Impressions? RCSC Board Mtg. Wed. April 5, 2023

My highlights:
--I was really pleased to see what I'd say was a good turnout for a 6 p.m. meeting, although I don't know what the actual number was or how it compares to a daytime mtg.
--I was glad that people seemed to understand the benefit of allowing board members to attend virtually if necessary.
--Seems we may get a reestablishing of the Legal Affairs Committee and that is long overdue.
--Allowing a little more time to reexamine Mountainview seems sensible to me.
--Amending Bylaws replicated by Board Policies would be a good idea as anything that helps condense and clarify sure enhances my understanding.
Yours?

 

Nice summary scj, on point and short and sweet. Something i am simply incapable of doing. And there's the "other thing" that differentiates us, you are way nicer than i am. Before i go there though, i was stunned by the size of the crowd. I saw faces i hadn't seen before and i didn't take a count which i like to do by just counting chairs in a row and doing a wag (wild ass guess." There were actually tables up and 6 chairs at each and the room was pretty dang full.

With the pleasantries out of the way, let's get straight to the ugly elephant into the room. A former board member who shall go unnamed, took the opportunity to spend her 3 minutes at the mic, much like she spent her 3 years on the board, insulting as many people as she could. It was a pathetic display of an angry woman unwilling to even begin to acknowledge why she got her ass handed to her in the past election. To the board's credit no one struck back, they took her diatribe and then went about the business at hand.

I find her comments to be absurd. She was on the board when they (the board), under armed police protection, scurried off the stage and running from the membership who came expecting answers to any number of questions (including Mountain View). They had no interest in engaging the membership; apparently it was beneath them. She served on the board and while pompously sitting up front, called the fired board member a liar while she was in the audience as a member and as a potential candidate. She was on the board when the doors to the membership meeting were locked promptly at 9 am and then during the meeting was comfortable denying the membership the right to vote; even thought the Articles of Incorporation gave us the right to do that.

Pot meet kettle eh? It was a classless display by a classless human being.

With that out of the way, easily the most pressing issue was the Mountain View 40 million dollar remodel being put on hold. I said it last night at the mic, i will say it again here: The issues at Mountain View need to be addressed and addressed quickly. They've let the center fall into disrepair under the guise everything was going to be plowed under and rebuilt from the ground up. The problem isn't with fixing stuff, it's with the 40 million dollar price tag. As i mentioned if fixing it was 20 million dollars, i doubt anyone would so much as blink.

The new board, including the two new board members (welcome by the way, great additions it appears), saw fit to take a prudent financially responsible position to try and make sense of a remodel that grew into an albatross. When you watch the meeting you will see a board acting like a board should be acting. The lament from those wanting what they want when they want it was, just do it. This isn't a Nike commercial, this is a community where everything we do creates a ripple affect across the community (and in this case for the next ten years).

While we all know how the former board president talked incessantly about the importance of data driving decisions, clearly it was more platitudes than actually accumulating it and then using it. Think not? What kind of data gave us an indoor archery range? What kind of data was collected for indoor basketball and volleyball? We already know our ability to collect solid information is truly limited by our wholly inadequate technology. Finally, what kind of "data" was accumulated to decide we needed another indoor walking track less than a mile from the other indoor walking track?

The perfect example was made late last night when board member Karen McAdam mentioned she requested utilization figures for the "flat space" gym at Mountain View. Of late, we saw and heard the board do the Arizona two-step how the new gym was really all about flat space. Really? Oddly, no one ever asked about how much that flat space was used beyond the Players and showing movies. It was negligible; dare i say, next to nothing.

More importantly, did you know there is "flat space" available at Marinette, Bell social halls, Sun Dial we know about, the social halls at Lake View and the two flat spaces at Fairway. There's also smaller "flat spaces) around the community. Have we ever looked at the utilization across each of those to determine what our actual needs are, or are not? We've kicked this can down the road a number of times; Sun City West developed a "space allocation committee" to make recommendations. It sounded like an idea worth exploring before we dump 40 million dollars into more "flat space."

Let me be very blunt here, in spite of Darla's (oops) comments. The board is beginning to function as a board should. Asking and getting legitimate answers from management is how it was supposed to work. It always used to be that way, but for the past 15 years we slid down the path of the management team making the decisions for us. If they had always been right, i guess it would have worked better than it has. Unfortunately we now know that wasn't the case.

Kudos to the board for the direction they are headed in. It's a long; slow road back but at least we've turned the damn thing around and are facing the right way.

 

Yeah, but I would argue that there needs to be some guidelines established within the bylaws rather than just a blanket statement.

There needs to be certain measures to address certain situations such as contingency plans if the electronics crashes in the middle of a meeting.

If there is another situation like Covid where nobody could meet in person, an electronic meeting would violate the current bylaws because board meetings shall be video recorded and time allotted for members to comment

The Arizona Revised Statutes already allows for electronic meetings.

 

RCSC MEETINGS:
Those in attendance are expected to follow RCSC Board Policy 10 – Rules & Regulations and must maintain civility and courtesy to all.

Time for an Incident report and possible suspension?
Repeat offender?

Incident Form

 

Agree! That's why I am glad the details will be worked out with membership input. A "get out of attending live meetings free" carte blanche is not the way to go.

 

It was nice to see the general manager placed in the hot seat! Who was making the decision not to correct the safety issue at the metal club that's been going on for 6 years? Could that be the same person who allowed our IT equipment to
go to hell?

 

Thx Bill. I was impressed, esp. as you said,

And yes, the former board member's display was embarrassing and made me breathe a sigh of relief that she is no longer on the board.

The flat floor stats were a real eye opener. Maybe we also need to know which ones actually have a suitable dance floor base laid down as I hear that is important for dancing. Some of those dance clubs are pretty large too and need more space so yeah, the question of usage stats is very important and maybe like SCW we could indeed use a "space allocation committee" since that data presented to the board and membership is crucial in decision making. Heck, they have attendance data since clubs have to have sign-in sheets, so why isn't the Chartered Clubs Supervisor regularly telling us stats and showing us charts on a regular basis anyway?

 

RCSC Board of Directors Meeting – Wednesday, April 5, 2023
For those interested in a previous board member’s comments, fast forward to 39:50
Watch general manager, Bill Cook squirm about a serious safety issue at the metal shop 1:28:30, stay with his whole response.
Tap “Watch on YouTube” to access.
RCSC does not allow sharing.

 

The link to RCSC Incident Reports is incorrect. The current forms (Oct 2022) can be found here: Forms - Sun City, Arizona - The Original Fun City! (suncityaz.org)

 

Thanks, Joelyn. Typical the RCSC has multiples! How about they remove outdated information when adding new?
Our site is hopelessly awkward to navigate as well as embarrassingly sad and tired.

 

How about an Ad Hoc committee of Members to help layout and determine an easier, simpler and more defined method of finding out information?

The current "website" is exactly that, a web of confusion!

You can dig around for hours and never quite find what you're looking for!

P.S. Or is our IT capabilities so bad that we can't even modify our website?

 

And we need to restore the Communications Committee!
An organization as large as our RCSC certainly requires a Director of Communications as well!

 

One of the glaring outcomes from the previous GM was to take the role of committees out of the hands of the community and to control and contain everything within the management team. Clearly there was an upside to doing that as she loved to control every aspect of the decision making process. Even more obvious was the limiting nature of a one woman band.

As i type these comments, there's little value other than they become teachable moments. The question is, can we learn from them? Do we need to?

The first committee to go was the Legal Affairs Committee. It was a group of retired attorneys and judges who had been in existence in the community for nearly 30 years. They reviewed every language change to our documents or other issues that bordered on legal matters. They made their recommendations; which is all a committee can do. The reality was once they were gone, the GM wrote every document change and the board rubber stamped it. Never once attempting to change the Articles of Incorporation because that took a membership vote and which is the reason we have By-Laws in conflict with the Articles.

Next up was the Entertainment Committee. It was an odd mix of members because there was often in-fighting over big band versus rock and roll that was attempting to come into Sun City with the baby boomers screaming the loudest. A director of entertainment was hired and has done a great job. I'm not convinced she has been given the leeway or the budget she could use, but that's really a call for the new board to visit at some point.

Last and not least was the communication committee. Members used to gather every month and review/recommend what went into the Sun Views. It wasn't the most efficient method of putting it together but it helped insure we had a broad range of topics covered. Over the years it morphed into various committees and now i guess it's the Sun City In Focus project. I see them as a stand-alone. We need a new committee that helps drive direction with a coordinated social media, print media and an integrated website. Nothing that need be done immediately but within the next year or two.

Let me just say this; i know the employees loved the former GM. She was brilliant at promoting them at the yearly gathering we can safely call the non-membership meeting and the other event that has evolved through several different names, the latest being Experience Sun City (or something like that). The one expectation she had above all others was loyalty. In most cases she hired qualified people who stayed within their lanes and as long as they didn't make waves, life was good. The downside (in my opinion) was they never strayed too far out there. Creativity was limited and limiting. Personally, i hate when that happens.

Literally everything that happened was like watching a slow moving car crash. I watched it coming and could do nothing about it. The more we complained or harped about direction, the more insular the board and the GM became. In fact, in the beginning (2006) we were still community focused. It wasn't until 3 years later, after the entirety of the old board had departed did the changes begin in earnest. With each passing year we grew into the mess we saw in 2020 ans 2021. That coupled with a change at the general manager position resulted in the perfect storm.

Saying all of this sounds like Sun City the past 15 years has been a disaster. It hasn't. The former GM kept the costs low (a failed measuring stick in my mind), rebuilt our golf courses and we've added any number of new structures. She also moved us away from the "City of Volunteers" into the "Original Fun City." I would and have argued the faults in taking us in that direction but it is grounds for reasonable debate whether right or wrong.

What is debatable is the sorry state of our technology. What isn't debatable is the angst across the community that came with the firing of Karen McAdam and the subsequent push back. What isn't debatable is the piss poor position the board/gm's decision making has left us in as the Mountain View mess has helped rip the community apart. The problem of course is no one wants to accept or even acknowledge there is/was any blame on their part that should be assessed. I will freely admit the creation of the Sun City Advocates and the shitstorm that hit at the Sept 2020 board meeting was directly on us.

Given where we are today, i would also argue it was for the right reasons. If you need one more point to debate, let me help clarify this with one question. Would you rather have the 10 million (best guess) Grand Center, or us owning the Lakes Club with a 10 million dollar total costs (with renovations) that included a 300-400 raised seat theater, all of our admin offices located there with a dozen classrooms and any number of public gathering areas?

So you understand the full ramifications had that happened, consider this. We would have had to push back the 10-11 million dollar Willow Brook/Willow Creek renovation to when it would now be coming due next year (2024). We could have fixed the problems at Mountain View (for a couple of million dollars) and we wouldn't be talking about a full blown 40 million dollar Taj Mahal. Those living there would be delighted, the theater/other groups would have had their venue and we could be looking seriously at the Lakeview rebuild beginning in the next couple of years.

I can't and won't tell you it would have happened. What i will tell you emphatically is, it should have been a discussion within the community. They should have decided, not the GM with her vision and a board who swallowed it hook line and sinker. The best way to learn from our past is to avoid making the same dumb mistakes over and over again.

 

I finished watching the video of this week's Board meeting. I think I can safely say that we witnessed the perfect example of "sore loser" from a former Board member's statements. Or was it the worst example?

 

Former Director Darla Akins, and yes I'm calling her out by name, was totally, TOTALLY out of line!

If she can criticize the current Directors by name then so can I!

The second she started to personalized her negative comments the Chair should have called her to order and instructed her to sit back down or she would be asked to leave.

You would have thought that a former Director would have had more sense and understood proper decorum and the code of ethics but then again, she never did understand proper parliamentary procedure, which just justifies why she wasn't re-elected!

So now I guess we can assume there were 4 sore losers of the last election?

It's sad when you see a persons true colors exposed when things didn't go their way!

 

“Chair should have called her to order…”
You can hear a man’s voice from a board stage mic say, “Point of order,” but nothing happened to stop Darla’s rant.

Her complaining about having to signup to speak on the multiple agenda motions on ten different sheets of paper was almost laughable. That was a requirement implemented on her watch!! It was acceptable while she was on the board, not so much now that she’s just a member!