Category: Community division

Another chance to balance the SCA Board

Who should fill the surprise vacancy on the SCA Board?

Bob Burch abruptly resigned last week,

…for reasons which will not be revealed, Rex Weddle announced to owners, or at least, to the 850 owners who have opted-in to receive SCA eblasts.

Rex also said that the Board would be appointing someone to fill Bob’s seat until the next election (May 2019).

Surprisingly, Rex then invited owners to submit their names for consideration by next Friday, July 13 @ 5 PM to the GM at [email protected].

If you are interested in being considered by the Board of Directors for appointment to a position on the Board, please be sure to place your written request to General Manager, Sandy Seddon, no later than end of business on Friday, July 13, 2018.  Click Sandy Seddon to submit via email.  This correspondence should include your name, phone number and a brief statement as to why you feel you should be considered to serve on the Sun City Anthem Board of Directors.

Once the Board votes on this appointment, they will also vote on the re-organization of the Board and select its officers.

Please consider volunteering to serve on the Board
SCA Board needs a better balance of perspectives

It should come as no surprise that, although the SCA governance and Board elections are structured to be completely non-partisan, there is a clear demarcation between factions in our community that might be identified as:

  1. Berman Believers
  2. Followers of Other Bloggers
  3. Everybody Else

If there is any hope in healing this community’s divide, there needs to be a shift in the representation on the Board to include voices from all three groups.

Otherwise, the currently-entrenched group-think  will continue to dominate our public discourse and distort governance so all residents are not equally well served.

I, for one, do not think this dynamic is healthy for the community. At a minimum, it has reduced my own joie de vivre, and I don’t think it is a stretch to say that I speak for others.

If you feel that you have a perspective that would assist the Board to be more effective at representing the entire community rather than just the segment whose voices are now heard, please step up.

Why was the request for owners to self nominate a surprise?

Because that’s not the way they did it last time. Jim Coleman was appointed last September by a secret process that

  • did not include notifying owners that the Board intended to fill my seat without an owner election (which was required at that time)
  • did not allow owners to submit their names for consideration
  • did not include any public deliberations by the Board of the selection criteria

The Board kept secret how Jim Coleman had been recruited and what competitive process, if any, had been employed. They were also silent as to where the Board got the authority to fill the seat of a director who had been removed when the NRS and the bylaws required a membership vote.

What’s wrong with the Board meeting in secret?

And, what’s happening now?

One has to wonder what motivated this 180-degree turn to a more open, competitive process to fill a vacated Board seat.

And, I’m sure, the more cynical among us, will question how open this current process really will be.

One might ask

  • Will the names and qualifications of the people who self-nominate be kept a secret?
  • Will the GM deem anyone”disqualified”  and not turn those names over to the Board?
  • Will they use the required candidate disclosure form from the NRED website or use the Clarkson  “I-make-up-my-own-laws” version, or will they not require disclosures from Board appointees?
  • Will the attorney usurp the authority of the Board and, at owner expense, issue an order, rather than an opinion, to block any applicant?
Let’s hope not.
I, for one, will give them one more chance.

 

No restaurant as of June 28 Board meeting

The game goes on…but now they’ve got a scapegoat.

I have been dealing with other things this past month, and had not kept up with the last month of the two-year restaurant process. I had heard that the negotiations had broken down with the one vendor left standing.

So, I went into the Board meeting thinking that the deal with G2G was off the table.

When I sat down, an irritated resident told me the Board was still negotiating a sweetheart deal with G2G.

I was further confused when I opened my computer and saw that at 1:13 PM,  literally minutes before the 1:30 PM meeting, palace-favorite, blogger Berman published a letter G2G sent to the GM saying that the deal was off, no matter how big the subsidy.

And here’s the kicker – it’s all Dick Arendt’s fault that G2G pulled out because he talked bad about them on Anthem Opinions.

How (and why) did Berman get a leg up?

It is inappropriate, from my perspective, for the GM and the Board to have a death grip on information which should be openly and immediately shared.

But it’s worse when they blatantly give David Berman “scoops” because they can count on him to consistently write favorably about the GM and the Board – NO MATTER WHAT – and unfavorably about other bloggers who won’t give the Board or the GM a free pass when they screw something up or screw someone over.

Shouldn’t everybody have easy access to the same information at the same time?

If it is confidential, it is confidential from everybody. If it is not confidential, it should be made readily available for the easiest possible access. The GM and the Board are creating a huge amount of unnecessary conflict by the way they mis-handle communications.

The GM and the Board play favorites and do not uniformly enforce the rules of confidentiality. They use information as power, and block access from their detractors. When criticized for this failure, they go crazy, and threaten the owners, particularly bloggers, who out them.

Why couldn’t G2G make it?

Apparently, free rent, free utilities, and ZERO profit-sharing with SCA until the obviously-unattainable $1.4 million revenue number was reached was not a sufficient subsidy to overcome the damage done by the bad-mouthing of the non-Berman blogger.

How did the GM characterize what happened?

The GM did not quote the entire G2G “we’re outta here” letter with those attending the Board meeting that she unfairly shared with David Berman before the meeting.

I say “unfairly” because it allowed her to use a willing tool to illegitimately stoke the fires of animosity AGAIN against  their common nemesis, and his reviled, competing blogger, without her having to dirty her hands.

Anyone else who requested such a document would have been threatened with sanctions for even asking for it, and then had to swear on the head of her newborn grandchild that it would not be disclosed before it would have been handed over.

She did, however, in making her report, focus on the phrase in the letter that most effectively, albeit unfairly, shifted the blame away from her, and her own gargantuan part, in designing an RFP/negotiation process ensured to fail.

She said that the SCA-G2G negotiations had reached impasse over “drop and go’s”, alcohol and pot lucks,

The Board wanted to talk some more, and SCA’s team thought they could get a deal, but G2G wrote her today that it is no longer interested. She paraphrased this part of the pull-out letter.

“… the blogging of Dick Arendt and his call to boycott the restaurant even before we opened.

So, …(we’re withdrawing due to)… the poisonous atmosphere illegitimately manufactured by a blogger.”  G2G

What’s the bottom line?
The Board approved a motion to direct management to continue to look for a restaurant tenant.

The GM asked the Board to approve two Board members to work with her. Tom Nissen is now fully retired from the Board and not willing to serve as a non-Director member of the work group. No matter how many times this method has failed (using a couple of Board members with the GM instead of an independent, specialized expert), hope springs eternal.

The good news is Gary Lee, the Director I think has the most experience negotiating restaurant contracts, was appointed to the team.

The bad news is that, to get a successful restaurant, Gary Lee will probably have to do a lot of the GMs job. The GM has not demonstrated herself capable of getting a successful restaurant tenant in place since she got here in November 2015 – even through that expectation was the one specific criterion the Board adopted – and probably ignored – for her 2017 bonus.

Public comments

One owner had specific suggestions about how to economically poll owners about whether they want a restaurant at all, and encouraged the Board to look at the possibility of just a bar and appetizers. There were suggestions for the Board to take a broader view of what would work in that space, including a food court or the high quality of places he had seen in Asia.

The old guard continued to promote the idea that only people who show up at meetings should get a voice, but I got the sense there was a small crack opening in Board acceptance of the idea that other people need to be heard.

What were some of the Board comments?

Several Directors said they were disappointed to be back at square one, but had an interest in getting more owner input. They saw the need for improving the RFP process to more clearly spell out the parameters in advance and to be open to wider competition.

Several Directors unfairly blamed bloggers, particularly Dick Arendt, for G2G pulling out, just as other Directors have voiced this same unfortunate refrain to deflect criticism of previous Board decisions that weren’t particularly owner-friendly.

“Shut up. We’re in charge here.”

They again asserted that the Board should take legal action to stop the criticisms of the Board and management that they think are totally unwarranted.

It’s a weird perspective to me – this being America and all. Utterly lacking in a sense of what gives legitimacy to their power

“Governments are instituted …deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”
-the Declaration of independence

I am particularly saddened when I hear Art and Jim rant about the need to silence dissent. I like them both, on a personal level, and think they are good people.

I think they just are not getting how they are unwittingly contributing to the polarization of the community by representing only some of the people, and by not tolerating  diversity of opinion about the way we want to be self-governed.

To self-righteous and aggressively defend themselves and those who agree with them against perceived injustices only becomes dysfunctional when that outrage is used as justification for intolerance and threatening to use legal force to stop the free expression of dissent.

I never wanted to be a blogger, but now, I will defend my right of free expression to my last breath.

Per Rex: “Shut up. We’re in charge here.”

Rex Weddle’s’s May President’s Report in SCA’s Spirit Magazine is entitled (apparently unaware of the irony) “Keeping our nest clean“. Rex again  devotes his entire official communication to sharing with all owners and residents his personal and chronic whine about how owner complaints about him, the GM and the Board are ruining this community.

Boo hoo.

Bloggers called Rex and his buddies “thugs and bullies”. Private individuals  accused him, the Board, the attorney and the GM of unlawful conduct and criminal corruption. Rex belittles those who complain, but without specifically denying any of the charges.

What’s a poor, hand-wringing President to do?

Rex seems oblivious to his contribution to SCA’s problems. He did not suggest any way he could use his position of authority to address owner concerns or to heal community division.

Rex thinks that bullying bloggers into silence is the best course of action.

Rex apparently lacks any self-awareness of how inappropriate it is to use the Spirit, SCA’s official publication, to express his personal opinion and his personal hostility toward certain members of the community.

The President of the Board has a column in the Spirit which is intended to share with the entire community news about what actions the Board is taking, how the owners’ money is being spent, or to provide inspirational words of leadership.

Rex, unfortunately, has chosen instead to use SCA’s official publication as a personal soap box, to chastise residents for complaining about him personally or for criticizing actions of SCA elected official or agents that individual owners or bloggers believe are detrimental to the community.

Rex’s message: “My way or the highway“

Don’t you think it is ironic that Rex Weddle, speaking officially as the SCA President, uses the Spirit, the SCA website, Board meetings, and other official SCA communication channels, to shame and demean residents for expressing their personal opinions on blogs that they privately own, just because he personally disagrees with them?

Doesn’t it seem odd that he does not recognize that his claim that blogs have a negative impact on our property values is just his personal opinion, and one that has no data to back it up?

“Because they read like a bad restaurant review, the buyers may choose to go elsewhere.”    -Rex Weddle

That is like a restaurant owner blaming his bad Yelp reviews on the customers instead of trying to figure out why they are saying the food and the service sucks.

Bob Burch only hears those on his side

Don’t expect these Spirit President Reports to be any better now that Rex’s protege and probable puppet, Bob Burch, will have his name on the President’s report byline. Bob’s intolerance of dissent and his blind spot when it comes to equal treatment of resident’s are huge.

How can I say such mean things?

I am just defending myself and my rights and protecting the rights of ALL owners. I don’t see that as being mean. I do see what Rex et al are doing as being mean.

For example,

after the restaurant workshop, I forwarded a copy of a blog, “How to cook our goose” to all members of the Board. I wanted them to know I thought the restaurant vendor selection process was unfair and incompetent.

Here’s what Bob graciously emailed me back:

“You really are a very strange person.  In any case, any further emails from you will be considered SPAM and will be treated as such.”                -Bob Burch

And another example of responsive leadership

Here is the gratuitous observation Bob made (not to me, but about me, on the only community blog that Board members seem to think deserves their respect) in response to my blog, “Being accountable for being good neighbors“,

Ouch.

I wonder if Bob is so non-judgmental about all of his constituents, or if I am just special.

 

SCA Board officer selection orchestrated again

Officer elections over in a flash

  • No competition
  • No owner input
  • No surprise
  • No hope 

President            Bob Burch
Vice president   Rex Weddle
Secretary           Candace Karrow
Treasurer           Forrest Quinn

Why was last year’s officer election so bitter?

Simple answer. I committed the ultimate sin.

I volunteered to fix what I saw wasn’t working right in the transition to self-management. I told them the truth.

Unfortunately, changing the tone at the top means regime change.

OMG! Shut up!! You did not!

Yes, I did. Unlike this year’s newbies, I was totally unaware of SCA’s political realities. I never dreamed that volunteering to share my expertise would be treated as a capital offense.

How low will they go?

Frankly, I was surprised to see that Rex and his cronies would do anything – even break the law- to crush a political opponent.

And yet, here we are.

We have a full year of evidence that proves this point. This past year, we have seen VERY clearly many examples of how they have spared no expense (owners’ money, of course) to keep a death grip on the reins of power.

So, Dona Quixote, what did you say to tick them off?

I told them the incumbents were the bottom vote-getters so it was…

“a mandate to improve the effectiveness of the Board as a unified governing body“

That’s really bad.  What other evil did you spew?

I caused an uproar of outrageous indignation when I said that the vote showed an interest in changing the “tone at the top”

Yes, horrible as it was, I also said

the Board needed to be trained together to be guided by common, articulated goals.

You said what!!?

Actually, what I said is exactly what happened. The Board predictably devolved.

“…(absent proper training)…this Board will predictably devolve and return to a pattern of making backroom deals, abdicating its policy role to management, creating dissent in the community, and interfering with operational decisions which should legitimately be handled by staff.“

Examples of how my fears were realized.Obviously, you can’t be trusted to keep a secret.
Remember,

Snitches get stitches.

On the advice of counsel
Unbelievably, Adam Clarkson or his underling, John Aylor, said these things directly or helped the GM and her buddies on the Board do them.

  • the Board can act without voting
  • the GM has rights that exceed those of the membership
  • directors facing recall have more control over the recall election than directors who were not named in petitions because the attorney says so
  • it is okay for the GM to use the attorney however she likes, including to get rid of a director who is too nosy about her pay and protecting the directors who like her from getting recalled
  • owners must pay whatever the GM and the attorney sayYou are so arrogant and mean, and you lie.

Even if I were arrogant and mean, I am not lying. Everything I say, I will eagerly say under oath.You deserved to be kicked off because, obviously, you are making a profit from doing this.

Seriously. They said that.

No decent Board member should have to work with you.

Well, that hurts.

It shows how stunningly effective a marketing campaign to demonize me has been. It persuaded a lot of people to agree with both that unfair assessment of me and with the ridiculous claim that other directors are above me and special.

It’s really sad, but the smear tactics have been led by,
Guess who?
current and former members of the Board, with the full support of the GM and the attorney, and funded by guess-whose money.

I was forced to become a blogger to respond to GM-initiated defamation and threats of litigation.

And now, Rex put out another self-righteous editorial claiming that it is the bloggers that have destroyed our property values.

Exhausting.

Since Rex has aggressively blocked anyone having equal time to debate his self-serving prostelyzing on the Spirit, the website or at meetings or any other forum, the only way to get the other side of the story out is to blog.

Will Bob write patronizing, insulting President’s reports?

If his diatribes during director comment periods at Board meetings are any indication, he will invest a great deal of energy in verbally assaulting anyone who disagrees with him that tries to speak up.

But, I’m pretty sure the deal he made with Rex, our new Vice -President, was to be a version of co-Presidents so Rex can keep a grip of the reins.

By my best guess, as far as the written word goes, Rex will continue to treat the Spirit as his personal snide blog as he ghost writes the President’s reports next year for Bob.

Previously, Bob complained that he finds writing boring when, on May 1, 2017, immediately before I disturbed the peace of last year’s pre-determined officer election, he wrote

“I have no desire to be President. In my entire military and civilian careers, I have never found writing reports or articles in magazines very interesting. Therefore, writing monthly Spirit articles, monthly Board meeting recaps, etc., is not something I would look forward to doing.”

So, President this year,

Way to take one for the team, Bob.

Board meeting as self-serving bully pulpit

Lesson 1 from April 26 BOD meeting

“What gets us into trouble is not what we don’t know. It’s what we know for sure that just ain’t so.”                                             -Mark Twain

Blame the bloggers

At least the first hour of the meeting was dedicated to blaming bloggers for all that is wrong, including the loss of SCA property values. It was a stunning example of how the Board marches lock-step against  owners rights and reflexively resists holding itself and the GM accountable for fixing problems of their own making.

Board beliefs vs. an alternative point of view

Tom Nissen listed his beliefs – all concerns shared by the Board – as his parting gift to the membership.

My beliefs offer another, albeit unwelcome, perspective, to show the way I think the Board and GM could better create value for owners.

Click here to link to the article about the UNLV study on HOA foreclosures referenced above.

Next time, I’ll share with you my planned request to correct the false and defamatory statements in the April SCA litigation reports. I didn’t speak up at the meeting because I was afraid I’d get lynched for complaining.

Being accountable for being good neighbors

Is a criminal-to-excellence measuring scale hard to understand?

It seems to be hard for the people currently in power here to grasp.

But, the association (meaning the membership) faces a very high risk if the Board, GM, and attorney are not held accountable for being ethical and fair.

With so much a secret, who can be held to account?

I invite you to look again at my  blog, The Cautionary Tale of the City of Bell.

Although SCA is a non-profit corporation that privately delivers municipal services rather than a city per se, SCA has hallmarks that mirror the City of Bell’s textbook case of municipal corruption:

  • laws are bent to serve executive’s private interests
  • those in power act in concert for self-interest
  • excessive executive compensation
  • disenfranchising of unsophisticated and inattentive voters
  • election interference
  • lack of transparency

Mmm…how can I make this clearer?

I know. Let’s discuss a fun fact about bestiality.

Did you know that until AB 391 passed last year, and became effective October 1, 2017, it wasn’t against the law in Nevada to have sex with a dog?

It’s pretty weird that it wasn’t illegal until a few months ago, but, I think we can all agree that,

just because you could have, doesn’t mean you should have.

Let’s take this tale a step further.
What if…

…before Nevada’s anti-bestiality law passed, a neighbor was disturbed by the noise of a dog whining. When the neighbor realized what was happening, he complained around the neighborhood that such conduct should not be allowed.

The neighbor complained strenuously that it was cruel and abusive to the animal, and offensive to community values.

Instead of apologizing or showing any shame or remorse, the “dog lover” was rude and insulting to the neighbor, flaunting his “rights” and saying in an arrogant and condescending tone:

“Shut up. I can do to my dog whatever I want. I do not have to change my ways just because some whiner complains about having to witness how much I really love my dog. My attorney says the law is on my side. You have invaded my privacy and defamed me. I’ll tell everybody you are a horrible busybody, and they’ll hate you. I’m going to sue you, and you will have to pay all my attorney fees.”

Your Ethics 101 Exam Questions
  1. How would you rate the dog lover‘s behavior on a criminal-to-excellent-neighbor scale?
  2. How would you rate the neighbor’s behavior?
  3. Should the neighbor have to pay the attorney fees?
  4. How could this situation have been handled better?

Even if the selfish dog lover had not technically broken any Nevada law, I think we can all agree that he was wrong to abuse the dog, and that he made everything about the situation worse by unfairly stomping on the aghast neighbor.

The moral of this tale

What the Board, the GM, and the attorney did felt to me as exactly comparable to how the dog lover retaliated against his neighbor for complaining. They bullied me, shunned me, threatened me with litigation and liability for attorney fees for speaking up when I saw things that were just plain wrong – just like the dog lover treated his neighbor.

SCA leaders must be held to a higher standard.

You can help. Vote. Raise our standards.
Bob Burch and Aletta Waterhouse should not be re-elected just because they have not had sex with their dogs.

Criminal corruption – best practices continuum

The Issue

Sun City Anthem will only get to be #1 again if we have a Board and GM that are committed to – and capable of – being excellent, and who are not focused on evading detection and accountability for their sins.

The Board brought in an overpaid, autocratic GM who has created or exacerbated problems that are very upsetting to owners.

And the Board did not require that the excessively-compensated GM fix the problems. Instead, the Board brought in a thuggish bully for an attorney who serves as the GM’s hired gun. The GM has ONLY worked well with Board members and owners who support her, and made life miserable for those who don’t.

Bob Burch and Aletta Waterhouse not only allowed this unacceptable conduct to continue, and they are the explicit beneficiaries of it. They allowed the GM and attorney to interfere with the recall election process in order to unfairly prevent voters from booting them out of office.

Bob and Aletta must be removed from the Board because they have been major contributors to the failings of the transition to self-management. The GM is simply not as good as she should be for the money we are paying.

Here’s the bottom line

I am critical of the Board and the GM when they are willfully negligent and so resistant to instituting best practices that they veer, no, they careen, to the lower end of the spectrum into being bullies and thugs.

What are voters really deciding?

How have incumbents Bob Burch and Aletta Waterhouse contributed to making Sun City Anthem the best it can be?
  1. Should Bob Burch be voted back in after he publicly berated 800+ petitioners for complaining that this GM is not good enough for SCA?
  2. Should Bob and Aletta be voted back even though they unlawfully allowed the GM to spend over $84,000 for a CPA and $16,000 for the attorney to interfere with the recall election to protect them from owners voting them out?
  3. Should Aletta Waterhouse be voted back in after she voted to evict the Foundation Assisting Seniors, voted in secret to kick me off the Board based on false charges without a trial because I questioned the GM’s value, and has allowed the GM to raise dues  to pay bloated salaries and then punished owners who ask questions — just because Aletta insists these acts were not illegal?

Why should they be re-elected?

My point is Bob Burch and Aletta Waterhouse should not be re-elected simply because not everything they did during their first term was illegal.

They should be voted out because they refused to address owners’ complaints about the GM and have no system for keeping her vindictiveness in check.

They should be voted out because instead of fixing problems, they made them worse by letting the GM and the attorney make life miserable for anyone who stood up for the owners.

Not everything that’s wrong is also illegal

Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.

This election is about raising our standards and about getting the bullies out.

The decision to be self-managed is not being questioned.
Everyone agrees SCA should have employees instead or contracting with a management company.

The decision to replace SCA’s former managing agent, FSR, is not the issue.
Everyone agrees that FSR needed to be replaced.

The decision to hire this GM at this rate of pay was the trigger.
Not everyone agrees that decision was right or done according to Hoyle.

It’s about the decision to let the GM rule SCA backed by a hired gun.
Close to no one agrees that is good.

 

Have you no sense of decency, David Berman?

Click on photo for 15 second video. “Have you no sense of decency, Sir?”

The frustrated sentiments of the Army Chief Counsel, Joseph Welch, speaking to Senator McCarthy in 1954  (15-second video above) resonate with me as they speak of a man who has simply gone too far.

I want to express these same feelings to David Berman. I want him to stop his unwarranted and unprovoked attacks against me, and against any other SCA owners, whose only sin has been having the temerity to tell him that he is wrong and that his vitriol is damaging more than to his targeted victims. It is  detrimental to the health and peace of mind of the entire community.

“Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness. … Let us not assassinate this lad further, Senator. You have done enough. Have you no sense of decency, Sir. At long last, have you left no sense of decency?”

Apparently, David also lacks a sense of irony

“When certain folks in our community decide to turn someone they don’t like into a villain, it appears there is no limit to the tactics they will employ to denigrate their targets, even when the “documentation” they disseminate to make their points is demonstrably and provably false.” – David Berman

Projection: Clinical term for “Pot calling the kettle black”

David Berman may be utterly lacking in self-awareness. Or he may believe his own press so much that he doesn’t see anything wrong with the way he treated me over months of totally undeserved attacks he made against me as a Board member which led up to my 8/12/17 notice of intent to take formal action to try to get him to stop.

David Berman lies = false narrative. Who benefits?

The conclusion of my complaint below shows my frustration at being one more in a long line of owners who have been cruelly victimized by David Berman instead of simply being thanked for volunteering to share my expertise.

As this was written two weeks before I was kicked off the Board, I still thought I could accomplish my three stated goals in a two-year term.

Click on photo for 12-page 8/12/17 notice of intent, written 2 weeks before my complaints of their inexcusable harassment and defamation got me kicked off the Board in retaliation of my calling in the authorities.

Please, in the name of all that is holy, just stop

Apparently, just asking David Berman to stop maligning my character was too much to ask.

So, why didn’t I go forward with this complaint?

  • My goal, as you can see in the proposed remedy section, was to get him to stop badgering me and let me be an effective homeowner advocate on the Board. I just wanted him to acknowledge what he was doing was destructive, and then, just not do it.
  • I also wanted to protect the rights of the owners to lawfully collect signatures or sign petitions; and I wanted him to stop his backdoor tricks as OSCAR spokesperson that was interfering with the neutrality of the Election Committee and the recall election.
  • Two-weeks later, I was dumped off the Board, and gratuitously, at the same meeting, formally removed as Election Committee liaison thanks to David Berman’s reframing me into his image. You can see in the email (below) he wrote on 7/22/17 defamed me and empowered the Board to take unjustified and unlawful actions against me. Obviously, since then, I’ve had  had other fish to fry since then.
  • The Ombudsman does not have jurisdiction over complaints of harassment or defamation. These would have to become civil actions for a court to rule on. Just what I need – more attorneys fees to rectify the damages done to me for volunteering. What a fine thank you for my service.

Projection, vilification & no limits to dirty tricks

David Berman sent the defamatory email below to the Board, but this email is the basis for the Election Committee developing the false belief that I had not only released confidential information, but that meant I was a bad person who could not be trusted. David Berman makes false statements about me, maligns my character, but gets away with it. He has quite a hold on the people in power to a level that I consider to be undue influence.

This horrible, hateful email very effectively painted me as an evil person who deserves bad treatment. David Berman has manipulated those in power to encourage them to gang up on me as he has done to others, and in this email he also continues his decade-long use of Bob Frank as an object lesson.

David Berman stirred up the trouble by conjuring up a new evil persona for me out of whole cloth, and then gave the Board and the Election Committee the permission to shun me and treat me like a pariah.

Character assassination by one lacking in character is galling

This is a very big deal to me to have my character maligned in this cruel, insulting and totally abusive manner. I spent a career in public and non-profit service, including administering a civil service system and controlling  personnel, discipline, medical and disability records for the workforce of the 10th largest city in the country.

I was NEVER accused of mishandling confidential information or of violating my fiduciary duty. My trustworthiness and ethics were NEVER questioned.

On the other hand, David Berman has been disciplined for violating his fiduciary duty to his client and forged a judge’s signature to cover it up. If a client had done that, the client would probably have been criminally charged and jailed, but attorneys tend to be reluctant to mete out strong discipline to one of their own.

David Berman’s law license was suspended for a year in 1991, and then he surrendered it. He cannot legally portray himself as an attorney. Yet, many people treat him with deference believing that he is one.

With a disingenuous sleight of hand, he is still able to manipulate people into believing that they should respect his word despite his history of unethical conduct.

It’s even more galling that, at the same time, he uses his considerable skills at palace intrigue to persuade a good chunk of people that they should not trust the word of a woman with a life-long, spotless record of competent and ethical community service.

David Berman got other people to stone an innocent woman while he egged them on.

And then he cries like a baby when the woman starts throwing stones back.

Bravado, just like Gary Hart 

David Berman bizarrely just challenged me to produce evidence of his interference in the recall election in exactly the same manner as Gary Hart self-destructed his Presidential bid by challenging the New York Times to “put a tail on him” before he spent the weekend on his boat, Monkey Business, with a woman not his wife.

Wow, David, if you insist. I have a novella worth.

Times up.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Telling lies, ruining lives

“As I understand it, Ms. Tobin was prevented from running for the Board not because she has opinions that are critical of the Board and SCA management, but ONLY because she is involved in litigation against SCA from which she might stand to gain a financial benefit.” -David Berman

Poppycock.

My unlawful removal from the Board was completely 100% done in retaliation for my complaints of harassment and retaliation.

I presented the issues formally to the Board, the attorney, the GM, and the former CAM and to blogger David Berman as statements of intent less than two weeks before they acted in concert, without cause, without authority and without due process to strip me of my legal rights and my Board seat and to disenfranchise the 2,001 voters who had put me in office.

While I was on the Board those interminable 116 days (5/1/17-8/24/17), the GM, the former CAM, the attorney, David Berman and 5 of the 7 directors acted in concert to marginalize me from day 1. (Art Lindberg should get a pass since he was the only one who asked the right questions. The attorney lied to him too., and the pressure to conform was very, very strong.)

They made my life miserable, shunning, lying, berating me, denigrating my contributions, making false accusations, publishing false and defamatory statements, and making it impossible for me to be an effective homeowner advocate as a member of the Board.

They only came up with the convoluted ruse that I had put matters before the Board from which I could make a profit because, even relying on Adam Clarkson’s tortured reading of the law, they couldn’t say they were getting rid of me because I was an outspoken pain in the ass.

Execution was a complete non sequitur

The 8/24/17 letter which constituted my walking papers, signed by Adam Clarkson, was the totally unlawful and unethical response to my notice of intent to file a Form 530 Intervention Affidavit alleging harassment and retaliation.

Before that letter came out of the blue, there were many disputes between me and five of the other Directors, the attorney, the GM and former CAM, most of which you will recognize. I was transparent and vocal as possible as I sounded the alarm on deferred attention to owners’ concerns.

It’s pretty obvious why I had to go

And it was not because I did, or even could, profit from being on the Board.
My profit = ZERO

Did I mention I never made a dime off SCA before, during or after my Board service?

How much did the attorney make for creating the ruse that I did?

Attorneys’ profit for 2017 = $300,000+

2017 legal fees for “Director Issues”  = $40,000
January 2018 legal fees = $38,000

but they won’t admit how much of that was to unlawfully block owners knowing how much the GM’s salary was bumped up in 2018

Deny. Deny. Deny.

Accept no responsibility for ANY problems.
Then attack your accuser.
And kill her.
Sample of the problems I publicly said needed correction
  • No restaurant -Failing to comply with the CC&Rs and good business practices about the restaurant space study, letting only a couple of directors work on it, refusing to use an independent expert, too cozy with one bidder
  • Owner oversight committees – Refusing to allow appropriate owner oversight in areas where going to self-managed and changing legal counsel and debt collectors caused a high level of risk – personnel, compensation, legal services, insurance, investments; getting rid of the Golf Course Liaison Committee, the Communications Committee, and decimating Property & Grounds, making the GM the Board liaison to Pinnacle and other groups
  • Board agendas – Refusing to put my items on the Board’s open or executive session agenda as required by law, by Board policy equal to other directors
  • Secret meetings -meeting in secret without giving me or other owners the rights guaranteed by law or confining executive sessions to the four permissible topics
  • Excessive executive compensation – Refusing to conform to the law for access to data, to evaluate according to professional standards, or to fairly consider evidence to rebut the appropriateness of those salary levels; giving Tom Nissen excessive authority in this area and blocking me totally from it despite our differences in expertise or the appropriateness of substituting the judgment of ANY one director for the judgment of the Board; spending thousands on using the attorney to hide what her actual compensation is from the owners.
  • No GM performance standards – Not holding the GM accountable for meeting measurable, publicly-adopted performance standards
  • No management agreement – Violating SCA bylaws and failing to protect SCA by having no management agreement or even any written terms & conditions of employment. Although the GM is an AT-WILL EMPLOYEE, allowing her to usurp additional privilege to the detriment of SCA.
  • Unfair complaint process – Going beyond NOT having a customer-service rating system to aggressively attacking the 800+ owners who signed petitions and refusing to answer any of their complaints on their merits
  • Evicting FAS – The process for evicting the Foundation Assisting Seniors was flawed. They ordered me out of executive sessions. They did not act in the best interests of the homeowners. The GM was not held accountable for the failure. Civil action without required owner vote.
  • Debt collection process – Failing to do proper due diligence on debt collectors; refusing to evaluate the expensive, inhumane cost of collection for a more ocst-effective solution
  • Ill-advised recusal demand – Overreaching demand for me to recuse myself on ANY collection matter because SCA’s attorney/debt collector alleges there might be an “appearance of a conflict” for me, however remote, while ignoring the current attorney/debt collector’s obvious actual financial conflict and the fact that the last debt collector filed for chapter 7 bankruptcy without telling SCA and continued doing foreclosures by morphing into another LLC.
  • Bullying -On at least three occasions in executive sessions, using bullying, shunning, intimidation, threats and other demeaning and belittling marginalization tactics to try to make me conform with nonexistent policies or legal requirements
  • Failure to investigate – When problems are brought up, they are dismissed out of hand without conducting, or allowing, investigation on the merits
  • Inaccurate official records -Causing, or allowing the official SCA records to be corrupted and/or error-prone ALWAYS against the interests of homeowners and usually to protect individual members of the Board or management
  • Concealing SCA records from me alone, i.e., giving me incomplete executive session Board books, refusing to respond to ANY records requests
  • Abdication – Allowing the GM to use the association attorney as her personal attorney in violation of NRS and SCA bylaws
  • Election interference – Allowing the Board president, the GM, the CAM, David Berman, and the association attorney to interfere with the recall election process and to UNLAWFULLY COST OWNERS $90,000 BY STRIPPING THE VOLUNTEER ELECTION COMMITTEE OF THEIR CHARTER DUTIES to pay a CPA to do the EC’s job poorly.
  • Undue influence allowed – As it served the interests of the Board majority and management, David Berman, spokesperson for OSCAR, was allowed to have greater access to recall election information than I received as a director; he was allowed undue level of influence over the Election Committee to cut me out in retaliation for my attempting to protect the rights of the petitioners, including falsely accusing me what he himself was guilty of;  misrepresenting himself as an attorney; falsely accusing me of releasing “personal director correspondence” further defaming me by creating the false impression that I had released a legally privileged documents (absolutely not!)
  • Sanctions without notice or due process -Having meetings to sanction me without notice and to enforce policies that don’t exist
  • Unlawful orders issued by the attorney against me, e.g., cease & desist from representing myself as a director, or asking questions that I was not “authorized” to ask particularly regarding personnel and GM compensation
  • GM’s frivolous litigation threats – Allowing the GM to threaten to sue SCA for damages and to threaten me with personal liability; refusing to indemnify me as a director; falsely claiming I had violated my fiduciary duty without any evidence, a hearing or a finding
  • Misinterpretation of “employer liability” – Allowing the attorney to represent the interests of the GM over those of the homeowners. Accusing me of violating my fiduciary duty because I criticized the GM’s performance and because I requested a salary verification from her prior employer.
  • Abdication to attorney acting in the GM’s or his own interest -Telling me that the attorney had the authority to declare that I, as one of the seven directors, could be excluded from the right to vote on, or even know about, matters under the Board’s decision-making authority, unless he approved it (which in most cases, he has never approved to this day).
  • Abuse of privilege -Allowing the attorney to declare ANYTHING to be “attorney-client privileged” regardless of the lack of its meeting the legal definition of privilege in NRS 49 or NRS 116.31085.
  • Falsification of litigation reports -Allowing the attorneys to publish false statements in the litigation reports to increase the appearance of a conflict or to defame me and refusing to correct after evidence was provided.

It’s pretty obvious why I had to go

Let them eat cake: learning how to be fair

When I was 12, my mother was killed in an United Airlines plane crash, leaving by father bereft with six kids ages 5 – 16 to raise alone. At 52, he had just retired a Colonel from the Air Force and was starting a private practice as a physician. He needed to have a way that we kids could get along and learn to treat each other fairly without him always having to resolve disputes.

I remember one system we used that taught us all to be more fair than we would have been if our dad had let the big kids rip the little kids off and hog up a pig’s share of a cake:

Whoever cuts the cake, gets the last piece.

This is a lesson that those in power at SCA need to learn if self-management is to succeed.

What’s wrong with the SCA system of “self-management”?

First and foremost, SCA is not fair. The big kids (the Board, the GM, and the attorney) are bullying the little kids (owners, residents and dissenting directors) to hog up all the cake that rightly belongs to owners.

  • The Board President is running amuck, consolidating power by controlling who can participate in decision-making by creating Board work groups and blocking owner-oversight committees.
  • The Board President is also misusing his power to disenfranchise political opponents and to silence opposition to the “party line”.
  • By disempowering appropriate owner oversight, executive limitations are poorly defined and internal controls are inadequate to ensure fair and equitable treatment of ALL owners.
  • The Board majority is just going along with the bullying and hogging up the cake “on the advice of counsel”.
  • The GM has been allowed to use the association attorney as her personal attorney (at owners’ expense), and is stealing the Owners’ cake and beating the crap out of the little kids who cry, i.e., owners /residents /board members who complain about non-owners grabbing their cake.
  • The association attorney has shoved a very big piece of the SCA Owners’ cake into his own mouth and grabbed another big piece for the GM while waving the knife threateningly at owners who even look at the cake, let alone try to get their fair share.
Owners pay dearly for having no control over their own cake

Here are some examples of problems with the implementation of self-management caused by the Board’s enabling the GM’s resistance to appropriate owner oversight.

  1. Owners pay for everything, but can be blocked from even knowing what they are paying for or how much they are paying.
  2. There is no way to control excessive executive compensation.
  3. The Board can act in ways that create liability or don’t protect SCA against manageable risks and the owners just have to shut up and pay for it.
  4. There is no way to hold the Board, the GM, and the attorney accountable as fiduciaries or to prevent them from abusing their positions for their own profit or personal or political power.
  5. Owners can be unfairly treated without being afforded the due process required by law.

The SYSTEM must build in controls so it is fair no matter who is in charge.

SCA does not have a system in place that protects owners from the very people who are supposed to be acting only for us.

If the interests of owners are adverse to those the GM or the Board President, then there is NOTHING built into SCA’s version of self-management to ensure that the owners’ interests will prevail.

In fact, with Adam Clarkson and Sandy Seddon calling the shots, there is no owner-protection system in place at all.