I've been very "high" on the accomplishments of the Sun City Advocates. Justly so given where we were at the end of last year to where we are now. However, this is a long journey and one where everyone need be patient and diligent. We live in an age where everyone wants what they want now (or at least as soon as Amazon can get it to your door). I almost attached this to the Monday Morning Quarterback thread, but it deserves to stand alone. Some may be upset by comments, don't be. I learned early on, brutal honesty is the best option to achieve change. Anytime anyone operates in a vacuum chamber and only hears your own voices (or that of like minded people), you lose your ability to be objective. Let's start with this premise: People can rationalize anything. I like examples, so let me step back in time to a previous life where this factoid was proven over and over again. Here's two of them. * In the mid 90's i was the president of a union (non-profit organization). I never met a microphone i didn't like and enjoyed the opportunity to engage people whenever possible. Given my unique skill set, i was often asked to do things outside my normal job duties. In this case it was as the labor liaison for the United Way. It just meant i gave lots of speeches trying to get people to donate money for a worthy cause. In 1995, a couple of years after he had retired, William Aarmony was convicted and sentenced to prison. He was the president of the national United Way organization and his salary was exorbitant (500k+), and he took advantage of his position and was convicted of defrauding the United Way of a million dollars more. He made raising money at the local level challenging. His argument was simple, he had been president of the organization for 20 years and turned it into the most profitable charity in the world. He was worth it. * During those years as president, i watched our international union leadership give sessions on how local union presidents could pass wage increases for themselves and their staff. The guys at the international level already had huge salaries and now they wanted to teach the locals to do the same. It made me ill. No surprise, they justified it as the right thing to do. I knew guys running local unions our size making 3 and 4 times the salary my staff and i were making. They simply pointed to other locals and argued they should be making as much or more. You can justify anything. Sun City, in my eyes, was always more pure than organized labor. It was never about the money here, those volunteering did it for the right reasons. To help insure Sun City stay the amazing community it was from the beginning. Altruistic? Absolutely; and as i grew to understand our history, it became even more so. Those getting involved did it for all the right reasons. It was about community. In the Monday Morning Quarterback thread, i went to some lengths to explain the past 15 year evolution. Suffice to say, i am not comparing what has happened in Sun City to what Aarmony did to the United Way. It wasn't about money. It was about control and power. It was about shifting away from a community built by and for a community to one where all of the decision making was concentrated in the hands of a very few. Sadly, it's getting worse. Let's break and i will come back and finish my thoughts. You won't like them.
Let's cut to the chase here and lay it all out: They (the majority of the RCSC board) think they are right and they think we (the Sun City Advocates) are wrong. As i am writing this, i know several of them are reading it. That's just fine, better to know how each of us feels about the other, at least we can start from our own positions. I know some of the Advocate members have suggested at some point, they (the board) will acknowledge their mistakes. They won't because they simply believe they are justified in their actions. To feel that way, they either have completely ignored the history of how Sun City was built and why it was successful, or they don't care. Many of them have been groomed by the now departed general manager and learned at her knee. They believed it was their right to do whatever. She was a product of a for profit corporation and she was hired to treat Sun City as one. She saw the board as her tool to accomplish what she thought was best for Sun City. The problem is and always will be, one person should never decide what is best for a community of 32,000 members. Even the genius of Meeker was never that arrogant. I've freely admitted some of the things she did were good. I was a fan until i got up close and saw the manipulation. Hell, i taught it as part of my job and knew exactly what she was doing and why. I once told that board that in an oral review of the gm (in front of her) and you thought i'd farted in church. They weren't happy with my comments and full well expected to be kicked off the board. I guess they didn't dare for fear of how and what i would do. Easier to just out vote Carole and I than create a stir. Not for profit corporations are a wholly different concept and construct. They start with predefined set of documents. They spell out why they exist and more importantly how they are to function. It isn't speculation or maybe we should do this or that. They literally are written to be the guidelines as to how they are run. Ours had some 45 years of being crafted to insure the community was involved and insulated against change. They were nothing short of brilliant. If you doubt what i am saying, you only need be objectively honest about what has happened the past 15 years. Just follow along: * The first thing the gm did was get rid of all of the long service employees. Those who had functioned under the old way of the RCSC doing business. * Slowly and methodically, the by-laws were changed. It took until mid 2009 as they were only 14 pages even then. After that, the onslaught began. The first change was the quorum. The second was the quarterly meetings, there was no need for them with a 1250 threshold for a meeting. Every step of the way, the gm rewrote them and boards just blessed the changes. My suggestion to reduce it was laughed at. * During the rewrites and in some cases even before, committees were dismantled. If they weren't, their input was rendered meaningless. The board put up with them rather than using them to help guide the community. * After the long range planning committee was disbanded, i questioned the board president about the wisdom of their decision. His answer still lingers as he arrogantly told me; "we don't need a long range planning committee, we have one already, it's called the board of directors." God's truth...pompous prick (excuse my French). * During my 3 years on the board, the solar project had begun. The deal took forever as it was a lease. As a non profit we couldn't qualify for the rebates and incentives. We had to lease it with the company we did business with getting the benefit of the rebates with the buyout after 66 months. No board member was ever involved in the lease agreement and to my knowledge no one ever saw it other than the gm. In my last year the gm asked for 4.5 million dollars to be set aside for the buyout from the PIF account. We quickly approved as this would provide the RCSC the best return on investment. 2 years after i left, a board member called and asked to have coffee. She told me the lease payoff went up more than a million dollars. They approved it and not a word was never uttered by a board member about it. I confronted the gm at the annual membership that wasn't and she said the 4.5 was never a firm number. Yes, it was. * I don't want to get into a lengthy discussion here on golf. Let me just say, over the years several board members have told me they knew golf wasn't fully self-sustaining. Even Gene W said it from the stage the end of last year. Once we found the 990's, we know they have arbitrarily spent more than 25 million dollars to subsidize golf. Is there a board member out there that knew it was this large? I doubt it. * We know our technology is the shits, the absolute and total shits. We also know they have accumulated enormous cash reserves that should have/could have been spent on staying current with technology and perhaps even built a theater along the way. When they showed us all of this, there wasn'a hint of being mortified or embarrassed. How is that even freaking possible. Oh, i know...it's no ones fault. Gang, i just banged this off the top of my head, i didn't mentioned the firing of board member in 2020 or 2021. I'm sure if i wanted to fine tune it, i could. The real question is, why bother? If they are reading this, and i know they are, it will not phase them one little bit. The general manager changed the by-laws by adding the organization's loyalty test which ultimately became the loyalty to the general manager test. It has become ingrained in them to accept whatever they do as being perfectly fine. When the documents were changed we abandoned the concept of self-governance, accountability and responsibility. What makes all of this so depressing is, in spite of the statement the board president read in January, we have no stepped into deeper yet waters of governance by handful. It why when i ran for the board i encouraged every candidate to have to at the very least read Jubilee, Sun City's 25th anniversary. So here's the good news and the one i take absolute and total solace in; There are 4 board members currently who believe the community should have a voice, that is stunning and come the end of this year we will elect a majority that feel that way.
What kinda amazes me is the fact that those board members will have to squalor in the same shit that they've created once their term of office is over? You know what they say about trash? "One man's trash is another man's treasure"... You can kinda apply that same mind-set to the board and the oligarchy they've created. They love it while they're in possession of all that power but all good things must come to an end and sooner or later they will be required to live by the same rules they have created. And when they see how impossible it is to change those rules, as a mere peasant Cardholder, they "might" realize what they have done...but probably not!
It would be nice FYI if any of them showed up and did a mea culpa. Don't hold your breath, no one wants to admit their mistakes. It's always easier to look back and tell the world what a great job they did. Imagine looking at your neighbors and telling them proudly, yup, i was there when we stripped members of their rights. I would love to hear from the avid golfers who were on the board, purchased the full play pass, and then refused to hold managements feet to the fire regarding staying revenue neutral. Yet we had no qualms about firing Karen for a conflict of interest. Thin about that one boys.
Like you, Bill, many of us have been vocal against all the issues you cited while they were happening and ever since. Our dissent was, to put it bluntly, just ignored and the documents changed after the fact to make what they did seem legal. So what is a membership supposed to do? When a board can significantly manipulate who is elected to the board, can change corporate documents to give themselves whatever powers they wish -- even orchestrate a change in State laws to exempt themselves from T33 (which was intended to prevent entities like them from having too much power). So hear we sit today, paying without limits for whatever the BOD decides and little recourse. 20+ years of talking and agitation by membership seems only to have emboldened their autocratic zeal. 20+ years of funding the RCSC with little say in what our money was used for. 20+ years of paying for management defending themselves against us asking that the RCSC be what we wanted. I've have little hope that trying to talk, motivate, and negotiate with the RCSC will have a substantial impact. For 20+ years they've pretend to listen and then essentially ignored us and done what they and a minority percentage of the membership wanted. We the membership don't own the RCSC any more than we the citizen own our government. We pay mandatory assessments and PIFs, citizens pay mandatory taxes and fees. A balance of power is essentially non existent -- the government/RCSC greatly overshadows the citizen/member and punishes us if we fail to pay or violate the rules. So what remedy does the little guy have? Elections, recalls, voter initiatives, and lawsuits are about it, and each costs both sides incremental money/effort. I'm not litigious by nature, but I'm concerned we'll spend another 20 years trying to regain some control with no better results than the past 20 years of mostly unorganized dissent and a parochial lawsuit that dragged on (IMO, because it wasn't well funded and didn't really have enough member supporters, nor a method to communicate to the entire membership to debunk the BS the RCSC was putting out via email blasts and press releases). The opposition (us) needs a war chest so we can expose our message to the general membership in a positive light via email, social media, etc., and enough cash so there's no doubt a lawsuit could be unleashed if necessary. The SCA has a good start, but I encourage them to start building a war chest (which I know isn't easy) to signal to the RCSC they will become a force to be reckoned with if ignored too long.
Hey ic, long time no read, Hope all is well with you. Honestly, the first glimmer of hope in a long time. Having board members who believe the members should have a voice is refreshing, The challenge will come this winter, can we elect three more? Two is all we need if Steve Collins runs again. Either way, it is a long slow road back. I for one am happy we are at least on the path. Stay positive brother stay positive.
Thank you for your opinions, IC. What indeed is a membership supposed to do? I'm so glad that when I fall down in the dumps about our progress, I have at least 9 other members cheering me on and reminding me that in September of last year, we started with 13 members who wouldn't accept the fact that the candidate that they had voted for could be "fired." Now we are nearing 500; we have a Facebook site; our own web (Blog) site; we send out emails to these 400+ group members; we pounded the pavement for proxy votes; we achieved the quorum of 1,250 people that had been set in 2009 and not touched since; we have our candidate back on the Board with several other like-minded individuals that we endorsed in the election; and we've watched the present Board continue to do such egregious things (call someone a liar; gavel a meeting shutdown without Board approval; make a promise to one of the largest clubs at SC without consulting or even voting on it with her fellow Board members; not even question management as to why there is a cash "stash" of over $15 million dollars) - that more and more members are become involved and aware of what's been going on. Gosh, we've done a lot. I hope you are a member of SCA and an active one at that. We vowed our message would be Communicate, Educate, Participate because the more members learn, the more they understand that something is just not right here in sunny Sun City. We have avoided asking for money or even discussing lawyers and lawsuits; we feel that we would be suing ourselves. At some point, we may have to entertain the notion. During the next few months, we hope to watch our membership grow, watch the Ad Hoc Bylaw Committee disseminate the bad and bring back the good, and groom some members who will run in the election. By the time the Snowbirds come back, we will have several candidates that we will endorse; candidates that think like we do. Maybe some of them will be from our Advocate group. We also are anticipating that the Member/Board exchanges will give us the chance to have our voices heard. The more that members know the truth and start to question where their dollar is going and what is going on behind closed doors, the more we will grow! Communicate - Educate - Participate One Day At a Time - Jean Totten
We have a wonderful opportunity right now. People are charged up for change. Let’s seize the opportunity to focus on the real problems facing our community. I look forward to moving forward on the real issues and not trivial matters and minutiae!
What pray tell are those real things rich? Are you suggesting the 25 million dollars spent to subsidize golf is trivial? How am i doing? Short enough for you. BTW, you admitted you knew golf was supposed to be self sustaining and told me it was close. Have you ever even looked at the 990's?
