The other day, at the end of the short-sighted thread, we bantered about a concept different from the direction the RCSC went in. One where the RCSC had decided when new buyers came to Sun City they had actually determined an investment in educating and welcoming them made sense. It begged the question, would Sun City look and feel different from where we are today? What if scenarios are really just brain teasers, because ultimately, no one knows. Truth be told, i didn't post my comments so much for the past, but for the future. We know this coming RCSC election is going to be hotly contested. Hopefully it won't get ugly. Sadly, after watching the two videos where present and former board members answered questions, it certainly looks to have the potential to go there. The mere fact the RCSC allowed a potential candidate to attend both sessions doesn't speak well for them. Clearly, they asked those interested to pick one or the other. The other issue was one where i hope i am wrong. The afternoon session had a newly appointed election committee member and former board member sit at the front of the room and answer questions. Lots of speculation she will quit the committee and become a candidate. Not to be unkind, but that kind of thumb on the scale crap should be avoided. But alas, this thread has a much more positive vibe, a belief the way the RCSC is run can become something more, something better. Imagine candidates committed to reaching out to those buying homes in ways they haven't done in the past. What if the goal was set to insure those buying into Sun City understood how the community worked and why it was so successful? There is an interesting comparison i can tell related to this concept. I came out of organized labor (there's an oxymoron). Minnesota was "union shop state," which simply meant if you went to work for an employer we had under contract, the new employee after their probation, had to join the union. "Right to work" states had a different arrangement, but one of the variations was they didn't have to join. The onus was on the union involved to convince the new employee they should join. They had to work for membership. Sun City is akin to the union shop, every one joins, every one pays. No exceptions. Which is one of the reasons the RCSC has no reason to try and engage new home buyers on anything other than a surface level. If you recall, at your closing, the fees; PIF now $4000, $300 transfer fee and $496 lot assessment is taken and remitted to the RCSC. No muss, no fuss; money in hand. Nope, not faulting the process. Most new buyers are told to go the Lakeview Rec Center and pick up their cards and i think they still give them a bag filled with information (at least they used to). There is indeed a website where there is lots of useful data as well. They can sign up for emails and get weekly summaries. It's not as if they do nothing, My question to be answered here is, can they do more? More importantly, as we work through this thread, why should they? What would be the point? What would the possible value be? Who would benefit from that kind of investment? Stay tuned and we can try and answer some of these questions.
There are two primary techniques i would argue the RCSC is wholly lacking in that could/would change the dynamic within the community: Education and Communication. Neither should be foreign or abstract. Both are pretty easy to articulate and define. For either to be used effectively, they need become a priority. My sense is, the RCSC has never been willing to make them one (a priority). Mike Wendell, a poster to this site and often a member stepping to the mic at RCSC meetings, has repeatedly argued for better communication. His point has been virtually everything thing they do is one way in direction. He is spot on and while i served on the RCSC board, i argued that very point, to absolutely no one's interest. My best pitches for interactive websites was laughed out of the room. My suggestions for recording meetings was seen as silliness. My fellow board members and the general manager thought i had lost my mind when i called for regular "town hall" type meetings to talk about topics of interest to the community. Virtually anything deviating from the norm, which was, you come to us, was simply me talking in tongues. I get it, working in a controlled setting where you are comfortable and better able to dictate outcomes is always preferable for those who don't want change, who don't want new ideas, who are able to do as they please. It was why i pushed for change, i saw the direction we were taking and tried to stop it. I failed. To Hoffer's credit, he got them to record meetings and to reinstate the long range planning committee. It's why i endorsed him when he ran for a second term. It was a start in the right direction. Then all of a sudden that movement to a more centric relationship with the members stalled. Committee recommendations fell on deaf ears, Decisions were made to cut down the number of meetings. Board members elected by the community were fired. The board walked off the stage rather than dealing with the members. The first membership meeting in 12 years was a fiasco with the RCSC's attorney brought in to blow smoke up our ass. All water over the damn now. Which is exactly why the second piece of the puzzle, education is so important. Almost no one moving to Sun City understands how the community works. It is foreign because it is so different from where they came from. If you don't teach them, give them the basics, how or better yet why, should they understand? My goal has always been to help those moving here understand and appreciate those nuances that make us unique. If i have found one thing to be a constant with my years at the Del Webb Sun Cities Museum, it is once people get a taste of our history, they do listen, pay attention. The sad reality is most don't have a clue. I'm not knocking people, they just don't know. It's why education regarding our history is such fertile ground. It's fascinating and whetting their appetite is easy. Of course if it's neither a priority or even a concern, it gets no play. Imagine, as i wrap up this post, if twice a year the RCSC engaged my good friend Ben Roloff to do history presentations to the community at large. He is a genius with power point presentations. As much as i know historically, he blows me away. And, he does it in a way that people attending get caught up in. The problem, of course is, when you are running away from our history, rather than running towards it, you leave the membership clueless. I understand why they do it; i understand teaching members they are the owners and as such need to be involved is terrifying to them. It threatens their control and leaves them vulnerable. If you think not, reflect back to the annual meeting last December and the abject terror on their faces when we reached a quorum. Hell, they locked the doors so members who weren't there before 9 couldn't get in. They "lost" the video of the attorney telling us we didn't have the right to vote on motions when the Articles of Incorporation point blank state we do. Then the motions we did make were shuffled off to an ad hoc committee where we have little input as they advance. As an aside, maybe we will see some of them, i will reserve judgment till they are released to us. We've read any number of articles now by the board president about working together, playing nice and getting along. We all want that, long for it. Let's be clear, words are meaningless without action. One only has to look at the agenda for next week's board meeting. I was stunned to see a motion for spending 50 or 60K for an ASU study, poll of the membership. Three years ago, i saw the poll the long range planning committee created, led by the current board president. It was really, really good. Then the board gutted it and after the gut job, they voted it down. Apparently some noses got out of joint because it mentioned green spaces. Really? Polling our members shouldn't be rocket science. Apparently for some on the board, it has become exactly that.
I find it ironic that they want to hire ASU for $50K to poll the residents of Sun City - approximately 27,000 households of residence - and hope to get 400 replies! ? There were over 1,400 of us at the Annual Membership Meeting last December - 1,000 more than what they hope is their return on investment - and they ignored everything that we said. Why pay big bucks when you won't listen?
Let's talk about "what if." What if we created a "welcoming wagon" approach like the old days in small communities. greeting new buyers where they lived? What if the board said from this day forward we are committed to educating and communicating with new home buyers on a wholly different level. What if each new buyer was invited to a coffee clutch gathering bi-weekly or monthly (5-6 homes sold each and every day of the week; do the math 150 plus homes per month) and the goal was to build an ongoing relationship regarding the best, most effective way to communicate. Newspaper? Email? Social Media? Website? Text? What if, rather than a 50k survey by ASU, we actually asked those new buyers why they chose Sun City and what they would like to see in the coming years? And then we did it, week after week, month after month, year after year? What if, as this program picked up steam, we started doing similar programs for existing residents? What if we started to teach them the importance of becoming the owners of a community built on self-governance, accountability and responsibility? What if we partnered with the other organizations within the community to understand why those organizations mattered as well? What if we started grooming new buyers, as well as existing members to take an active role on committees, especially ones they had work expertise and experience with/in? What if we made a commitment to creating a true "symbiotic relationship" between the organization, the membership and the management team? So, what are the arguments? Too costly? Too much time? Too much work? Who really freaking cares? This is where i always look back. What if John Meeker had said those things? What if Sun City had stayed the course in 1964 when sales plummeted? Would we even be here? I told you above, what ifs are invariably exercises of twisting in the wind. We know they have no interest in doing any of the above. The RCSC made a decision 15 years ago to become something wholly different. To move in the other direction. Was it smart? Are we better for it? I guess we'll never know, or at least we won't until we elect board members who want to change the culture of the organization. One where the members matter. By the way, i watched the annual membership meeting of the RCSCW the other day. My only point is this; they addressed those in attendance and those watching at home as, "owner/members." Not once did i hear them called "card holders." Hmmmmmmmmmmm?
Shortly after i joined the RCSC board i went in the general manager's office, closed the door and we had one of our many talks. At that point, i was still of the mind we were both interested in the same thing. I knew where the power/control was and frankly speaking, it wasn't in the hands of my fellow board members. They were more than happy to let the gm do all of the heavy lifting. The assumption was, that was what she was paid to do; she was brilliant at it. Our discussion was pointed, at least regarding my comments. She seldom engaged, more often listening politely with minimal response. It's the technique that passive aggressive personality types use most often. Having spent a good portion of my work life sorting through various leadership styles, i understood clearly what she was doing. It mattered not because i had an agenda and it was centered on creating a more open, welcoming relationship with the membership. I'm blunt to a fault with people, one of the many reasons some dislike me. I hate end runs and subversion to accomplish a goal, it's just not my style. With that in mind, i laid out my vision. Even back then we were averaging close to 2000 home sales per year. My best guess is 70%-80% of those new owners are couples. Just for discussion purposes, we'll use 25% single owners. If the remaining 75% are two owner house-holds, that would factor out to 3500 new members per year. To be safe, lets remove 500 of them as flips or changes in title for the property. My point to the general manager was this; 3000 new owners per year over a 10 year period was nearly 100% of the RCSC membership. Over 20 years, it would be the entire membership plus. We know hardening of the arteries isn't the only thing seniors suffer from. We become set in our ways the longer we do things. My entire pitch to her was to look forward, not look back. Changing our interactions with the new members would invariably change many of those living in Sun City over the coming years. It was always about creating an energy of inclusion. One where the focus would be drawing new owners in, not pushing them away. One could argue i am using gross hyperbole to make my point, but am i? If my outcome was inclusion, was her vision one centered on exclusion? Every change made over the years regarding self-governance was a step in the wrong direction. Fewer members making fewer decisions wasn't an accident, it was an outcome. It was at this same exact moment (2012) when we moved away from "the City of Volunteers," to "Sun City, the original fun city." In 2009 they changed the quorum from 100 to 1250. With each ensuing step, they moved further and further from wanting members to be involved. There's no point in recounting the moves, the simply reality is, by 2020, they had evolved to the point where when board members didn't fit in, agree to go along, they just fired them. We had arrived at a community where the board and the general manager felt empowered to do whatever they wanted. Community be damned. Since November of 2020 when Barbara Brehm was fired and through 2021 when Karen McAdam was fired, the RCSC was faced with push back, and they didn't like it. You want to argue that point? Let's do just that: * Let's start with June of 2021 when they took only the second vote on the massive Mountain View project. Some have argued it was the most democratic process in our history. If so, why cancel the third reading on the motion which was by the way, the most expensive in our history by at least double. They were terrified over the summer folks would turn out in droves at the Sept meeting (which they did by the way). Then to compound the matter, the end of June they fired Karen. * At the first board meeting in Sept the largest crowd in a very long time appeared. The RCSC knew it was coming and hired 3 armed officers to guard them. Signs in the crowd were on display. The board president stated they weren't allowed. One person didn't get the memo apparently and the board president gave the oath to Karen's replacement and then promptly walked off the stage and out the backdoor. * The members in the audience were stunned. The new general manager told the police officers to get us out of the building or we would be arrested for trespassing. Really? I tried to intervene between the officers and some of the more heated members. The result was the gm said we could stay if we were civil. Thanks for letting us stay in our own building. * Karen McAdam ran in the 2021 election and got more votes than any candidate in a very long time. What does that tell you? * In December 2021, the RCSC held their annual membership meeting (even though they didn't want to, but state statutes said they had to). Members worked their asses off gathering proxy votes. Between the 700 plus members in the room plus the 700 proxy votes, a quorum was reached. The general manager responded by locking the doors right at 9 am so no more members could come in. Really? * The Sun City Advocates had been born during the turmoil. We submitted 4 motions and 1 language recommendation regarding the rights of a board member should they be terminated. The response by the RCSC was they would take the motions made from the floor "under advisement." Several folks argued the Articles of Incorporation gave us both the right to make motions and vote on them at the meeting. They drug out the organizations attorney who told us the Bylaws had standing over the Articles. It was bullshit then, it still is now. * The meeting raged on for hours, and was less than a thing of celebration. Members were livid. It mattered not. When we eagerly waited for the video of the meeting to be posted, we were told it had been lost due a bad video card or something like that. As the pressure grew, they miraculously recovered the last half of the meeting. What was missing were the motions properly submitted and made from the floor, the appeals by the membership to honor the Articles of Incorporation and the attorney standing in front of us trying to explain why we were wrong. To be fair, if i was the attorney i wouldn't want that floating about as evidence either. * The new year (2022) starts with calls by the new board president for everyone to get along. We agreed, that would be refreshing. To help us have a louder voice, the plan was to take away a board meeting and replace it with a member/board exchange. Again, we were in favor. However to do that, the board president threatened if board members didn't support the actions she would only allow members to speak to motions at board meetings. Her strong arm tactics worked as the minority board members were afraid if they didn't go along, the membership would lose their voice completely. * The resulting outcome was both a blessing and a curse. The member/board exchange has proven to be a valuable tool in talking with the board. The board meetings have become virtually worthless, unless there are motions of substance, the meetings are done in less than an hour; which was their goal. I am more than willing to admit the above summary is my take. I would be delighted if those seeing it differently would step up and refute my comments. Sadly, they seldom do. It is that exact problem when those having all the control refuse to debate, discuss or have a civil discourse on the problems at hand. It simply becomes my way or the highway. All of which is the whole point of "what if?" Would we be here today if 15 years ago we decided to make a commitment to a community built on inclusion and not exclusion? Would board members have been fired? Would the same board members keep getting elected to multiple terms if we had been actively soliciting and grooming new owners to become involved? Would we be arguing over a 40 million dollar performing arts theater, or would the community have voted to buy the Lakes Club when it was for sale? Would we as a community have allowed the general manager to fall 15 years behind in our technology? This game can go on almost into infinity. What if is immaterial, other than for asking the question, knowing what we now know, why wouldn't we look for a better way?
And extremely accurate! Look, here's the problem, if we start a "Welcoming Committee" to new home buyers we would be doing exactly what the RCSC/Board doesn't want us to do...get people involved! I'm sure those who purchase homes in Sun City have researched the many other senior communities out there, so they mostly know what the SC community has to offer, they just don't know where to find it. If we offered a "Welcoming Committee" we would essentially be presenting them with the knowledge and offer to become a Member and part of the "community team" so too speak. The way it works now, the bus stops at Sun City, people get off the bus and have no idea where to go!! That's why the lady I met at Lake View last week thought she was at Bell Center! Knowledge is power and the last thing the RCSC/Board wants, is for the Members to know what's going on. They want us to simply remain fat, dumb, and happy. Don't worry about your $496, we got you covered! Right! And as a second thought, I think we need to start thinking about acquiring proxy votes again for the proposed November 1st Annual Membership Meeting and for when the Snow Birds return, but of course we need an issue to energize the community!
Well stated FYI and it was that exact decision the general manager made that drove me to run for the board and then watch in horror as it grew steadily worse. And once i left, it continued down the steady decline in attendance and participation. This isn't some grassy knoll conspiracy theory, it was simply a paradigm shift in leadership style with a desired outcome that you mentioned above; "fat, dumb and happy." i suspect that is the driving force behind the 50k proposal to have ASU survey the membership. Verify how much people "love" Sun City even though their knowledge base is minimal. Quick story to amplify this. I went on the board in 2012. My goal was to immerse myself in as much as i could. I wasn't on the long range planning committee, but i did attend meetings. I always felt that single committee was critical, for obvious reasons. At one of my first meetings, the committee got all over me asking, "why won't the full board meet with us?" The chair of the committee was an old friend who was in a horrible position. He was also an officer and was somewhat compromised. I don't remember who was the co-chair but i personally knew most of the members on the committee. Their questions were pointed and frankly i couldn't answer them. There were two things that still stick in my craw. First they wanted to know why the full board wouldn't agree to meet with the long range planning committee. i assumed that would be easy to accommodate. Was i ever wrong, the gm nor the board wanted to sit and argue with them. They didn't see that as their role, their job. That was why they had a chair and co-chair. It was bullshit. The second item was really at the heart of their angst and exactly why the powers that be didn't want to be in the same room. The edict had come down from the general manager, the LRPC would only have input into 25% of the PIF budget. Say freaking what? Even i was stunned by the folly of that stupidity, which caused me to question it at a work session. I was told in no uncertain terms that other 75% was to be spent at management discretion and used for golf. The board filled with golfers had supported the gm's position. No discussion, no argument. To say it left a bad taste in my mouth would be an understatement. The good news was, with that 25%, the LRPC established the number one priority to be pickleball. From that came the Pickleball Pavilion at Marinette. The total remodel ended up ballooning to over 6 million dollars, far beyond what the general manager had intended to spend. All of which led to the demise of the long range planning committee. The board at the direction of the gm deemed the LRPC job was done and vanquished them to the ash heap of the rest of the committees that stood in her way. One could argue this to be revisionists history, but all the information is out there for anyone wanting to dig through the limited minutes available. Your entire point was spot on FYI, by removing the membership of the process, Sun City becomes whatever they want it to become. It is 100% different from the way Sun City was created and built by DEVCO and then carried on by those who accepted the concept of self-governance. There has always been a fear (and dare i add loathing) of those living in the community and getting involved on anything more than a surface level. We could debate this, but in all honesty, we can't. They won't. They refuse to have these kinds of discussion. Think about it; how do you have an argument about the owners having a right to a voice when you've spent the last 15 years shutting off that voice? They can't and they know it. Better to pretend everyone is fat, dumb and happy. Sun City has long, rich and amazing history of engaging with the membership. Of being open and honest with them and willing to listen. How can continuing that tradition be a bad thing? Someone please step up and explain that to me. PS. I agree 100% with the statement, proxy votes for sure. Now we know the bullshit they made up regarding the membership meeting and not having the right to vote at it was pure drivel. We've always known that, now the real question is, should we challenge it?
I long ago stopped thinking of the RCSC as the "hub" of the community. The community got lazy and expected the RCSC to do everything for them. It didn't, and the state of affairs we now live under is what that laziness got us. My 2-cents is if I were to receive a "welcoming" to the SC community package, I would expect it to include info from/about the SCHOA, the RCSC, the Chamber of Commerce, Maricopa County (police, roads, taxes, parking, pets, street lights, etc), the fire district, the various supporting organizations (eg, Possie, Sunshine, CAN, Meals on Wheels, etc), community hospitals, public transportation (bus, taxi, uber/lyft, etc), various State items (drivers license, registration, vehicle inspection, office locations nearby, etc), nearby shopping and entertainment venues, etc.
Exactly IC. As i have written more times than i can count; "Sun City is a sum total of its parts." Too many see the RCSC as the only thing that matters. It's not, never has been, never should be. Inclusive, not exclusive. We were built that way, the past 15 years we've moved away from it.
Exactly! The five items in the Bylaws that need to be addressed are as follows in no special order: 1. We should be allowed to vote at our own Annual Membership Meeting. Why was it we could vote in 1975 but not 2021...what changed beside the power hungry members of the board or our past General Manager? 2. We should be allowed to collect names for petitions on RCSC property. Why can candidates running for the board do it but the general Membership can't? 3. The RCSC should not be allowed to determine what petitions can or cannot be circulated. If a Member feels the issue is that important he/she should have the right to pursue it. The final decision will ultimately be made by the community based on whether the required number of signatures were achieved. 4. The quorum should be set at a number of attendees that would typically show-up at the meeting. Not achieving a quorum should be a rare occurrence and any parliamentarian worth his/her salt will tell you the same! Those Members who lack the interest in their own community probably don't deserve to be there and vote? JMO! 5. Eliminate the "Limitation Period" found in the Bylaws, Article IV, Section 6. It's bad enough we can't achieve a quorum, but that Bylaw says if a motion failed at our Membership meeting, it can't be brought-up again for three years?!?!?!? Which kinda brings us back to Item 1! If the community doesn't mind living by those rules, then who am I to tell them otherwise? I, personally, find them unconscionable. "You get the government you deserve"!
Virtually every one of the motions listed above were safeguards to the concept of self-governance built into the documents and then stripped away. Number 5 was one that has interesting roots. It came at a time smoking was a hot button issue. The proposal to ban smoking on RCSC property was hotly contested. There was a vote and banning smoking passed by a very narrow margin (more than a 1000 votes on each side). The smokers came back at the next quarterly membership meeting and proposed another vote on the ban. That too passed on almost an identical number of votes. All of which triggered the language about the limitation period. I just spent the last hour plus reading the Articles of Incorporation from 1993 and then from 2003. It was a quick read, only one change and that was adoption of a second 3 year term on the board. The bigger issue was the bylaws. OMG. They have been doctored too many times to count. Worse yet, those changes made for ugly reading. Then to compound it, i brought up the mess posted on the RCSC website. Holy crap batman. The bylaws from 1993 were easy to read and pretty clear. The set that was revised and passed Dec. 17, 2009 was convoluted and way less clear. One of the oddities was the quorum requirements. There was no set number, there was simply a reference to our Articles of Incorporation and adhering to the "Revised Arizona Statutes." If memory serves me, that was Title 10 calling for 10% of the membership. That 3,500 (roughly) caused an uproar. The board quickly gathered a committee and arrived at 1250 members. What is pretty clear to me is, they (the RCSC) were pretty comfortable they would never reach a quorum. Which in fact, they never did until they fired Karen and started the shitstorm. Once that happened and once they saw the number of proxies pouring in, they became worried. They knew they had 700 proxies in hand, they still figured (wrongly) the membership wouldn't show up. Over all of the years the RCSC held annual membership meetings (2009-2020), attendance never reached 500. When you consider all the things that happened; the locked doors at 9 am, the lost video, the attorney being there to make an excuse not to let members vote, one begins to grow a tad suspicious of what the RCSC really hoped/wanted in all of these changes over the years. It is pretty clear, the RCSC's preference has been, as FYI pointed out, "fat, dumb and happy," was their ultimate goal. Those safeguards written into our documents were there for a reason. The entire point always was the board and management not do dumb stuff that would result in the turmoil and tumult we have all witnessed the past two years. The problem of course was/is, once those guard rails were gone, they just did as they pleased. Again, this is just one man's opinion. Love to have those who see it from a different perspective counter my arguments. Waiting patiently.
And if you read Article IV, Section 5, all votes at the Annual Membership Meeting are suppose to be done by ballot! Did anybody receive a ballot when they entered the auditorium? They knew damn well they weren't going to allow anything to happen. Bottom line: Even IF they allowed us to vote they weren't prepared! Just another excuse that would have been available if the lawyer said we could vote! They would have adjourned the meeting to a future date and most likely we would have lost our quorum.
My memory is pretty clear about the laws/articles when the quorum was changed to 3500/1250. AZ T10 back then required a quorum of 10% of the membership IF the corporation's Articles/bylaws didn't specify a quorum number at all. The RCSC documents DID specify a number... 100. The Board put out a statement that their lawyers said they had to change the quorum to be in compliance with the 10% law. The bulk of membership (which tends to not question the truthfulness of what the RCSC tells them) just went along with it. Those of us who cried foul about the quorum were lumped into the lawsuit crowd in public opinion even though most of us weren't part of it.
Then how did the RCSC determine 1,250 to be sufficient when 1,250 is not 10%? Well, we know the lawyers are full of you know what because the Arizona Revised Statutes allow the RCSC's Articles of Incorporation or Bylaws to set the quorum requirement. We just need a reasonable number so we don't go another 12 years without being able to hold a Membership meeting! Which by the way, we can't seem to be allowed to vote on anything! We're simply being railroaded every step of the way. The RCSC set's all the rules and the Members have no ability to oppose anything unless we first get the authority/permission to do so by the RCSC! So much for community input! It's a rigged system and we need to give the community a fair way of introducing their input without the blessings from the RCSC. If they're performing their duties properly, then they should not have any concerns with recalls or petitions!
Great points guys, all of this was just cover to strip members of the safeguards built into community documents and insure they could just do as they pleased. After the 10% fiasco, they shifted to an ad hoc committee with several board members leading the charge. I have some half-assed notes from back when it was going on and their goal was to come up with a number that would be hard to reach. They did, until last year and the solution failed them so their answer was to make shit up as they went.
