Who is doing what?
The general manager has one employer; one entity he or she is accountable to. If the Directors of the Board – who were elected by us don't do their job - we end up with one person doing whatever they want. This magnifies each year when the board members keep conducting business in the same manner. There was a reason they had term limits (1 three-year term), and there was a reason to allow a second. I'm not sure one was more beneficial than the other. I know in retrospect as openings occurred, bringing back retreads insured we continue down the same path. They simply refused to hold the general manager accountable. Frankly, I think that was why they brought former directors to close out the year.
Duties of the Board...
One of the duties of the board...questioning what the GM is doing and why
Holding People Accountable
The one thing we all should have learned early on is accountability. It's been the subject of several of the blogs that I have started over the years on various Sun City sites. It still hasn't sunk in what Accountability actually means. At the January 27th IT Planning Session (following the RCSC Board meeting) I heard General Manager Bill Cook say it was "no one's fault" that Technology at our Sun City is in dire straits. Are you freaking kidding me? Does that mean that the roof collapsing over the Sun Dial pool back in **???? **was no one's fault, too? At the least, no one alive and kicking.
The neglect of all things technological is 100% accountable on both the now-departed General Manager (Jan Ek) and the Boards who stood behind her and refused to ever question or challenge her actions. My first real suspicion about her intentions was when she convinced boards to trash the grandfathering clause for those owning homes in Sun City in 2003 and then moved, either away or into another Sun City home. They intended to grandfather members even after they sold their homes. It didn't matter as she simply argued who really knew what they intended? It became apparent boards were going to go along with whatever she said.
Giving Away Self-Governance Over the Years
It was one of the reasons I elected to run in 2011. By then the quorum had been flushed, and the golfers who had been elected to the board were getting boatloads of money spent on the courses. The meetings were cut down in time and the committees were minimized in their ability to function, and in some cases, totally eliminated. As I mentioned, serving on the board was laughable because virtually everything came through the GM. Carole (Martinez) and I could vote no, but they were the majority and, in the end, they did as they pleased.
While serving on the board, the RCSC was actively pursuing solar. It took forever. The only one working on the contract was the GM. There were lots of issues, and at one point, I suggested it wasn't worth the effort. Finally, a lease deal was done, and members loved the idea of "covered parking." Over time it would save us money and save on energy costs. The lease called for a buy-out in 66 months (we had to do it that way to take advantage of rebates and incentives) and the GM asked us to allocate 4.5 million dollars from the PIF for the payoff. We did, as owning them would eliminate the lease payments and would save us even more money.
Lack of responsibility and accountability is costly as History Shows
Several years after I was gone, a board member called me and asked if we could have coffee. We met, and I was told the GM came and said the 4.5 million dollar buy-out was now 5.5 million dollars. They needed to cough up another million dollars. I was shocked, but no one batted an eyelash about the price skyrocketing. Holding the GM accountable just wasn't anywhere in the board's DNA. They had been trained loyalty to the corporation meant loyalty to the GM. A couple of years after that, word started spreading that the solar panels were under-performing and, in some cases, not even working. It turns out, the employee who had leaked the information was quickly terminated (so the story goes).
Over the years, the bylaws had been rewritten by the GM with boards doing drive-by approvals. There were never questions about the impact on the membership or how the dynamic in the community changed. The board was insulated from recall and the GM never once was held accountable. The old standby always was, "most affordable community with the most amenities." Hell, I said it more times than anyone. It's true, but at what cost?
The final straw for me was when they fired two board members, and I started digging into the idea of golf being self-sustaining. While on the board, I had asked the GM for those documents, and she just didn't know where they were. When I found them at the museum and went through our files, there was no question in my mind: golf was supposed to be cost-neutral. The more I dug, the worse it got. They not only were losing money each year, but they were also spending dollars from capital expenditures at the rate of more than a million dollars a year. I requested the information at the board office as we are told to do, but I received less than half what I asked for. With what I was given, I could see that golf was costing us a small fortune as we were subsidizing it.
Board Members Need to Own Their Responsibilities and Be Held Accountable
This blog isn't about golf though. It is about the board doing what it is supposed to do. The board should have known and told the GM to bring the increase in the solar buyout before the membership for approval; hell, most of them had no clue. They just trusted her to do the right thing. In her mind, I guess subsidizing golf was also just fine, in spite of what the Articles and Bylaws said. In fact, she argued as she was retiring, that was never really the intent when the RCSC purchased the courses. More bullshit by the way.
I know, all this is Monday morning quarterbacking, eh? Not really. Anyone who knows me knows that I have been saying all these same things since 2009. When I was elected to the board, I tried to be supportive of the GM whenever it was warranted. The closer I got to it, the more I realized the incestuous relationship between the board and the GM was bad for Sun City. Mind you, she did some really good things along the way, but she was allowed far too much leeway in her role and voice in Sun City's future.
No one held her accountable; no one questioned whether the employees she hired were capable of doing their job. Her primary objective for both the board members and the staff that she worked with was loyalty; loyalty to her and her words. If it was to the corporation, that would have been acceptable. Unfortunately, too many along the way acted as if everything was just fine. Clearly, it wasn't.
Bill Pearson, member of the Advisory Panel
2 comments:
Thanks for the education. Owners abdicated responsibility to supervise the BOD, the BOD abdicated responsibility to supervise the GM who in turn abdicated supervision of staff by competent hiring of staff.
We could just be a public entity except that the US and AZ State Treasury do not pay for the consequences. We do. Thanks for the education, the wake up call and tenacity in pursuit of financial responsibility
Well stated Marco and the exact reason we have begun Sun City Advocates. Sun City residents had not been paying attention to what was going on. When they fired Karen and then we found out the year before they fired Barbara Brehm, it became crystal clear, the membership mattered not.
To this day, they refuse to acknowledge their actions as being wrong. Imagine, the handful of them (7 board members who fired her) did everything just perfect and those of us who rose up in protest are all wrong.
Those days of ignoring their actions are long gone. We aren't going away, so you might as well start acting like board members who have an obligation to the community, not the RCSC general manager.
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