Attitude of Gratitude

Wishing you all a beautiful day and a wonderful life!

I just wanted to take a moment to reflect on how lucky and grateful I feel. I have a wonderful family, great friends and neighbors, way better health than I probably deserve, and I live in a beautiful home where, on a clear day, I’d swear I can see all the way to Area 51!

Although the Bay Area was a great place to have a career, living in a Sun City Anthem is a much better fit for a lady of leisure, and I have absolutely loved living here for almost 14 years. I have a great sense of belonging here surrounded by diverse and kindred spirits who are also enjoying fulfilling lives pursuing the many different lifestyle options available here.

I am totally committed to this community and to doing everything I can to keep it wonderful for ALL of us.

Thanks so much to all of you make my life so great!

SCA’s Wasteful Loss of Foundation Assisting Seniors

The recent open letter attorney Clarkson wrote attempted to justify the SCA’s Board’s actions against the Foundation Assisting Seniors (FAS). It was very disheartening. It shows SCA is lacking a system that guarantees Board decisions actually will serve the best interests of the community. It also shows how the Board does not hold the GM accountable for ensuring mutually-beneficial and cost-effective resolutions to community disputes.

The GM did not do a competent job to collaborate with FAS on a solution beneficial to SCA owners.

The Board delegated the dispute to the GM for resolution, but she was incapable of developing a collaborative solution or to avoid escalating the conflict. Why doesn’t the Board hold her accountable for that failure? Why doesn’t the Board hold itself accountable for achieving a negotiated settlement that would maximize benefits of both organizations to the SCA membership?

Instead, the Board followed the unhealthy pattern of power politics where they forgot who they are representing and who they and the GM are supposed to be serving. Their “Board/GM must win/be right and Favil West must lose” strategy made the Foundation Assisting Seniors and all of SCA’s members and residents just collateral damage to their “fight fire with Napalm” approach.

We all lose when the Board and the GM don’t do their job

In the end, we all lose when the Board does not hold the GM accountable for preventing or minimizing disputes.

When neither the Board nor the GM hold themselves accountable for bringing the community together or for maximizing “neighbor-helping-neighbor” strategies, we all lose.

When the Board picks a side to throw their weight and our money into waging a war against owners perceived to be on the other “side”.

We all lose when the Board does not hold the GM accountable for the owner relations and “people” parts of the General Manager job as much as for the property management aspects of the GM job.

WHY are we paying her so much if she doesn’t exhibit sufficient leadership or collaboration skills to bring the community together synergistically or to negotiate mutually-beneficial arrangements that allow diverse groups to thrive here?

Evicting FAS was the unnecessary destruction of a community treasure

Escalation of this conflict should never have happened. Consider for a moment how Favil West described as the FAS’ beginnings:

In 2003 the Foundation submitted a grant proposal to Pulte for a community service building. Pulte accepted the proposal. The Foundation President negotiated the design of the building, a building worth more than $550,000, to house the Foundation and the services it started; SCA TV, Community Service, and Emergency Preparedness (all originally part of the Foundation). The end result was that the building would be provided to SCA in addition to Independence Center, with Pulte’s condition that space would be dedicated to FAS so long as it serves SCA seniors. This was evidenced by the original plans showing and referencing the Foundation space allocation. This term was accepted by SCA and was documented by a board resolution at the SCA April 2007 board meeting.

These statements were presented as documented facts so they should have been easy to verify. Why was there no simple, fair internal cost-effective process to ascertain their veracity?

Instead of collaboratively evaluating the facts where both sides were given an equal opportunity to present their side of the story, those in power wastefully decided to disregard these assertions, to ignore the good that was being done by FAS, and to dismantle a 15-year-old community service and destroy community relationships for no good purpose.

Attorney added cost, but no value in achieving a good solution

SCA Board spent a huge amount of money on attorneys to evict FAS, and yet they still managed to break a few laws while taking this completely disproportionate action that benefitted the community not one whit.

For example, NRS 116.31088 requires a member vote before initiating a civil action, but the Board ignored that and filed case A-17-760014-C to evict FAS. Please note that attorney Clarkson’s was paid both to file the civil action against the FAS AFTER Clarkson was paid to give the Board the self-serving advice that SCA did not have to follow NRS 116.31088 in this case.

Another example is the violation of NRS 116.31085 (executive session) where FAS was repeatedly discussed in secret long before SCA board decided to take legal action. Perhaps, had the Board allowed the community to listen to their deliberations, it might have been harder for the Board to settle on the most expensive and least beneficial final solution.

GM Dumped $73,000+ Removal Election Costs on SCA Owners

The GM is to blame for the big bill – not the SCA owners who must pay it

This huge expense is still climbing, but it was totally unnecessary, not legally authorized by the Board, and did not serve the best interests of SCA.

Both the GM and the attorney should be fired for spending our money to interfere with the integrity of the removal election.

This unauthorized expenditure is sufficiently egregious to warrant the termination of both the GM and attorney, but that won’t happen because the beneficiaries of the election interference by SCA’s agents included a majority of the Board which was apparently important enough to them to stand by and let SCA owners foot the huge and unnecessary bill.

While I was on the Board I aggressively attempted to protect the independence of the Election Committee, but alone and constrained by ethical boundaries, I was no match for the abuse of power by the Board President and SCA’s agents who were not so constrained.

A well-documented contributing factor to my unlawful removal from the Board was that I informed the Ombudsman on July 24 of my concerns about the need to protect the independence of the Election Committee (and also to protect owners lawfully collecting petition signatures) from the significant GM/CAM/attorney/Board interference I observed.

Berman’s constant improper placement of blame

David Berman continues to perpetuate the myth that these unnecessary and unauthorized costs were caused by the petitioners who (legally) called for the removal election.

This targeting of unit owners is obviously wrong. Owners don’t have enough power to be culpable.

Think about it.

If 1,200 unit owners had wanted the Election Committee to conduct the removal election, but the GM did not want it, would they have been able to make their wishes happen over her objections?
If any of the petitioners had come to the Board meeting and begged to have SCA fork out over $73,000 to pay an unknown CPA and the attorney to do the Election Committee’s job, would SCA have spent one dime?

Both the GM and the Board President had to want SCA money to be spent on agents of their choosing to run the removal election (incompetently or, more likely, unethically), or OUR money would still be safely in the bank.

The Spin Doctor at work

Yet, despite all evidence to the contrary, David Berman persists in promulgating this almost laughable propaganda that unit owners could make the GM do something that doesn’t serve her interests. Smug in this delusion, today he blogged with a melodramatic and an almost audible sigh that this big $73,000 number would still be bigger when the attorney and CPA bills all come in:

Sad. SCA deserves so much better.
But, wait, hope may be on the horizon:

CIC Commission recently held a GM accountable despite HOA attorney advice that action was OK under NRS.

If Rex and Sandy having Clarkson on speed dial is no longer as good an excuse as “the dog ate my homework”, then maybe…

AnthemOpinions blogspot reported about a case that was heard at the recent CIC Commission meeting which seemed to demonstrate the Commission’s repudiation of the “the attorney said I could” defense.

The Zeitgeist
Perhaps, we are reaching a tipping point.

In the whole country, the public conversation has shifted seismically around sexual harassment. Suddenly, society-at-large is not just standing silently by while men in power abuse vulnerable people with impunity.

Maybe the tide is turning here at SCA too.

Now, owners no longer seem so resigned and no longer seem willing to tolerate inexcusable behavior or poor leadership. A critical mass is forming, and this is a necessary step to creating a healthier balance of power in our community.

As formerly discouraged and disenfranchised owners are more willing to speak up and stand up to bullies, SCA’s bullies will predictably face a Come to Jesus reckoning. A tectonic power shift will occur that, in retrospect, we will be surprised at how long it took us to take our power back.

On the Advice of Counsel is No Defense

After a relaxing couple of weeks in Cabo, I have been immediately hit by how badly SCA homeowners are being treated by our highly compensated and highly self-serving agents.

This first example from the November Spirit demonstrates how our well-meaning volunteers on the Election Committee have been duped into allowing the GM and attorney to violate the integrity of the removal election process at great expense to the membership.

Who gives the association attorney the power to make such decisions?

No one. At least not legally.

NRS 116 does not give an attorney who is advising the Board ANY authority to decide any policy issue.

NRS 116 does not give the attorney ANY authority to advise the Board to violate any provision of Federal, state, or local law or of our governing documents or policies.

NRS 116 does not give the attorney ANY authority to require the Board or the GM or a committee to take it not take any particular action.

Whose authority is it?

The buck stops with the Board, and they can only legally delegate some of their duties, but can’t delegate ANY of the ultimate accountability. The GM is a licensed manager, and she can’t get out of being accountable for the standards of practice listed in the law by getting the attorney to say its okay to break or bend the law.

NRS 116 and SCA governing documents and policies define clear requirements for:

contracts must be authorized by the Board in open session,
the Board SHALL NOT delegate policy authority over the budget
getting bids for contracts
how elections are conducted
under what circumstances attorney’s opinions are sought BY THE BOARD and for what purpose

None of the legal requirements were followed in this case, just as they are frequently ignored in other cases, for self-serving purposes and not for the benefit of the membership of the association.

I would like to point out that the issue of the Board President Rex Weddle, the GM Sandy Seddon, and the former-CAM Lori Martin taking actions in excess of their legal authority to interfere with the removal election process is the subject of numerous complaints and is currently under investigation by NRED. If their defense is simply that “the lawyer said we could do it”, they better be ready to take their wallets out. I would expect that feeble excuse to fall on deaf ears.

Jim Mayfield re annual budget mailer

Jim Mayfield writes:

We received the annual mandatory budget mailer in today’s mailer. I have reviewed the budget in detail as well as the materials sent with the budget mailer.

1. The “Summary Budget” does not contain any information that compares the 2018 draft budget to the adopted 2017 budget. Furthermore, a comparison is not provided of the 2018 draft budget to the projected actual financial statements for 2017. Without these comparisons, unit owners have no way access the expected actual to budget performance for 2017 OR to see how spending priorities are budgeted to change between 2017 and 2018.

2. The Budget mailer does not include a proxy form or return envelope for unit owners to use to vote for or against the budget. This is a change from prior years. Instead, the cover letter states that if a unit owner desires to vote for or against the budget, the unit owner should see NRS 116.311. (So much for transparency and encouraging unit owner participation in the governance of SCA.) The strategy is obvious: Don’t raise the dues and hope the unit owners don’t care how their money is spent and find it too hard to find out to bother.

3. The capital budget includes an authorization of $45k for “chairs, outlets, storage shed, BBQ tables and benches for the Pickleball court area.

Notes from Nona on saving some bucks

I haven’t received my budget mailer, but I want to address easier voting described in NRS 116.311 as they can be used as an example of how SCA could avoid most of our huge legal bills. The Board and the GM are not competent in preventing owner problems using the attorney as their sole guide. They should shift from paying for secret attorney opinions defining the legal minimum to asking owners to help develop popular “best practices”.

The NRS 116.311 code section is entitled,

“Voting by units’ owners; use of absentee ballots and proxies; voting by lessees of leased units; association prohibited from voting as owner of unit; voting without a meeting.”

This section offers ways in some situations that voting could be made easier on owners – like absentee ballots, proxies and voting electronically. Even though simpler, more convenient methods are available, doing things in the most “user-friendly” way doesn’t seem to be much of a priority for the Board or the GM even if not doing it the easy way is more costly.

The default seems to be just knee-jerk asking the attorney for an opinion. The attorney’s opinion generally veers toward advising the Board or GM what is the minimum that can be legally done. Conceptualizing a problem in terms of improving customer service is simply outside of the attorney’s paradigm, training and expertise – and yet he is their top-dollar “Go-To Guy”.

The GM does not seem to be inclined to focus on improving owner relations or utilizing owners’ expertise to research and recommend “best practices”. Instead, just handing over $325/hour for the attorney to rule on what the Board and GM can probably get away with is her counterproductive modus operandi. The Board has a total blind spot to this failing.

A better way of doing business would be to evaluate EVERY Board or management decision by asking owners BEFORE taking action,

“Is this action in the best interests of the membership?”

Then, if there are lots of owners who disagree, listen to them and remedy the problems. This could be done easily and systematically by utilizing the expertise of owners in a re-invigorated committee system. It certainly would be more cost-effective.

I believe that, had the Board and GM in 2017 followed the simple principle of acting SOLELY in the best interests of the membership, at least 90% of the $200,000 SCA is projected to spend this year for attorney’s fees could have been avoided, and there would have been a lot less community turmoil.

Removal Election Results

Removing a Director LEGALLY is really hard to do

Predictably, the removal election did not succeed despite over 1,200 unit owners voting to remove Rex Weddle, Aletta Waterhouse, and Tom Nissen from the SCA Board. I say it was predictable because the only lawful way to remove a director is to meet ALL the rigorous requirements defined in NRS 116.31036:

More than 10% of unit owners must call for a removal election
More than 35% of ALL unit owners must vote YES
More than 50% of those voting must vote YES

It was even more predictable because GM Sandy Seddon, Board President Rex Weddle, association attorney Adam Clarkson and their accomplice and lobbyist, David Berman, took unfair actions to interfere with the removal election process to protect the incumbents and to make unit owner pay for the legal removal election approximately $40,000-$50,000 unnecessarily.

42 NRED Complaints against SCA

Interestingly, I have been told that the Ombudsman and an investigator were present at the vote counting today. I understand they came to observe the final step in the removal election because there have been 42 complaints filed against SCA for such violations as:

removing the volunteer election committee,
paying a CPA without a contract to perform the EC’s duties and performing them so badly some people didn’t even know there was a removal election,
not counting all of the petitioners’ valid signatures so Bob Burch wasn’t included on the removal ballot,
concealing information from unit owners about complaints,
retaliating against owners for making complaints,
and, last but not least, removing me, an outspoken homeowner advocate, without having the required removal election at all.

Deceptive eblast reports the news

Saying

“In order to RECALL a BOD member, 2,501 Yes votes were required.”

is a thinly veiled way to disguise the FACT that

“In order to REMOVE a BOD member, 2,501 Yes votes were required”

The Board unlawfully ignored this FACT when they removed me without abiding by ANY provision of NRS 116.31036 and without ANY owners petitioning or voting to have me removed or recalled.

That’s a really fast announcement when you consider that the GM NEVER announced that there were petitions going around in June to remove four directors, or that there even was a removal election scheduled, or that there were 836 signatures calling for a vote of no confidence against her submitted in August with a long list of owner complaints about her performance as GM.

Keep those fun facts in mind when you hear very soon whether the Board has given her an excellent performance rating and a $20,000 bonus. Rex Weddle made the off-hand remark at the last Board meeting that they had discussed “GM performance” in executive session, but item 7A lists “GM Compensation” on the public executive session agenda.