I have always loved Bill Pearson's stories of the days of DEVCO and John Meeker. Those are stories of coming together and building a community. A community built on a vision of neighbor helping neighbor. Coming together to iron out differences and settling conflicts. Yes, those are great stories of the building of this great community. Now, here we are, today, unwilling to face the changes needed for this community to grow. The stagnation of ideas and motivation is crippling the growth needed to make Sun City the community of the future. The need to grow this community organically to include and expand the member involvement is critical. Yet, there's little movement on the leadership's part to seek ways or individuals who can help create an environment of change. Rather, it feels as if the board has become more reclusive and makes little overture to invite the members to participate. This corporation was founded for the benefit of the members, plain and simple, its written in the corporate documents. A certain GM made changes to remove the beneficial member language, making it appear the RCSC is to be a top-down organization. This prevailing management style needs a change. For the benefit of the corporation and the membership. So many great ideas are presented on a chat board, but are never incorporated in real life. Don't try to tell me the board members don't read the chat rooms. Why such stagnation? Why such a prevailing theme that members are to be disdained and not invited to the table? There are committees but they are feckless due to the nature of how they are are managed. They should have a greater role in the governance of Sun City, their ideas presented loud and clearly and given weight as they are the voice of the members. Are there any prospective board members out there that can be the face of change for this board moving forward 0r just ore more of the same? Anyone offering new ideas or ways to thinking that can offer the promise of getting off the current mark and making changes needed to be a corporation for the future that includes the members? Is there anyone willing to stand and restore the members rights as they once were? It will be a daunting task, especially if the board members continue to cling to the past. It is time to create space for the members to be included in the processes needed to be written. Ones that invite member participation and feedback, one that allows members to speak at their own meetings for longer than three minutes, processes for including member feedback in a constructive way via an RCSC chat board or wall. Be willing to be inclusive of the membership, and go out to various rec centers and have meetings at their locations where they live. Its not fair that the only conversation is set to the board daytime hours and limited to three minutes. Get out to the rec centers and meet your constituents on their terms. You would have the time to do so if you let the minutia go to other departments. Hire another Facilities Manager, similar to Jim Wellman. Let that person take on the role of the buildings and infrastructure and report back to the board the best practice of cost, the best bids, the better contractor and so on. These are items bogging down the work of the governance of the RCSC. The board is so bogged down in the processes that could be off loaded they are not able to see the forest for the trees. Meeting at a rec center lobby for some chat to say hi, and meet with the members, preferably in the evening or a weekend, due to the number of members still working at a job. If the minutia was removed, time for member interaction becomes real. The board needs to include the membership as an active part of the RCSC. How do we proceed? How do we make the RCSC the better place it can be? Time to re-evaluate work practices? Review how ideas are treated and created and give them credence with a better review process? Form a new model of leadership that benefits the corporation that also includes the members? All kinds of ideas, but who can put it to practice? I can write about ways to proceed, but I am ineffectual to do anything. Here's hoping someone is listening and takes up the call.
The interesting aspect of the building of Sun City Carole was the constant stops and starts by DEVCO as they opened and evolved. We truly were a work in progress; we still are. I suspect we always will be. Three guys were the primary drivers: L. C. Jacobson, Tom Breen and J. R. Ashton. They drove the bus and by 1965, all were gone. In came John Meeker who played a bigger role than anyone. Sure Del Webb and Jim Boswell were the money guys, but the hands-on, day to day work was Meeker and a huge core of DEVCO employees who toiled tirelessly. In Meeker's journals he names dozens of employees who filled key roles. At the end of the day, in 1978 as they were walking out the door, Meeker better understood, more-so than anyone else in the company, everything fell square on the backs of the members and the community at large. Initially the powers that be were convinced we would become a city. When it didn't happen, John knew it was up to each and everyone buying a home here and taking ownership of the process of self-governance. It was how and why our documents were built around the membership having such a loud and powerful voice. It was also why Carole and i watched in horror as the RCSC, the GM and most of our fellow board members ran from the rich traditions and safeguards we had been built on and around. Theoretically, it might have worked, except the platform that made us Sun City wasn't created to be a top-down driven structure. We were simply too big to rely on the genius of one general manager, or a couple of board officers to provide every answer. Think back over and ask this simple question: How the hell did we end end up where we are? How, why and when did things go so sideways? Then, just stop; what's the point? Because, right now at this moment in time, our past is nothing more than a potential blue-print. There's been a myriad of ideas floated here, some good, some not. I would argue, now is the perfect time to change. Perhaps nothing is more important than redefining the role of the board, the inclusion of the community and the role the committees could/should play. I know that idea is scary as shit for a board terrified of letting go. Either you trust the members to help make good choices, or you don't. As i stayed away from the keyboard and read the comments, i was astounded by this one argument: It would be bad to allow part time residents to be on the board and and attend a meeting or two virtually. Really? How much more cocked up could it get by trying something that allows greater participation from members with qualifications that would be value added to the process? How much harm would there be in adding a marketing committee with members who spent their lives in marketing? What's the downside of telling members exactly what's going, why it is and allowing them to question the logic of it? Rebuilding, or re-birthing the concept that got us to the dance shouldn't be terrifying; it should be exciting. As usual, this is just one man's opinion. Eh?
