SCA Board elects officers at 1 PM today

It starts in a half hour.

I’ve made here a few satirical comments about how Rex Weddle will probably orchestrate the election of officers based on what actually happened last year.

Then, I’ll force myself to go into that hostile environment to see for myself what actually happens at the meeting.

What could possibly go wrong?

If it’s anything like last year, Rex Weddle will have worked it out in advance so only his handpicked directors can even be nominated.

Huh? Last year?

Here are the simple steps Rex followed last year to make sure he stayed President and to control who else could run:

Met with or had serial emails with directors to set up quid pro quo trades to elect incumbents who could be “trusted” to vote as a block.
Pay the attorney to say that standard election of officer procedures and Board-adopted Parlimentery procedures do not have to be followed.
Rex, while chairing the meeting as President, got Bob Burch to nominate him.
No other nominations could be made from the floor.
If any disobedient director tries to nominate someone else, Rex claimed that it required a non-existent type of motion: a substitute motion. This is a handy trick because, once Rex got the attorney to bless breaking that standard protocol, it was used routinely to block seconded motions made on other matters by that same disobedient, second-class director.
Rex even went so far as to text the director sitting next to me to give him the exact wording of the motion and name of who he was assigned to nominate for Secretary.

Hypothetically, what would be the worst case scenario this year?

President

Bob Burch will again nominate Rex, by reading a dramatic, praise-filled motion. Rex will again abuse the authority of the chair to block other nominations. Bob will move that Rex’s coronation be by acclimation and that the position’s title be changed to KING.

All of the bad outcomes for owners and resistance to best practices that I predicted last year that already happened will continue. All future dissent by directors or members will be crushed by the attorney who is beholding to Rex.

Vice-President

Jim Coleman will be nominated for Vice-President, not for his outstanding leadership qualities, which are substantial, but to show that Rex and the other incumbents are really not racists, like that name-redacted guy.

Secretary

Bob Burch will be pressed into service even though (sigh!) he doesn’t want to.

Strategizing with his cohorts before the meeting, Bob figured it would be insulting to try and make “the woman” do it. Too bad, though, it would have been a perfect way to keep her from trying to steal Forrest’s Treasurer job that he sold his soul to get only last year.

Worse, Candace was the top vote-getter and has a strong financial background and a reputation for being outspoken. She might insist that the association’s records be accurate, accessible and that the laws be followed so owners’ rights are protected. She must be kept away from a chance to audit anything.

Treasurer

Forrest Quinn will be the Treasurer. He will continue to work full-time to do management’s job in an excellent manner. He will sing the GM’s and the CFO’s praises for the outstanding job he does for them.

Paying the GM and CFO double their value in the market and claiming that what SCA pays is a secret is a small ethical price to pay for the staff’s complete loyalty to him and their willingness to attack dissenters.

If other directors question the propriety of obfuscating the special pay arrangements privately agreed to, or if owners complain, he will have no problem encouraging the Board to sue the bastards for defamation and charge them with a CC&R violation that poses an imminent threat to health, safety and welfare, punishable by a fine of $1 million dollars or a sanction of foreclosing on their house and their banishment from the tribe.

So what?

Ordinarily, controlling who gets officer spots would be no big deal. Most non-profit organizations are thrilled when anyone will accept any thankless duties on a volunteer basis.

However, here and now, trying to ensure that a small clique controls everything is a problem that is costing us a lot of money and peace of mind.

Under Rex’s leadership and this particular GM, SCA is going in the wrong direction. This is negatively affecting our lifestyle, our property values and ultimately, will increase our assessment costs.

Isn’t that just a difference of opinion?

Ordinarily, yes. Ordinarily, it’s no big deal to have different opinions.

But, here and now, it is a problem. Rex and his cronies are operating from the perspective that SCA is a private company and that the Board should operate according to the norms that are applicable to a business.

This is bad, but not catastrophic, until the Dear Leader’s point of view is weaponized as the official party line, and the rule of law is suspended to prevent alternative points of view to be expressed, let alone be openly debated.

Weaponizing a perspective also involves inappropriate use of the association’s resources for maintenance of personal political power, and this is being done, here and now, on steroids.

Quid pro Quo –
you scratch my back…

Why would SCA agents, licensed professionals, play favorites with Rex and his cronies?

OBVIOUSLY, if the GM and attorney were to only work for the Board as a whole is nowhere near as profitable.

Further, if all Board actions were public, SCA’s agents could be monitored to ensure they were acting SOLELY AND EXCLUSIVELY FOR THE BENEFIT OF THE MEMBERSHIP OF THE ASSOCIATION.

Works for SCA agents to have a blank check, but it doesn’t work for owners

SCA spent over $100,000 on attorneys in the first quarter of 2018, more than double the recently doubled budget.
$40,000 attorney fees were charged to evict the Foundation Assisting Seniors, and more fees will be charged to fight over which non-profit pays them.
They admitted spending $40,000 in 2017 on “Director Issues” to write me “legal letters” telling me to stop complaining about them violating the law and to stop demanding owners’ access to information affecting our lives and pocket books.
The attorney made money protecting the GM who protects him so legal prohibitions for their conduct are easy to bust through.
Both the GM and the attorney have violated the standards of their profession by claiming powers and rights that are not theirs by law, e.g., make certain policy decisions or expend un-budgeted SCA funds. (SCA bylaws and NRS 116.3106(1)(d) prohibit the Board from delegating policy-making authority in five areas.)
There is money to be made whenever those who let the agents get away with it are kept in power and those who blow the whistle are silenced.

Time for a real change.

New SCA Board – New chance to get it right

Congratulations to the newly-elected members of the Board:

Candace Karrow,
Jim Coleman,
Gary Lee.

Check below for why no congrats for Bob Burch

A message from Gary Lee

Nona …. I want to take this opportunity to thank any of your readers who voted for me in this election.

I recognize the fact that I do not have any “direct” experience on any of SCA’s committees or volunteer programs but … I do bring to the board an extensive background in the management of facilities, construction, budgeting, finance and human resources – all of which are basic to the operations of the SCA.

I promise to bring an element of “common sense” to the board and a diligent effort in exploring facts and conditions prior to voting on any subject.

I would welcome the thoughts and opinions of any of your readers. I will be open to receiving any input and I will certainly consider them in my decision making. -Gary Lee

All directors get an equal vote

I personally have great hope that Gary’s significant management experience will be treated with respect as mine was not.

The restaurant negotiation

Will Gary’s substantial restaurant experience be used for the benefit of the membership to protect SCA from giving away the store in negotiating with the probably pre-selected vendor?

Or is Rex’s death grip on consolidating power so strong that his expertise will be rejected in favor of Tom Nissen and Forrest Quinn who have no restaurant or negotiation experience that is specifically on point as Gary’s is?

SCA experience is required only for some

Rex Weddle and Bob Burch, in particular, proffered the pretext that my not having been on SCA committees was sufficient justification to refuse to treat as an equal member of the Board.

Keep your eyes open, new directors!

The new Board members need to guard against the incumbents claiming to possess special authority over them. Or that the Board is allowed to have secret meetings on topics other than the four permissible topics in NRS 116.31085 and SCA bylaws 3.15A.

Abdicating and usurping must stop

There is a surprising willingness for the GM and the attorney to play favorites and play fast and loose with the rules so that decisions that are supposed to be made by the Board in open session, informed by professional managerial and legal advice, somehow get made by who know who and who knows when.

Be careful, it is very easy to get sucked in.

Which brings me to why no congrats to Bob Burch

I am having trouble congratulating the fourth person elected, Bob Burch, because ongoing NRED complaints against him have not been adjudicated since being filed over eight months ago. These complaints include serious charges:

interference with the recall election
harassment and retaliation
abuse of authority
concealing SCA documents from members, including a director
taking action by secret votes against owners without cause or due process
acting for reasons of self-interest or revenge
failing to disclose a potential conflict of interest and then repeatedly voting on the issue
and more violations of owners’ legally protected rights

Never heard about these charges?

Voters probably didn’t hear about these open complaints because they were concealed.

Unfairly, “on the advice of counsel” and on owners’ dime, the Board and the GM purposefully concealed complaints against them, and the attorney from the membership.

They refused to place the complaints on an open Board meeting agenda as required by NRS 116.31187.

Board Policy Manual 6.1 was disregarded when they would not allow me, as an elected director, to discuss these violations in any open Board meeting.

They would not fairly even allow the complaints to be investigated or be fairly debated executive session.

When I tried to get the Board act lawfully, the Board’s official response was to kick me off the Board without notice or appeal.

Good luck to the new people.

Paying attorneys to disappear political opponents

Lesson 3 – Create a false narrative to win

or as Chuck Lorre, the creator of Big Bang Theory crudely put it in Vanity Card #586:

(Quote redacted)

Item 11 E – Quarterly Litigation Reports

Now that I have your attention, let’s discuss how item 11 E – quarterly litigation reports – is an example of how the Board wastes lots of our money to use the many SCA lawyers to control who sits on the Board. (I’m sorry. It seems I have to offend some people to keep everyone else awake.)

Only one Board candidate seemed to notice problems

In member comments, Board candidate, Gary Lee, pointed out some inadequacies in the reports.

Of the 15 cases reported, 9 are foreclosures. Is there a problem with the way we are handling foreclosures? There are inconsistencies.

Gary did not know what I’ll tell you below. In my case, that the defamatory and false statements were used as the pretext for kicking me off the Board and that the Board has refused my repeated requests to correct “errors” for a year.

Clarkson, SCA legal counsel and debt collector, lies like a rug

Clarkson Law Group has given the same false report for the last five quarters on the case that supposedly disqualified me from the Board.

Wrong!

The current status of the quiet title case is not as of 2/1/17. That is the date when the original cross claim was filed, but dismissed on 5/25/17.
This ignores that the claims of the Gordon B. Hansen Trust, by Nona Tobin, individual and trustee, were dismissed by Judge Kishner at a hearing on 5/25/17, and that the order (due in June 2017) was not filed by the SCA attorney until 9/20/17, a month after I was ambushed and kicked off the Board on 8/24/17 .
The mere existence of this case is what Clarkson falsely claims disqualified me from serving on the Board. More importantly, what this lie has achieved is keeping my nose out of his debt collection business.

The Lipson law firm’s report is defamatory.

I was not removed from the Board “for cause”.

This is a horrible, hurtful lie.

It brands me “guilty!” without any finding of fact. It is a continuation of the harassment and retaliation I have been subjected to for over a year.

I was unlawfully removed by the other six Board members in a secret meeting based on the totally false and unsubstantiated allegation that I was making a profit from my position on the Board. Poppycock.

The FACTS

SCA was a named party in 2015 by the plaintiff Jimijack, who has possession of the house and been collecting rents on Bruce’s house since 2014.
Nationstar filed a second lawsuit against the buyer at the foreclosure sale of 2763 White Sage Dr. in January, 2016 and completed a failed mediation with SCA a month before I showed up as the third lawsuit.
On behalf of the Gordon B. Hansen Trust, I entered the case on 2/1/17 as a defendant in intervention on the two existing cases in order to regain the title for the trust.
The 2/1/17 cross claim against SCA was to get SCA to void the defective foreclosure sale from which SCA’s former agents unlawfully kept $60,000 that should have been distributed to either Nationstar or the GBH Trust after paying SCA only $2,701.
On 5/25/17, all claims against SCA were dismissed ($2,701 paid SCA in full in 2014 so SCA has no financial stake in the quiet title dispute), but the Lipson attorney did not file the 5//25/17 order until 9/20/17, a month after I was kicked off the Board on the pretext that the mere existence of this case disqualified me from being on the Board.
I did not, and could not, make a profit from my position on the Board.

And yet, the Lipson report brands me

My request to correct false reports was not heard.

Click here to link to the request I intended to, but did not, bring to the Board.

I stayed silent.

The tone of the meeting and the mood of the crowd made it clear that there was a zero% chance that the Board would see through their prejudices and willful ignorance to treat me fairly.

There was a standing ovation for Jim Coleman who was shaken and outraged at being falsely accused of voting to kick me off the Board by lying, probably racist, Mr. (name redacted) blogger.

There was zero acknowledgement that I existed in the room, let alone was deserving of compassion as the falsely accused (of making a profit off my Board position) and the actually-injured (kicked off the Board without a trial or finding of guilt) victim.

Who cares?

Good question. The issue is way bigger than me.

The precedent puts homeowners in all 3,000 HOAs in Nevada at risk of losing control over who sits on their Boards if who they elect can be “disappeared” without cause, a trial or an appeal on a pretext.

Let’s face it

I was kicked off the Board because the GM and the majority of the Board did not like me telling them they sub-standard in their implementation of self-management and that they were breaking lots of rules and needed to straighten up or I would tell on them.

So, they made up a story to get rid of me

If it can happen here, it can happen anywhere

All the directors in any HOA would need to do to get rid of a Board member they don’t like would be to deem their position vacant by operation of law.

It’s easy to kill a political opponent if you have attorneys willing to ignore all the other laws that exist to protect homeowners from arbitrary and capricious abrogation of their rights.

This precedent is especially risky for the state because Adam Clarkson is the president-elect of the Community Association Institute and claims that his firm represents 300 HOAs, 10% of those in Nevada.

Good-bye, democracy.

Being serviced by SCA attorneys is painful and pricey

This is the second blog in a series about lessons learned at the April 26 Board meeting.

Lesson 2-
When we don’t get what we paid for, we should send it back.

This blog is about how it is always “lose-lose” when the SCA Board abdicates to attorneys instead of being guided by:

common sense,
NRED Board training,
owner oversight and
professional management standards of practice.

This blog is about the overuse and wrong use of the SCA attorneys to protect individual Board members and the GM, and actively, purposely hurting owners – all on owners’ dime.

Special thanks go to Rex Weddle and Sandy Seddon for setting the mean-spirited and divisive tone at the top that has prevented all neighborly, amicable resolution of differences on their watch.

Highlights of legal expenditures

First quarter 2018 – $101,300 more than double the $48,750 budget
2017 quarterly budget was $22,500, so $101,300 was nearly five times what was expected to spend in a quarter last year
In 2015, before self-management SCA actually spent $116,292 for lawyers
In 2014, $52,219 was spent for the whole year.
In 2016,the whole year of lawyers was $118,861, but that was before buckets of money were extracted from owners’ pockets in 2017 to pay to be aggressively serviced by the Clarkson Law Group

Again, a special thanks to Rex and Sandy for their utter disregard of best practices and fair play to make owners pay attorneys to keep your dirty little secrets.

What are we getting for our money?

Can we figure it out from the budget variance “explanation”?

“NRED, FAS, Director liability, policy updates, etc.”

Pretty unsatisfactory explanation, I’d say. I’ll also say these ridiculous legal fees are not necessary expenditures. They are only necessary if the Board is duped into doing everything the hard way instead of opting for the ounce of prevention.

Some of these fees are also caused by individual Board members and the GM using the attorneys in inappropriate ways, and the attorney leading, or going along with, unfairly stripping owners’ of their legal protections. The attorney makes big bucks as a quid pro quo for the Board abandoning even the appearance of controlling budget policy.

SCA leaders refuse to be transparent about what they are doing, but I think you all should know what you are buying.

And remember, unlike blogger # 3, Mr. (name redacted), who was drummed out of the legal profession for forging a judge’s signature, I will swear under oath to the truth of what I say, and I will, willingly and openly, back my words up with evidence.

I’ll show you in Lesson 3 why attorneys’ lies about me are so serious and why doing this to one owner hurts ALL owners.

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

“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 fabricated “duty, 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.

Election Recommendations

Election Recommendations
The SCA View Newsletter by Ron Johnson

Vote for Coleman, Karrow, Lee and Wigen

It’s that time of year again and your vote is needed to determine who will best represent the interests of our community. On the heels of the results of a very divisive recall petition, where a substantial number of members voted to throw Bob Burch and Aletta Waterhouse off of the board, your vote is more important than ever. While that petition failed to meet the very high threshold needed for a director’s removal from the board, this election campaign has provided voters with another opportunity to demonstrate their concern.

It’s my position that the community would be far better served by electing three new members to the board rather than returning any of the old directors who had been previously elected. Let’s say goodbye to Bob Burch and Aleta Waterhouse and vote for JAMES COLEMAN, CANDACE KARROW, GARY LEE AND CLIFF WIGEN. Director James Coleman was not elected but was appointed to the board last year.

My concerns about Burch and Waterhouse stem from the board’s questionable and potentially illegal actions in approving if not directing management to adopt certain accounting gimmicks. Those accounting gimmicks have resulted in the deferral of almost a million dollars annually in scheduled repairs to the following year(s).

Such unreported deferrals amount to self-serving efforts by the board to avoid increasing assessments, thereby helping those directors who are running for reelection.

While one prominent blogger has been eager to pass along management’s assessment that the Association’s finances are in “excellent” shape, that assessment is grossly misleading. That assessment failed to reflect what’s been really going on behind the scenes in what I view as an unorthodox effort to provide millions of dollars over time for unanticipated and unfunded repair projects at Liberty and Anthem Centers.

One method management adopted was to defer almost a million dollars in previously scheduled repairs from one year to the next year. Such deferrals have a cumulative effect on subsequent scheduled repairs in the following years, which is exacerbated when there are recurring unplanned events in the following years, like the Anthem Locker Rooms, forcing management to annually push scheduled repairs forward year after year. As reserve funds are expended for such unplanned repairs, the reserve fund keeps going down by that amount. At some unknown future date, that reserve deficit will have to be replenished.

Meanwhile, the board will continue to rely on members not paying close attention to what’s going on behind the scenes in the accounting room as your money get “created” and spent for unbudgeted purposes.

Restaurant Rumors
Did the board or management influence G2G (Denny’s) to drop gaming in order to assure their likely selection as a tenant?

Club Rumors
Some residents are looking forward to the possible creation of the NEW YORK CLUB.

Administrative matters
My new Email address is: rljohnson32@coxÆnet
My new phone number is: 702-413-6026

Published by Ron Johnson, Email: rljohnson32@coxÆnet, Phone: (702) 413-6026

How to make your vote REALLY count!

You must vote.

No matter how disenfranchised you feel.

This envelope will be in your mailbox today or Monday.
No problem recognizing your ballot this time.

Do you want to drain the swamp?

Well, your vote will ONLY help clean up this place if you

DO NOT vote for Aletta Waterhouse or Bob Burch, the two tone-deaf incumbents,

who wiggled out of the recall by allowing the GM to use our money

to pay $85,000 to a CPA to takeover the job of the volunteer election committee, and
to use the association attorney at $300,000++ in 2017 for reasons unknown, including LOTS of $$$ to screw over owners who weren’t in her corner and $15,000+ to make sure your vote didn’t count in the removal election process

Vote like this.

Ironic signs have been posted.

(I don’t have time right now to expand on the irony. My grandson’s here for the holiday, and we’re going to see a different magic show tonight.)

Happy Easter! Time for renewal and rebirth!

Legal fees beget more legal fees – $80,000 in two months!!!

Giving attorneys a blank check = bad idea

In the first two months of the fiscal year, SCA’s spending $79,760 for legal services. Attorneys have burned through 40% of the $195,000 budget for the whole year.

Had the 2018 budget not be more than doubled from the 2017 level, the burn rate would have been a whopping 89%.

2017 Legal services budget was $90,000, an amount that prior Boards fond to be adequate for SCA’s needs.

Was the service SCA got worth it?

Do you feel like paying this attorney has improved the quality of your life in Sun City Anthem?
Do you think, as this current Board does, that the attorney must be retained to do work that is normally performed by a Community Association Manager, like propose towing or publication policies?
Do you believe that the Board is incapable of making decisions unless the attorney approves them?
Do you think SCA owners should pay for the association attorney to represent the GM to protect her “privacy rights” against owners finding out what she is being paid in 2018?
My best guess is that SCA has been billed in the tens of thousands of dollars for the GM to use the association attorney to keep her secrets. I can’t be more precise because when I requested an explanation for spending $321,000 instead of less than $90, 000 in 2017, the response boiled down to:

“We don’t have to. You can’t make me”

2017 legal expenditures exceeded $321,000

This was a whopping 3 1/2 times the $90,000 budget! So, one would think that the correct response would be to look at ways to bring that number back in line. But, that wasn’t what the Board did. They more than doubled the 2018 budget to $195,000.

While a strategy of carefully calculating the increases needed in the budget to cover runaway costs may be prudent in a strictly fiscal sense, it completely ignores the Board’s duty to analyze the root causes of why we are wasting so much money on attorney fees.

Last year’s waste blew my mind, and this year is starting out even worse.

What I told the Board at the 3/22/18 meeting

The Board and the GM are using attorneys excessively, inappropriately and in a manner which is not serving owners well.

The Board is not following the business judgment rule if you:

Use attorneys to conceal from owners how our money is being spent when you are required by law to tell us.

Allow the GM to use the association attorney to serve her own purposes in violation of SCA’s bylaws and the Board policy manual, e.g., relieving the Election Committee of their duties in the recall election ($90,000 spent on her order), and at least $50,000 to conceal records from me as a director, and threaten frivolous litigation, and unfairly remove me

Accept without question demands for payment for unbudgeted services which others who are not being paid tell you, are not necessary or cost-effective if done by attorneys.

Ignore warnings of inappropriate expenditures

Refuse to allow any investigation by owners to determine the veracity of the complaints that these fees are out of line.

Refuse to have a Legal Services Committee to provide owner oversight to protect the Association.

The Board silently noted and (round)filed.

I predict no action will be taken to control the costs of control.

And another thing

Why did owners have to pay $43,022 to write-off bad debts last month?

When this amount was written off, Forrest said that it had largely been due to foreclosures by banks.

What properties were affected?
Why so much write off?
Was litigation involved?

My questions could be answered if the Board would require the GM/attorney/debt collector to publish the quarterly delinquency report mandated by our bylaws and keep them posted on the website.

Refusing to manage the attorney instead of letting him run amuck is costing owners money unnecessarily. It is not a good example of sound business judgment.

Bylaws 3.21 (f) (5) Quarterly reporting requirement

…(quarterly) commencing at the end of the quarter in which the first Lot is sold and closed,…(v) a delinquency report listing all Owners who are delinquent in paying any assessments at the time of the report and describing the status of any action to collect such assessments which remain delinquent…

Publishing the required report would improve the cost-effectiveness of collection efforts significantly, reducing attorney/debt collector fees and uncollectible debts.

But this isn’t something you will hear from the attorney.

SCA Board inched closer to restaurant decision

Volunteer Tom Nissen led the Board’s latest decision-making process on the restaurant space study. Once again, the highly-compensated GM sat coyly by and let the man who hired her hold center stage.

Remember where we left it. The GM was charged with having a decision by the end of 2017, but instead she chose to hand off leadership to two Board members, Tom Nissen and Forrest Quinn. The three of them had workshops, gave regular retrospectives about what their little triad had done, listened to owners patiently, and then handpicked 10 potential bidders. Coming in to today’s meeting, only two remained in the race – the Village Pub and G2G, the preferred candidate with a leg up.

Now, instead of before the RFP was put out, they decide to define parameters. It is all but guaranteed that the vendor that Tom had met with for a year before nine other vendors were invited to apply is all but a shoe-in.

The Board passed seven of Tom’s eight motions to decide operational restrictions that will be placed on the one of the two providers left standing.

Approved having a restaurant vs. attempting to re-purpose the space.
General public can be customers of the restaurant. It won’t be only for members and accompanied guests.
No smoking will be allowed in any SCA facility, but there will be designated outdoor smoking areas as exist now.
The provider will get exclusive rights to catering in ALL SCA facilities – Anthem Center, Independence, and Liberty. However, the good news is that potlucks will not be prohibited. There might even be an opportunity for pizza or some other type of delivery, said the GM, based on her experience at other Sun Cities. She also said that G2G didn’t really mean it when they said in their proposal that they wanted clubs to be restricted from having events off site.
Approved having a subsidy. This was an odd way to put the thumb on the scales considering only one of the two bidders is going for the free ride approach. The Village Pub offered to invest $750,000 to $1 million of their own capital to set up and then to pay $3,000/month. The one they have nurtured through the process, G & G, proposed getting free rent and free utilities.
Coffee window to be closed while restaurant is open.
No 24/7. Restaurant hours will be limited to the hours the Anthem Center is open unless there is a special event.
The motion to prohibit gaming failed so it was left to the discretion of the Tom/Forrest Board work group and the GM to work it out with the last vendor standing. No substitute motion was forwarded.

Financial vetting must be rock solid

Several people have over time raised the question of how the financial stability of the chosen one will be vetted. The answer has been vague so there are rumors out there that G2G has been in bankruptcy four times.

So, I checked. The chapter 7 bankruptcy is some other G2G, LLC. – not our guy, who is G2G Management Group, LLC

I don’t know anything about this vendor. My objection is to any process that gives one competitor an edge. While I was on the Board, I wasn’t “authorized” to work on the Restaurant Space study, but in response to concerns that the bidder might have dark secrets, I checked. A quick glance tonight at the NV Secretary of State’s website and bankruptcy court public record was sufficient to show that our bidder is none of these problem entities that raised red flags to some owners.