Our expert in all things Sun City Advocates is on vacation, so here is my feeble attempt to post a Blog.
As posted in Sun City Advocates FB group on May 15th
One man's opinion
So let's talk about the recent Member Exchange... The good, the bad, and the ugly...
The Good:
-Progress continues on signing a 5 year library lease. There was some push-back by the Membership that this is not happening fast enough.
- The Board has engaged legal assistance to assist in considering the hospital property purchase and are in the process of conducting due diligence on the property.
- A five year plan is nearing completion and we will get a first glimpse of it at the May RCSC Board meeting hopefully.
- A 10-15 year PIF plan will follow.
- It was mentioned the Board is looking towards professional assistance to develop a RCSC Master Plan in 2025.
You cannot understate how Good the Good really is. Based on my understanding of historical Board practices this is a monumental shift and should be applauded!!!
The Bad:
- Communication continues to be a very big challenge for the RCSC. Staff do not even attend the Outreach and Communications Committee meetings, and Management stated it might be until the end of the year before they will do so.
- There appears to be growing frustration that the RCSC is not doing anything about the homeless situation in Sun City. The Board indicated that the RCSC has no ability to address the homeless and concerns should be raised with Maricopa County or SCHOA.
This month it does not appear that there is much Bad. That said, the communications issue is a serious problem, and quite frankly is exacerbating the challenges the Board faces in performing it's duties.
The Ugly:
- Member safety was given as a primary reason for considering the closure of the Fairway library. To date, the Board and Management have not produced a single demonstration of the actual problems faced, rather they have relied upon anecdotal statements. Furthermore, when a factual accounting has been requested, the Board cites "confidentiality" as the reason one cannot be given.
It is understandable that actual incident reports cannot be made public. However, there is simply no reason that the safety violations cannot be summarized by Date/Time/Location/Safety Reason and provided to the Membership. This is a perfect example of where communication is lacking and is causing challenges the Board just does not need. That is, of course, unless safety was merely given as an excuse to cover what was a lapse in Management judgement. I prefer to believe it is the former, but it is becoming more and more difficult to argue that it is not the latter.
(Earl Brigham)
Please feel free to comment below.
*Here is a link to the last RCSC member Exchange.