted title related presentations in the day and my mind immediately went to educating the realtors that work with these buyers. In my day we explained every detail to the buyer. Today it is sign here, sign here, etc.

 

My hope is that members work harmoniously with staff to determine the best course of action. There may be things you're discussing that are already being done or tried in the past that failed or were not cost effective. Those things need to be taken into consideration rather than having a group of members assume their ideas are new or best and to force them if they may not make sense. Please work together to see every angle. We are paying these people for their knowledge and experience. You won't convince me their input doesn't matter. This is not only about the members. It is about everyone involved with the rec centers.