Yesterday at the board meeting a comment was made by a resident that we were the customers for the RCSC. When i had a chance to speak, i expressed my sentiment that we weren't customers, but owners. A short while later, the only person in the room supporting the board's motion to form a for-profit corporation rebutted my remarks and said we don't own the corporation, we simply pay fees to them. I've had this argument over the years, mostly from board members who feel once they are elected, they become the RCSC and the rest of us be damned. It's exactly why i bemoan the assault on our documents, because clearly the direction in the past 10 years has been to eliminate the role of the those of us living here and concentrate all of the power in the hands of the board and the management team. But i digress, the real point of this thread is to refresh in people's mind how Sun City was built. The Del E Webb Development Corporation (DEVCO) built Sun City. It was started in the summer of 1959 and sales began on Jan 1, 1960. They sold their last homes in 1978 and moved to Sun City West. During those 18 years, a partnership was formed between the residents and DEVCO. The company knew someday they would leave and there needed to be in place an entity to run the community. It was a massive undertaking whereby thousands of residents took ownership of the process to insure Sun City would flourish. The residents created the organization and the documents to simplify and clarify how it would work. This isn't one of those chicken/egg questions, the people came first and the organization followed. If you ever take the time to research our remarkable history, you will find the significance of that ownership process by residents who felt compelled to treat Sun City as it was their own. Perhaps the tragedy and the direction we are going in is captured in the words of support by someone who has lived here for such a long time and doesn't feel like they are anything more than user of the amenities?
When those who are elected to the board serve there term (s), they have to return to being mere mortals like the rest of us, true? So they go from having all the power to having no power. I wonder how all those past boand members feel about that.
It's been an interesting dynamic V. Most of the ex-board members leave and stay away; unless they want something these days. In the old days, some migrated to the long range planning committee. Others found spots on the Sun City Foundation or just plain found interests beyond the governance. Back in my first days at SCHOA (2006), we would hold occasional breakfast meetings at a cafe on Grand Ave and several times i ran into a collective group of ex-board members who got together and lamented the fact once they left no one from management or the current board asked them anything. My guess is they would prefer we all just go away, but that isn't going to happen anytime soon.
