Vindication...

I struggled whether to write this, i find gloating to be tacky. So let me be clear, i'm not gloating, simply using this thread as a chance to help new board members better understand the role they fill when elected to the RCSC. Over the years, when i have written like this, i have called them "teachable moments."

If you dig through the archives on this site you will find a thread i wrote when i left the board at the end of 2014. I started by apologizing for stealing from Dr. Martin Luther King's powerful speech these words; "Free at last, free at last, thank God almighty, free at last."

Sadly, it was how i felt. After three excruciating years of stupid, i had escaped it. I've written, from time to time, the RCSC board was where ideas went to die. I had the good fortune to spend most of my work life in running and being around not for profit organizations. I had seen the good, the bad and the ugly.

When elected, i had hoped i could influence the board to actually do what they were put there to do. I understood the culture walking in, but felt confident the elected board members would understand over time the importance of the positions they filled. I was dead wrong.

In fact, about the only thing coming out of my tenure was people felt i was an asshole. That i disliked the gm and just didn't get it. That she had all the answers and our/their job was to simply support them blindly. I knew better, but that mattered not. Our job was to challenge, question and ultimately set the long term strategy for the community.

The truth is we did none of that. Worse yet, after i left it just kept getting worse. RCSC employee's primary function was to be loyal. The boards primary purpose was to be loyal. All of which added to the deterioration. The gm became the sole arbiter of the written words that went in the by-laws. The changes were an assault on the members rights, but it made the gm's job even easier.

All of which gives rise to why i so often bring up Sun City's history. The documents were built on a foundation where if a board became derelict in their duties of oversight of the gm, the members then had a forum for redress. It was nothing more than a perfectly constructed checks and balance system that had worked almost perfectly for 45 years.

My angst and frustration was never personal. It was never because "i hated the gm." Not at all, in fact she was/is a very nice person. Virtually everything i was speaking about was outcome driven. I watched in horror as boards neglected so much of what they were elected to do. They refused to hold anyone accountable for anything.

I'll come back later with more specific examples, but i will remind those who are new to this site, i quit the long range planning committee back in Sept of 2019. At our last meeting in June, we made a proposal to Rich Hoffer and Dale Lehr (the chairs) to have the RCSC do a top to bottom review of just how bad off the RCSC was regarding our technology. They thought it was a good idea.

We broke for summer and when we returned in September the gm had come back from her annual month off in July (which she had negotiated early on in lieu of a wage increase one year), saw the proposal by the committee and Rich told us in no uncertain terms it was a dumb idea, I went off on him and the shouting match resulted in committee members thinking i was being an asshole. They were right, i was.

I had lived with that mind set for three years while serving on the board. I had watched in horror as the gm did whatever she wanted and the boards just blessed her actions. With each passing year it got worse. The straw that broke the camels back was in 2020 when the board fired Barbara Brehm and in 2021 fired Karen McAdam. Both had the gall to question the gm's actions.

Here's the teachable moment guys. That's one of the duties of the board...questioning what the gm is doing and why. It's not an offense people should be fired for, they should be applauded. That is just how far afield the RCSC's board had fallen from the concept of self-governance. It became leadership of one, with rubber stampers who were trained to believe that loyalty to the general manager is the same as loyalty to the organization. It's not, in fact it's not even remotely close to how it should work.

Sadly, it appears they still feel that way. Hopefully after the IT presentation the other day, some of them will begin to understand the difference. and the importance of returning to our roots.

 

I think Vindication is the wrong term?!?!

I think it's more like Affirmation! You were right all along and they were wrong!

We know the Board can't process the fact that their responsibility is to both the corporation AND to the Members because without Members there is no corporation. But now what's called into question is whether or not they even understand what their fiduciary responsibility is?

I get it...we can't blame this board for the actions taken by prior boards but we should certainly see some sort of corrective action taking place. The first thing they should do is acknowledge why the RCSC is in the state it's in and how it got there!

 

Thanks FYI, but sadly being right doesn't help us fix where we are. The one thing we all should have learned early on is accountability. It's been the subject of several of the threads i have started over the years on this site, it still hasn't sunk in what it means. When i heard general manager Cook say it was "no one's fault," i nearly threw up in my mouth. Are you freaking kidding me? The roof collapsing over the Sun Dial pool was no ones fault, at least no one alive and kicking.

The neglect of all things technological is 100% accountable on both the now departed general manager and the boards who stood behind her and refused to ever question or challenge her actions. My first real suspicion was when she convinced boards to trash the grandfathering clause for those owning homes here in 2003 and then moved. The board members showed up and spoke to the matter and told them they intended to grandfather members even after they sold their homes. It didn't matter as she simply argued who really knew what they intended? It became apparent boards were going to go along with whatever she said.

It was one of the reasons i elected to run in 2011. By then the quorum had been flushed and the golfers on the board were getting boatloads of money spent on the courses. The meetings were cut down in time and the committees were minimized in their ability to function and in some cases, eliminated. As i mentioned, serving on the board was laughable because virtually everything came through the gm. Carole and i could vote no and in the end, they did as they pleased.

While serving on the board, the RCSC was actively pursuing solar. It took forever. The only one working on the contract was the gm. There were lots of issues and at one point i suggested it wasn't worth the effort. Finally a lease deal was done and members loved the idea of "covered parking." Over time it would save us money and save on energy costs. The lease called for a buy-out in 66 months (we had to do it that way to take advantage of rebates and incentives) and the gm asked us to allocate 4.5 million dollars from the PIF for the payoff. We did, as owning them would eliminate the lease payments and would save us even more money.

Several years after i was gone, a board member called me and asked if we could have coffee. We met and i was told the gm came and said the 4.5 million dollar buy-out was now 5.5 million dollars. They needed to cough up another million dollars. I was shocked, but no one batted an eyelash the price had sky rocketed. Holding the gm accountable just wasn't anywhere in the board's DNA. They had been trained loyalty to the corporation meant loyalty to the gm. A couple of years after that, word started spreading the solar panels were under-performing and in some cases not even working. Turns out, the employee who had leaked the information was quickly terminated (so the story goes).

Over the years, the documents had been rewritten by the gm with boards doing drive-by approvals. There were never questions about the impact to the membership or how the dynamic in the community changed. The board was insulated from recall and the gm never once was held accountable. The old standby always was, " most affordable community with the most amenities." Hell, i said it more times than anyone. It's true, but at what cost?

The final straw for me was when they fired the two board members and then started digging into the whole golf being self-sustaining. While on the board i had asked the gm for those documents and she just didn't know where they were? When i found them at the museum and went through our files, there was no question, golf was supposed to be cost neutral. The more i dug, the worse it got. They not only were losing money each year, they were spending from capital expenditures more than a million dollars a year. I requested the information but they gave me less than half what i asked for. With what i had, i could see, golf was costing us a small fortune as we were subsidizing it.

The story isn't about golf though, it really is about the board doing what it is supposed to do. The board should have known and told the gm to bring it before the membership for approval; hell, most of them had no clue. They just trusted her to do the right thing. In her mind, i guess subsidizing golf was just fine, in spite of what the documents said. In fact, she argued as she was leaving, that was never really the intent when the RCSC purchased the courses. More bullshit by the way.

The general manager has one employer, one entity he or she is accountable to. If those people elected by us don't do their job, then we end up with one person doing whatever they want. It magnifies when we keep letting the same board members keep doing the same thing year after year. There was a reason they had term limits (1 three year term), and there was a reason to allow a second. I'm not sure one was more beneficial than the other. I know in retrospect as openings occurred, bringing back retreads insured we continue down the same path. They simply refused to hold the general manager accountable. Frankly, i think that was why they brought them back.

I know, all Monday morning quarterbacking eh? Not really, i have been saying all these same things since 2009. When i was elected to the board, i tried to be supportive of the gm whenever it was warranted. The closer i got to it, the more i realized the incestuous relationship between the board and the gm was bad for Sun City. She did some really good things along the way. She also was allowed far too much leeway and voice in where we went. It got worse, year to year.

And that my friends is why, when you watch the video of the IT planning session, we are in the horrible place we are in. No one held her accountable; no one questioned whether employees she hired were capable of doing their job. Her primary objective of all the parties (board and employees) she worked with was loyalty. If it was to the corporation, that would have been acceptable. Unfortunately too many along the way acted as if everything was just fine. Clearly, it wasn't.