I got an email yesterday from my friend Ben who had read TOSC and noted there were almost no new comments and not much in the way of posts. It was a reasonable question and one i owe him an answer on. Summers typically are slower and traffic falls off. That coupled with my lack of enthusiasm for starting new threads adds to the drop off. As i will tell him, much of my work is finished here. Anyone doing a cursory search will see if have started hundreds, maybe thousands of threads over the years. You'd have to go back beyond 2013 when they revamped the site to see when and where it all started. I wouldn't bother because none of it matters now. The site used to be way better when it allowed posting attachments that would open to help elevate any topic covered. At least one poster asked me point blank: "How much longer are you going to keep beating the dead horse?" Yet again, another reasonably fair question in that the subject matter i posted threads on was most often centered on: 1). Sun City's history. 2). Building a sense of community. 3). Ownership, accountability and responsibility. 4). The concept of self-governance and how it had been stripped from us and our documents. Since 2020, my target had shifted a bit because as the board started firing board members they didn't agree with, my angst increased ten-fold. It all accelerated when they hired a new GM with the former's hand-picked replacement; i became even more caustic. It was simply what happens when one thinks they hold all the cards. No one was more shocked than me when in Dec of 2021 we reached a quorum and held our first membership meeting in 12 years. Obviously it scared the snot out of them because following that turnout, they became even more brazen. All of which fits perfectly in creating the perfect storm. Their actions resulted in the membership voting in board members who talked about returning to our roots; a place and time when the members voices mattered. The two elections (2021 and 2022) resulted in flipping the minority to the majority. The new minority board members showed us why they were there and promptly 3 of them quit. Oh well. Sorry for the recap, but i need to say this: Thousands of threads and millions of words later, my work here is nearly done. Everything i have been doing has been for one purpose and one purpose only. My dream was that one day common sense would prevail and we would begin to rebuild that sense of community. That we would begin to restore the tenets that made us the age restricted community that changed the nation. That members would value ownership and the accountability and responsibility that came with it. There's no point in me continuing to beat the dead horse. Mercifully we've dragged that carcass off to the dung heap where it belongs. In my humble opinion is was a failed 15 year experiment. Here's the dilemma we are now caught up in. Those 15 years with virtually no holding anyone accountable will be coming due. Not-for-profit board's primary responsibility is holding management accountable; oversight if you will. That simply hasn't been done very well in a long long time. While it's nice to say "it was nobody's fault," that statement is pure crapola. There's little value in assessing blame, but understand this; we are where we are because of what was done...or in our case, what wasn't done. Kudos to the new board for being willing to take on the job of proper oversight. There's not going to be anything pretty about what needs to be done. That said, the course we were on was an absolute and complete travesty. It's going to get worse before it gets better, but the great news is, it is going to get better.
Hardly Bill! Using similar words from Ronald Reagan, the mindset of our current board is only one election away from losing it all again! We must remain vigilant. Keep the boards feet held to the fire and maintain a certain level of pressure or they will surly fall back into their once stronghold on power. Elections have consequences and the Members have responsibilities. We must keep that in the forefront as we continue to restore Sun City.
Operative word in both Bill and Tom’s comments is WE! Healthy, successful self-governance is inclusive, accessible and welcomes participation by its members in whatever ways they are able to contribute.
Thank the world for all of the work that many RCSC Members did to get us back on track! Bill, you and the others have been the force that helped us all understand what was happening. I hope I have contributed a bit to your efforts and will continue. Our work is never done, but it is nice to sit back and take a deep breath for now. I agree with Tom and Eyes Open that we can't let our guard down or we will fall back into the same trap or a worse one. It's part of self governance. It doesn't have to get ugly. We just have to be realistic about where we are and what we need to do to get wherever it is we want to be. Some of it won't be for us, but for the people who will move to Sun City after we are gone just as we have enjoyed the efforts of previous Members.
Hey Janet, anyone who has done a deep dive into Sun City's history can tell you there are a dozen or more prominent names that were in the news for years and years. That said, those names pale in comparison to the tens of thousands of residents whose names were never mentioned but helped shape Sun City's success. My only claim to fame was i wasn't willing to stop pushing the bolder up the hill. Let me give you the perfect example: That Dec 2021 annual membership registered 1400 plus members. I had zero hope in that happening while others said hell yes we can do it. In fact half of the attendance came from proxy votes gathered by RCSC members. Spectacular. That single turnout changed the course and direction of our community as both the majority board members and the new GM showed us their true colors. As mentioned above; We not Me.
