Sandy Seddon used the HOA attorney to keep her big fat unjustified pay check

SCA’s attorney billed owners for “legal letters” to stop me & channel 13 from knowing how much Seddon is paid.

The Clarkson Law Group & Sandy Seddon should both be fired for their long-term pattern of acting in their own self-interest instead of as fiduciaries.

If they had only known – Part 4

What’s the big deal about GM pay?

Excessive executive compensation is a huge trigger for lots of SCA owners. Unfortunately, the Board and GM have taken the tact that they can do whatever they want and they don’t have to answer to anyone.

And, worse for owners, our money is being used to pay an attorney who will say that

  • there are no limits on the Board’s power to decide what to pay for management,
  • that management has privacy rights so pay should be kept secret and
  • it’s okay to threaten owners with legal action if the pay is disclosed to third parties.

These problems could have been avoided if the Board had only known that

It just ain’t so.

What training should the Board have taken?

If the Board had taken the NRED training, Responsibilities of the Manager,they might have learned that they should have, at least, had a written agreement defining ALL the terms and conditions for the GM’s employment, including compensation, as required by NAC 116A.325 and by her Community Association Manager (CAM) license.

Verbal deals aren’t good enough

Why no GM management agreement?

Probably because NRS 116.31085(2) PROHIBITS the Board from adopting or amending ANY contract in secret.

Or maybe because the Board “work group” who negotiated the GM’s terms and conditions of employment didn’t have the right expertise.

In 2014 SCA had a fine management agreement with FSR. It is a mystery why the 2015-16 Board would think they could just “wing it” with a handshake deal the first time SCA was flying without a management company’s net.

Isn’t a written agreement required just when contracting with a management company?

No. A written agreement is needed whenever an association pays a licensed community association manager (CAM) for management services.

Whenever management services are paid, the manager must be licensed. The only exception is when the association is small, and the board is able to manage the property by itself without paying a licensed professional manager.

A little common sense please

Besides, how can owners be protected if a community manager licensee does not have to meet the requirements of the CAM license just because he or she is an employee of an association as opposed to being the employee of a management company or being an independent contractor?

How does NRED exercise its authority over HOA managers?

NRED regulates ALL community association managers in Nevada through “licensure, registration, education, and enforcement”.

NRED states there is no legal prohibition against an association handling its own affairs if it does not need to hire/contract with a professional, licensed manager. Any HOA board can control its business directly without paying a licensed managing agent.

The law ONLY requires that the manager must be a licensed CAM, and subject to all the regulations of the community association manager license, if the manager is COMPENSATED.

Which duties don’t require a CAM license?

NRED has published a list of the specific duties that can be performed by UNLICENSED employees.

This means that it is unlawful to COMPENSATE any individual manager, or any management company, to perform the higher level CAM duties unless all the requirements of a CAM license are met.

SCA must be managed by a licensed CAM

The duties performed by the SCA GM require a community association manager license. The CAM license is required unless those duties are performed by a volunteer who receives NO compensation.

SCA bylaws are also controlling

SCA bylaws 3.13, 3.18, and 3.20 define, and limit, the Board’s authority to employ and compensate a LICENSED CAM to manage the association.

Section 3.20 gives the Board the authority to provide compensation to a manager, and specifies limits on what the Board can delegate to the manager.

Section 3.13 (f) says compensation to a community manager must be under the terms of a management agreement.

3.13 (a) prohibits compensation that creates an appearance of undue influence or a conflict of interest.

What conflict of interest?

Doesn’t it seem that paying the GM double the market rate, as well as paying a second licensed CAM the full market rate, created a huge,  ACTUAL conflict of interest? 

Who is protecting owners?

Ultimately, it is the Board’s job to protect owners from being taken advantage of by licensed professional agents.

If the Board does not do this critical job, then it is up to NRED to enforce NRS 116 requirements on the Board and the enforce the provisions of the CAM license on the GM.

NRED has no authority over the attorney because the attorney has ZERO decision-making authority over the association despite how it may appear.

Don’t you wonder who Adam Clarkson is representing when he turned a blind eye to the failure of the Board to publicly adopt a management agreement with the GM with the NRS 116A.620 REQUIRED TERMS that would protect the association membership:

There’s more, but you get the idea.

What is the maximum the SCA Board can pay the GM?

Apparently, the sky is the limit

“The Board could pay the GM $1 million/year if they wanted.”  – former SCA CAM Lori Martin (in response to my information requests in November 2016)

This shocking pronouncement shows what SCA owners have faced since SCA began employing all staff directly instead contracting with a management company to run day-to-day operations.

What are they thinking?

The Board is being severely ill-advised, and it is costing owners way more than is necessary. Worse, how executive compensation is set at SCA has failed to conform to professional standards, Nevada law, SCA governing documents, or even common sense.

More than Henderson City Manager

In the R-J today, there was an article publishing that, yesterday, the interim Henderson City Manager was permanently appointed at an annual salary of $235,000, 

Apparently, SCA Board feels the SCA GM’s level of responsibility exceeds that of Henderson’s City Manager, but does it?

  • 390,000 city population vs. 7,144 SCA units
  • 1,933 F/T employees vs 46 F/T SCA employees
  • Operating budget of $244 million vs. SCA $8.5 mil

Click here for City of Henderson fact sheet

I don’t see any justification for it, and determining  employee compensation was one of the things I used to do for a living.

How much is SCA’s GM being paid?

Owners can’t know for sure what the GM is being paid in 2018 despite NRS 116.31175 and SCA bylaws 6.4(a)(i) affirming that owners have a LEGAL right to know what employees are getting paid.

The January 2017 SCA table of employee salaries was provided to another unit owner, before Adam Clarkson, SCA’s legal counsel, began creating an unlawful veil of secrecy, asserting that the GM had some imaginary privacy rights which exceeded owners’ rights to know how our money is being spent.

The GM’s compensation was publicly known over a year and a half ago, and it’s just a waste of everybody’s time, money and energy to try to hide it now.

Sorry, Adam, it’s legally out in the open. You can’t pretend it’s confidential now. You simply can’t unring that bell.

When SCA got rid of the FSR management company, and the GM took over in April, 2016, the GM was paid $250,000.

By January 2017 the SCA GM was paid a base salary of $257,000 plus a $20,000 bonus.

Does the GM now get paid $22,000 more than Henderson’s City Manager?

Yes, and only, assuming that

  • her 2017 base pay of $257,000 stayed flat.
  • she was given no COLA (cost of living increase)
  • her 2017 bonus expired on 12/31/17
  • no bonus is being paid out for 2018
  • no performance increase from the 3% budgeted for employee performance increases

I don’t know what you think, but I think it is pretty unlikely ALL of those assumptions are true. So, her salary could closer to 20% higher than Henderson pays its manager.

Is her pay AT LEAST $42,000/year more than the city’s manager?

My guess is that she is being paid at least $277,000 because…

Inertia

It seems like the Board would let her carry her 2017 annual bonus forward into 2018. I think they would be reluctant to take $20,000 even though that is the way a pay system should work. So, the default position is “let it ride“.

The “Halo Effect”

I also imagine they probably carried her last year bonus forward despite all the myriad complaints against her because

  • they repeatedly and publicly chastising owners for signing a petition for a vote of no confidence against her and because of
  • their adamant refusal to address any of the petitioners’ criticisms on their merits and
  • they didn’t hold her accountable for the failing to meet her deadline on the restaurant or for mediating the FAS-CSG dispute or for failing to de-escalate the community divide

The cone of silence

It would be an egregious sleight of hand, contrary to professional standards, for the Board to authorize rolling a $20,000 bonus into her base pay, but there is ZERO evidence to show that the Board didn’t do just that, and then kept it a secret.

These actions are all a big no-no

A bonus is supposed to be earned every year. It is NEVER just moved into base pay without an EXPLICIT public action by the Board.

But there are worse scenarios

  • if the 2017 bonus were rolled into base pay, and then
  • a 2018 $20,000 bonus added on top of that,
  • ending up at a whopping $297,000 salary for 2018.

Even worse…

than paying $297,000 could be giving a 3% increase from the 2018 budgeted 3% pool for employee increases.

I’ll try to stop imagining the worst

I won’t even put that number ($297,000 + 3%) out in the universe because I don’t think it is possible that SCA Board would go that far off track.

And yet, follow the money

If they didn’t increase her pay in 2018, why would they spend so much money and political capital to hide what owners are paying her for what is little more than property management?

I also wonder how the GM and SCA attorney can honestly claim they are acting as fiduciaries, solely and exclusively, acting for the benefit of the SCA membership, when the GM uses the SCA attorney to threaten legal action against owners who exercise their legal rights to KNOW how much owners are paying employees.

“Heads will roll if lips aren’t sealed about GM pay”

Or, anyway, that was the threat, before…

Contact13’s Darcy Spears highlighted Sun City Anthem’s excessive executive compensation on the “HOA Hall of Shame” on Channel 13 action news last Thursday.

Living in Las Vegas can cost more when your home is in an HOA, but where does all the money go? Contact 13 looks at who’s getting a big slice of the pie in one of the largest communities in Southern Nevada. Click on photo to watch 3 1/2-minute video.

Threatened with legal action? Really?

Did you catch that report at the end of the video?

Neither the GM or the Board would even answer KTNV’s call to explain how the SCA Board justified such big payouts.

“Instead, they had an attorney respond who claimed State law prohibited the HOA from discussing anything about salaries and we learned the HOA threatened legal action against some owners after Contact13 started asking questions about manager pay rates.”

Is any of that true?

It is 100% true that the GM has used OUR attorney to threaten legal action to try to keep her pay a secret.
  • against me personally,
  • against other owners,
  • against the association itself, and
  • in this case, against a TV station,

But, it is 100% legally and morally wrong to use our SCA attorney to unlawfully hide from owners how much of OUR money is going into her pocket.

Are any SCA employee salaries/ benefits confidential by nevada law?
Short answer:       No.

Per NRS 116.31175, most personnel records are confidential, but not compensation.

…4(a) The personnel records of the employees of the association (are confidential), except for those records relating to the number of hours worked and the salaries and benefits of those employees;

Why would the SCA attorney say employee compensation is confidential when the law clearly says the opposite?

In my view, he is simply representing the wrong client.

As the SCA association attorney, he is being paid by the owners to act as OUR agent, not to be the GM’s agent.

In fact, there is a law specifically prohibiting him from representing the GM because it is a conflict of interest. See NRS 116A.640(6). He is duty bound by law to act, solely and exclusively, in the best interests of the association membership as a whole.

But, is he?

I certainly don’t see it. I see the GM approving tons of unnecessary attorney fees that owners pay to protect her imaginary privacy rights.

And like Ricky Ricardo, I think Adam Clarkson has some ‘splainin’ to do.
Why did I get a threatening letter because of this story?

I was told this story was taped, after the fact, last October, but then nothing happened, and I forgot about it.

On 12/22/17, I submitted a written request for SCA to update the 2017 employee compensation table that had been given to another resident on 1/31/17. The budget was ratified in November, and I suspected the Board had given the GM another bonus in secret despite the petition for a vote of no confidence signed by 825 owners and her failure to meet the 12/31/17 target about the restaurant.

When CAM Elyssa Rammos emailed me around 1/15/18 that the 2018 salary table was ready to pick up at the front desk, I was in Mexico and asked for it electronically.

When I got no response, I asked Ruby Leong to pick it up and email it to me before the MLK 3-day weekend. They gave her the run around.

“It’s not ready.
We gave it to someone else.
We have to make changes.”

None of which was true.

The reason for the stonewalling was exactly what Darcy Spears said. Between the time Elyssa Rammos had notified me that the 2018 employee compensation chart was ready, and Ruby Leong could drive a few blocks to pick it up, Sandy Seddon had gotten a call from someone at KTNV.

Quick as a flash, Adam Clarkson manufactured an absolutely false legal interpretation out of thin air that the 2018 version of the previously-released 2017 table was now confidential because Contact13 was doing a story.

Wow. It’s magic.
Documents become invisible, and our money disappears.

SCA’s $325/hour attorney blocked the release of the 2018 update of the 2017 SCA employee compensation table that was already in the public domain. SCA homeowners had to foot the bill for Clarkson to write “legal letters”, in SCA’s name, in January to threaten legal action against me if I told KTNV what the GM’s pay was (even though they already knew) and against KTNV if they ran the story.

There was no Board action authorizing this threat of legal action – unless, of course, they took the action in a secret meeting.

And, by the way, NRS 116.31088 requires a VOTE of the membership, before SCA can file a civil action. But no big deal.

This is a provision of the law that Adam Clarkson made disappear when the SCA Board filed a civil action to evict the Foundation Assisting Seniors. I’m sure Adam Clarkson’s convoluted reading of the law will come up with some magical way that allows the GM to use him to threaten litigation, against anybody or everybody, in SCA’s name, and on SCA owners’ dime.

What did I do about this “legal letter”?

I filed an affidavit under penalty of perjury on 1/31/18 with NRED.  I requested that this complaint be incorporated with the ongoing investigation into the harassment and retaliation complaint which precipitated my unlawful removal from the Board on 8/24/17.

It is my understanding that these complaints will be heard by the CIC Commission on November 6, 2018.

More to come.

The next few blogs will discuss the magnitude of the GM’s misuse of the association attorney to act as her personal fixer.

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.

Making owners pay to fight owners knowing how our money is spent

A point for transparent Nevada

The R-J just won a victory for transparency when the District Attorney was required to release information about how much the DA’s office was compensating witnesses in criminal trials.

Public interest
Using taxpayer cash to fight the taxpayer

Click on photo to read full editorial

 

“To sum it up, the taxpayer-funded prosecutor’s office sought to conceal from taxpayers certain payments it made with taxpayer money – and then eventually cut a deal that will cost taxpayers $55,000 (in attorney fees).”

 

“Wouldn’t it have been easier – and cheaper – for those in the DA’s office to simply have made the information available in the first place? Instead, the default setting is always to retreat into the shadows and make liberal use of other people’s money to fight against open government.”

Sound familiar, Mr. Clarkson?

It should.  Sun City Anthem Board and GM are misusing the SCA attorney to hide their sins, and he is laughing all the way to the bank.

SCA’s leaders are wasting owners’ money to hide information which should be easily accessible to us at virtually no cost on the website.

SCA’s brand of mean-spirited opacity- hiding actions and expenditures from owners and making the owners pay the attorney fees for hiding what could even be unlawful or fraudulent – has more elements of sleaziness than I saw in the government’s efforts to avoid transparency.

SCA has gone beyond the practice of merely blocking freedom of information requests as described in the R-J editorial to being outright abusive to owners who just ask for information they have a legal right to receive and distribute as they wish.

For example, the claim on the new SCA Records Request Form that SCA records that might be requested, such as employee compensation, are “private and confidential records of the private entity that is the association” is simply false.

Those records can’t be confidential by Nevada law in Sun City Anthem and not confidential by that same Nevada law in Sun City Summerlin.

Threats of litigation?

I don’t see that the Public Employees Retirement System threatened the R-J with punitive sanctions for just submitting a Freedom of Information Request like our mean-spirited leaders are doing to SCA owners, threatening litigation for even asking for information the GM or individual Board members want to be publicly known.

GM’s “privacy rights” bigger than owners’ rights?

I also don’t see that the government officials ever claim that freedom of information requests violated some imaginary and legally-unsupported “personal privacy rights” as SCA’s attorney has done on behalf of the GM.

Only withhold records from certain parties?

I don’t see that the District Attorney claimed the requested information could be withheld from the R-J, but that it could be released to the R-J’s competitor? SCA has done this very thing repeatedly by providing information to OSCAR (recall opponents) that was withheld from others who were not in that camp.

Making up laws?

I also don’t see that the District Attorney just made up some bogus legal  requirement that the R-J acknowledge that the information can’t be used in ways the DA would consider harassment or even just embarrassing. The new SCA information request form contains multiple ridiculous “acknowledgements” which have no basis in law.

The SCA attorney is lying to owners about what owners’  rights are. Fines and other sanctions are threatened against  SCA owners for requesting and disseminating information, both of which are within fully within owners’ legal rights.

For example, the claim that SCA CC&R 3.6(h) and SCA Rules & Regs 9.4 would be violated and an owner subjected to penalties for violating any of the totally fabricatedduty, restriction and/or obligation provided herein” is a double whammy of threatening an owner for violating restrictions the attorney just made up out of thin air. 

Magically creating privilege?

I also don’t see any egregious claim by Clark County that documents, actions or conversations become privileged just because the secretive official wishes that they were legally protected from public view as the Clarkson Law Group, the GM and individual members of the Board ludicrously and repeatedly do to unlawfully attack owners for exercising our legal rights.

 Ask any Discovery Commissioner

The burden of proof that documents, conversations or actions are legally privileged falls squarely on the party who is seeking protection from disclosure.

Not the other way around.

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.

 

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