Sharing my “engagement experience” after choosing to live in Sun City: Warm, friendly welcome from immediate nextdoor neighbor. Offered to help in any way. Discovered a sizeable dawn and dusk dog walking community when exploring the area with my two hounds. This became my best connection, a great helpful new friends group. Free Sun City Independent delivered with lots of news of the community, occasional Recreation Centers of Sun City newsletter insert and yes, advertising of local businesses, which as a newbie, I appreciated learning about. Obtaining my RCSC membership card was mechanical. Just the required registration and photo id process. No welcome, no thank you, no handouts. In the coming months, the neighborhood friends never talked about RCSC clubs, attending its meetings or committees. I was invited to go to Baseball Spring Training games and Coyote hockey games, West Valley Symphony concert series, Sun City church services and events, movies, restaurants in Sun City and many nearby, among other non-RCSC things. It wasn’t until RCSC director, Karen McAdam, was booted off the board with much news published in the Sun City Independent that I took interest in the RCSC board governing function and duty to “act in the best interest of the members.” Attending meetings, joining social media groups and meeting like minded members who insisted “MEMBERS MATTER,” opened my eyes to become engaged! It takes a crisis like the library and PAC fiascos to engage our membership. We CAN and MUST do better engaging inclusively with our diverse membership.
This, ten times over, especially this: "Obtaining my RCSC membership card was mechanical. Just the required registration and photo id process. No welcome, no thank you, no handouts"Has it gotten better? I have no idea, i do know the whole Experience Sun City (or whatever it is called these days) is far from an optimal welcome. 100 plus tables and no program is hardly warm, or welcoming. I was just asked on one of the social media sites i frequent "whether we could ever rekindle that sense of community?" My answer was steeped in our history, no surprise there eh? The past couple of weeks i have been preparing for the Lifelong Learning club class Ben and i were going to do. On top of the pictures we pulled and the materials we are bringing with us, my research has included reading a number of interviews we have on file. If there is one common denominator/reference point that went along with building a sense of community it was this tenet/concept: "Ownership." Those moving into Sun City were led to believe they were both responsible and accountable for our success. DEVCO and then Meeker understood it didn't/wouldn't happen by accident. He also knew when the company left, we would be on our own. He did everything possible to leave us in good standing. When i first moved here in 2003, one of my common arguments was with RCSC board members who were adamant: the members didn't own the RCSC. It was more a semantics game than a reality game. Ownership, based on reading the Articles of Incorporation, was more about how the organization functioned than who held the title to it. Seriously, it was that simple; and given our documents it worked well in spite of how they felt. And then it all exploded as the documents were downgraded to shift the power from the members to where it became a top-down driven organization. No point in recanting how and why, suffice to say, if the RCSC truly wants to recreate the sense of community, it needs to accept the membership as being equal owners of the process called self-governance. Pretending they care and then doing as they please, or worse yet, letting management decide what we need will always and only come with one result, driving the members away. I know, the idea of ownership is difficult, especially when we see the potential for overreach as members try and claw back some semblance of control. We had the perfect balance of power, equal shares of obligation between the board and the membership. Back then, management was not an equal partner in the relationship, that came much later and was driven by the belief they (management/some board members) knew what was best for us. While i like to say it's an easy fix, we all know better. Nothing is ever easy these days. I suspect, while i would hope it not be the case, the coming membership meeting may well be more divisive than an exercise in problem solving and solution finding. I truly hope i am wrong. The good news is we should achieve the quorum, at which point the question looms large: Then what?
Let your voices be heard at the Annual Members Meeting on March 11th at the Sun Dial Auditorium with registration starting at 5:00 PM. The motion to allow members to vote on the big stuff is being submitted tomorrow!
