We used to talk about it a lot; it's called a paradigm shift. In this case, it's when an organization moves in a wholly different direction from where it was. It's often a new way of thinking in meeting objectives and goals of the organization. We did it in the union i ran by becoming more bottom up than top down...almost the exact opposite of what the RCSC is doing. Over the past ten years there has been a consistent shift away from resident involvement and a far heavier dependence on the management staff and board members in the decision making process. It's been frustrating to watch and even worse to have been involved as we did it. Specifics are always easier to follow, so let me tick off a few: * The board in 2003 grandfathered existing home owners to a single property pay schedule as long as they lived in Sun City. About 5 years later, the new board changed it to say they were grandfathered as long as they lived in the same house. * Before i was elected to the board, quarterly membership meetings were defined as 100 or more to meet the quorum requirements. The board changed that to 3500 residents insuring we would never have another membership meeting. After some pressure they reduced it to 1250, suffice to say there hasn't been a membership meeting since then. * We've talked about the demise of the legal affairs committee and of the long range planning committees but let me just say i was on the board when we eliminated the LRPC as a standing committee. I voted against it because it was pretty clear some of the management team resented getting the Marinette pickleball pavilion and the 6 million dollar price tag shoved down their throat. As it turns out, it is a great facility and incredible marketing tool as the pball club is one of the fastest growing in the community. * I was on the board when we voted to reduce from 2 member exchanges to one per month. I agreed to support it because my goal was to incorporate scheduled monthly visits by board members to the clubs for input. How foolish was that expectation? * With all of the talk of less committee work for board members, while i voted against the proposal, i drafted a 3 page summary if the board was hell bent on moving away from committees, they needed to replace it with another form of direct member contacts, for example 2 or 3 community forums where we solicited information from residents...wonder if anyone read it but me. * I also voted to move from quarterly membership meetings (i knew we would never reach the 1250 quorum number) to an annual membership meeting. In doing so, i was confident that if we didn't reach the required 1250 the first year, board members would support reducing it to a more manageable 500. Never happened because the GM said the attorney advised against it. So to this day we haven't had a membership meeting since 2009. Shameful. There's more, but i suspect i have lost most of you long ago. Perhaps i'm just a dinosaur slogging along believing this community should not belong to 9 board members and the top management staff doing as they please. Should be interesting to watch what comes next; maybe if they could just eliminate all outside meetings with residents, we wouldn't get in the way of their agenda at all. Then they wouldn't have to post agenda's or motions and face residents trying to understand what kind of craziness they are getting into. Really, explanations are just so darned troublesome.
