Normally i would walk you through 6 paragraphs to get to the question. Knowing some of you hate to read, i will ask the question first and if you elect to read the rest of it, cool: Does the RCSC exist to serve the members? or, Do the Members exist to serve the RCSC? Seems really simple when taken at face value? Let's be honest though, its not a throw away. As an age restricted community we all come here from different perspectives, attitudes and our own baggage/history. If you owned your own business or company, that one is easy, you were running it to make a profit. If you worked for a corporation that had stock holders, the goal was to be profitable and have the stock holders benefit from those profits. It gets trickier in Sun City, because more often than not, we attracted working men and women who came from a variety of back grounds. In the early years we saw lots of folks retire to Sun City with good defined benefit pension plans. Between those pensions, social security and private savings, life in Sun City was affordable and within reach. Far more people came here retired than were working (not all though). If you did a deeper dive, you saw all kinds of folks who moved here coming from public sector pension plans. Teachers, fire fighters, police officers, county, city and state workers all who had pretty good pensions. They also came understanding working for an organization rather than a private individual or a company with stock holders was wholly different. The concept of how Sun City was formed was often captured in the minds of those coming here and trying to build an entirely different way of life. I would argue, in fact, the residents here (and Sun City West) fought incorporation for that very reason. They loved the idea of a brave new world, one where they took ownership and responsibility for the community's success. When i first moved here i used to jab folks with this description: Those of the right loved it because we had that "pull yourself up by your own bootstraps approach." While at the same time, telling those on the left is was similar to living in a commune; "everyone paid their fair share." We were that unique. The resulting documents, after lots of pulling and pushing, resulted in a near on perfect set of Articles of Incorporation and By-Laws. Over the course of 45 years, they served us brilliantly. Even with all the gnarly infighting and rancor, Sun City became the most unique age restricted community in the nation. As others opened, they always looked at us. There was a major adjustment in newer communities though, and i would argue it made running the community easier. One organization was built to oversee the community. Adding to the mix, most others also were part of local municipalities. They were paying for/buying city services along with what their rec fees gave them. Life with simpler, less moving parts, more cost. During all those years, the RCSC management team stayed in their lane; they ran the day to day operations. The board took active control of managing the future and engaging with the membership. With almost every step they leaned on the membership to help guide that direction. It was beautiful to watch with committees being involved in almost every aspect of the decision making process. Don't get me wrong, the board was always the ultimate authority, but seldom did they stray far from what the membership wanted or recommended. There was a reason for that; built into those community documents were safeguards of checks and balances. They were that carefully crafted, so as to encourage finding solutions rather than bitter battles. I will tell you from a personal perspective, the RCSC was there to serve the membership. If you read the Articles of Incorporation, you will still see it there today. We strayed after 2005 when a decision was made to hire a general manager who suddenly had more clout than ever in our history. It stared slow, but as time passed, more and more was changed. It's one of the reasons our By-Laws look like word salad. You only need understand this; changes to the Articles of Incorporation have to be approved by a vote of the membership. By-Law changes are done by the board, though in front of the membership (it doesn't matter if they like them or not). Of course if there are only 20 members in the room, hardly an impediment. It is why there is virtually no flow from one document through the next. It wasn't what they were striving for. I will be the first to admit, working through committees and caring about what the membership wants is a slow arduous process. It's meant to be. Changing an organizations foundation should be done carefully and with complete understanding of what you are doing and why. My problem was and still is, i came from this exact setting. Knowing and watching what was going on from day to day, month to month and finally year to year was painful. I know the more we removed the membership from the equation, the easier it was to change whatever they wanted. To be clear, it wasn't an accident, it was intended. Which made it all the more worse for me. I saw it, i couldn't stop it. I'll stop here and come back later. I just want you each to ask yourself the question above when i opened. Like i said, i know how we got here, i know why and frankly i had lost hope we could change it. That is until the other day when between proxy votes and butts in chairs we had almost 1500 people in the room for the membership meeting. In fact, if the board had checked in like we all did, we might have hit the 1500. Think about that for a minute eh?
You will find the answer in the Articles of Incorporation, Article III: "To do anything and everything lawfully necessary in the interest of the Members of the Corporation..."
Those words should have resurrected her to the board president with Steve Collins as her VP, and everybody else resigning!
