Embarrassing!!!!!!!!!!!!

Another good crowd today for the RCSC board meeting and like all of them of late, the lofty goal of showing those in attendance who was/is boss was clearly on display. The regular cast of characters voted in lock-step to ignore the wishes brought forward at last years membership meeting.

Instead they want to send everything off to never/never land where someday they will form a committee to study them to insure they "get it right." To help them, i will provide all of you a time table: Spend several months finding committee members; break for summer; come back in September and hope the maddening crowd has gone away so they can scrap the effort or, drag it on for months and then years to insure they "get it right" (thank you Allan for that information).

Suffice to say, i talked with several members disgusted by what they saw and heard. But alas, that's not what was so damned EMBARRASSING!!!!!!!!!! Nope. For those of you who left before the IT planning session, which is roughly 98.2% of you, that decision saved you from seeing what could only be compared to as being caught in your birthday suit at your Sunday church gathering...and worse yet, being in the front row.

OMG (short for OH MY GOD for those of you acronym challenged). There's a very large bunch of us gad flies and hangers on to all things RCSC related who knew their technology was a bit behind the times. There's any number of us who have been pounding on tables and telling them that since as far back as 2010. I would doubt any of us were aware of just how bad it was. Seems the RCSC has turned a blind eye since 2010 regarding technology.

The report (and i encourage/beg you to watch it once posted) is staggering in scope, in cost and sheer and utter stupidity. I know i tend to embellish from time to time, but in this case i would argue i understated just how bad it is. The report given was thorough and pulled no punches. It put the turd right where it belonged...in the pocket of those running the community for the past 15 years.

I know, the new general manager jumped up and said "it was really was no one's fault, given the roof collapse at Sun Dial years ago," Having been around when that happened i found myself scratching me head in disbelief, but what the hell do i know? That roof collapsing back around 2005/2006 was truly traumatic. Interesting that the time frame is almost in complete alignment when the just departed gm was hired. Yes she had to dig her way out of it, but give me a freaking break, the roof was back on and life was good again.by 2008.

The simple reality is she hated anything tech related. Their idea of becoming technology driven was giving board members an ipad and being able to reprogram them from year to year. Which is a polite way of saying we are caught up in an absolute shitshow of problems and the only way out is millions of dollars, several years of catch up and several newly hired and badly needed techie types.

I know others have some photos from the event (i hate camera phones), maybe they will post the slides they took, if not please watch it. Let me be blunt; if we hadn't dismembered committees and made them irrelevant and if we had not been dumping untold millions into secretly subsidizing golf we wouldn't be in this really, really bad position.

This is what happens when you put all of your trust in one person and let them take you to the promised land. Sun City was built by the members working in conjunction with the Webb Corporation and the RCSC as an organization that were committed to listening and working together. During the past 15 years we moved away from that relationship and just listened to the gm; in my humble opinion, it was pure foolishness.

 

The part you missed in your comments was the explanation that practically every bit of equipment, (servers, computers, printers) have outlived their useful life! The manufacturers no longer sell the product and no longer offer any support of their product!!!!!

The RCSC is functioning on borrowed time! The actual comment was "It's not that the equipment might fail, it's just a matter of time before it does fail." And how catastrophic that failure will be?...nobody knows because you can't even find the parts to repair them anymore and even if you did the supply-chair disruption has caused delivery dates to stretch out for months!

We are so outdated that we can't even take advantage of data storage in the "cloud"!!! That's how outdated our equipment is! You probably have more computing power on your I-Phone????

It was also reported today that the RCSC has 5.5 million in capital reserve and another 1.5 million carry-over from last year! This is an issue that can't afford to be overlooked any longer and sooner a remedy is decided on and action taken the better.

I was disappointed that a special session was not scheduled to initiate discussion of their options to get the ball rolling....immediately! None of this will be a quick fix but it can't be kicked down the road any longer.

I strongly urge the president of the board or by the written request of three directors that a special session be scheduled for the purpose of resolving this issue as soon as possible.

 

Forensic Audit ASAP

Question ❓ for Bill: when you were a board member, what was the bidding process used when JIM WELLMAN was Eks right hand man? Thanks

 

I was never on the "bid commission" that position back then was given to 3 board members who were more popular than i. One time i requested to see the bid packet for the Bell Lawn Bowling green project. As a bowler, i thought it was extraordinarily high. They had hired the golf course maintenance sub-contractor to build it. He knew virtually nothing about bowling greens. We have a member who lives in Sun City and has built greens all over North America and he wrote him a detailed plan; he followed about half of it and it showed. Unrelated to building the green, he and his company were fired as they were coming up on the expiration of his 3 year agreement.

For years the standard joke was the one contractor that almost always was awarded the bid, was the low bidder and almost every time he started the project he would come back with an increase for the project because "dang, when he opened up the walls he found 30 and 40 year old problems he hadn't considered would be there. Safe to say, every other bidder already knew when he opened up the walls on a 40 year old building what he would find and factored that into his bid. One time when i complained to the GM about the assistant gm she said go tell him which was utter BS because the gm is the only one the board is responsible for. Every other employee works for the GM.

How they do it these days is anyone's best guess...or maybe one of the current or past board members can come on and fill us in (said with a smirk).

 

Thanks for explaining FYI, i didn't go into detail because i know photo's from the slide presentation are out there and may work there way here. I did have to laugh when they introduced their IT guy. He was very impressive and turns out he worked for years in IT at Sun City West. We've been telling the board and management that both West and Grand were 10 to 15 years ahead of us. Now we know just how true that was/is. Sun City West has a 5 person IT team, and is up to date. Sun City has a two man team and they are burning them out because almost nothing is up to date and it's impossible to keep up. They better move quickly or they will lose both of those guys and then we are really up against it.

The comment by Cook about the Sun Dial roof collapse and how it put them behind the curve is nonsense. When it happened it is true they pinched pennies until the insurance claim was settled after a year plus. There was a period for recovering some of the loss, but pretending that's the reason for being as screwed up as it is rubbish. The old gm simply had no interest in technology and she simply kicked the can down the road till she left and now they are facing an absolute mess.

Here is the irony of his statement and proof positive how silly it was. After they fixed Sun Dial the board decided they needed a rainy day fund, just for incidents like this. I forget the amount they set aside each month/year but the goal was to get to 5 million dollars. They had the financial where-with-all to get there a year or two ahead of schedule and the fund is sitting there untouched drawing minuscule interest. It seems to me, after today's report, this is exactly the reason that money was set aside. I know they have the carry-over (another real oddity in the world of budgeting) so between the two they should make this (IT) a priority, accelerate the 3 year plan and then pay back the Capital reserve fund as they did when they built it.

The biggest problem is apparently going to be buying and actually getting the equipment. As FYI said, it should be done as quickly as possible.

 

And when the report is published they will see that the two IT guys are working 55 hours during the week and 20 hours on weekends just to keep the system running!

Everything is being held together with duct tape and chicken wire. Nothing is actually being fixed. They are simply trying to keep the systems running!

Nobody in their right mind can sustain in a job that constantly consists of putting out fires! That wears on you mentally and physically.

 

I hate to beat a dead horse, but after yesterday's IT presentation, i will indeed do so. Last year, i jumped on the "golf need be self-sustaining" band wagon. I even went so far as to bring to the table the deed restrictions and newspaper articles from 1975 when the initial 18 month trial agreement was negotiated. In the newspaper articles, then board president Myron Waggoner, was quoted numerous times stating the only way the RCSC would buy them was to keep them from becoming a money pit and they would not be subsidized by non-golfers.

The meeting after that the exiting gm took the mic and claimed that agreement wasn't really between the RCSC and Webb, but an agreement with the title company and DEVCO, It was utter nonsense and dare i say, pure bullshit. Be that as it may, it prompted me to have a chat with the new gm and the director of golf following another meeting. At which point, the new gm said two things; "do you want golf to go away?" No i answered, i want you to be honest with the members how much it is costing.

The second point was far more frustrating, because even then i knew and understood the answer. He said; what is the difference if we keep spending a million or two in golf every year but have excess funds at years end? I was going to put it in quotes but the comment isn't verbatim, but very close. By this time the meeting was long over and they had to leave and i never did get a chance to answer him, so let me do so in the next paragraph or two.

I have probably paid more attention than most when it comes to how the community is run. I moved here because of the unique arrangement, one where we were self-governed and owners with a responsibility to pay attention and be involved. I loved the entire way Sun City was built and why i am so fixated on our history. The road map, the pathway to maintaining the kind of community Sun City was founded under is all there.

So, the answer Bill Cook's response about what's the difference if we dump boatloads of money into golf every year they don't bother to tell us about (and well beyond the agreement they took them under) is contained in that entire presentation yesterday. The reality is, when you shovel money into one area (golf) and ignore the other stuff like IT and let it become a festering mess of unmarked cables, out of date software and equipment that should have been relegated to the junk heap years back, you suddenly have to catch up and try and resolve it before the whole crashes down around them/us.

Sadly, it's not just limited to IT. The theater should have been built years back, we wouldn't be having the Mountainview challenges. We should be much more advanced in our life long learning structure than we are. We should have been formulating plans for the coming water crisis on golf courses and the lake. We shouldn't have documents that stripped members of their rights but kept on working together in committees and in concert with all of these issues rather than letting one person dictate those outcomes.

So Bill, there is your answer. Hope that helps as we move forward. To be clear, i don't say these things with malice but so you understand why the Sun City Advocates even exists.

 

Just watched the Planning Session video.

My observations ;

Bill cook was absolutely wrong - the current shape of our IT facilities and equipment is due to negligence and poor management decisions.

The shape of the equipment closets showed very plainly that there was never any oversight of IT and it's infrastructure. The pictures of the closets that were shown in the video was deplorable and in real world IT shops they would be called Rats nests. Absolutely no labeling, no documentation, just throw crap in there wherever you can fit it. Not at all professional.

The IT managers opinion that they can probably get things in better shape within a year and a half if they were to add 2 extra staff members is probably a hope and a prayer.
Salaries suggested for new IT staff are well below industry standards and he may find problems trying to hire experienced it staff at the salaries he mentioned.
I left the IT world 23 years ago after a 35 year career in IT and my salary then was well over what the IT manager suggests.

One thing that the IT manger didn't mention is that the IT staff will need on-going training every year to support new and emerging technology.

I don't think the board fully realizes the current IT emergency. Without immediate hires and immediate attention paid to upgrading our infrastructure we will be in this same position a year from now.

There must be a budget item for IT going forward and it will be a significant number.

This is an emergency. If the board hesitates to act immediately and kicks the can down the road we will be revisiting this next year.

 

The most disturbing thing in on the IT presentation was not the pictures and descriptions that would also describe the the Chicago Stockyards in the early 1900's. It was when Bill Cook said that what you are about to see and hear is no one's fault. What??

Years ago I was responsible amongst other things for the server that authenticated the sign in of employees at POS computers at about 2000 retail locations. If server was down or slow it was a huge problem. As the manager responsible I would have give a report the same day, if not sooner, of what happened. The why, what, where, and who of the problem. I guarantee you if I ever started my report with "No one is at fault" I would be looking for another job. Because when you are in charge, you are the manager, and something is not right or goes terrible wrong, you are at fault.

I'm afraid I am having some doubts about the management skills of our new GM.

I was impressed with the new IT manager's ability to not sugar coat a serious problem. Get him some help, please.

 

Thank you Bill I've been out of town for a while but I appreciate what you're doing! And now that I'm back LOL, why can't we as members see the bids and be the ones to approve the bids? Just asking. I know how the good old boys game is played especially when you grease the palm of somebody's hand with cash just to comment.

 

We're just getting started SW, and the Sun City Advocates is way more than me. In fact, my role is more about an occasional bit of writing. Thanks to Bob A's comment; the idea/suggestion by the gm that it is/was no ones fault might well have sealed his fate moving forward. There was no point/value is blaming anyone, but the idea it just kind of happened accidentally is pure nonsense. As someone pointed out in the Sun City Advocates poll, perhaps if we hadn't been shoveling a million or two a year into quietly subsidizing golf, we could have kept up our technology. DUH! Beyond that, we could also have built a theater and Mountainview wouldn't be the cluster-flock it is now.