A Memo to 'The Disruptors” 

Dated:  Dec 13, 2021

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"Today I read through an email that I received from a friend who still lives in the community. I was appalled by what I read. A group in opposition to the Activity Center Renovation and other decisions being made by the management and the leaders in the community, has now been labeled as “The Disrupters”. And that label is not just a whisper but has been put in print for distribution throughout the community using secret and/or club contact lists, as well as in community news publications! The leaders had been challenged and they were not a happy clan.

 

My wife and I made a tough decision this past spring. We decided for our mental and financial well being to leave. 

I was a Club President. I had served on the Properties Committee. I also offered my professional land surveying services to the community through management whenever questions arose regarding properties in the community. I did this while employed full time and in between consulting work I was doing when I retired.

 

I never had the need to deal with management or the board beyond the necessary functions involved with being Club President or the calls to review certain property issues. This was the case until COVID changed the landscape. More importantly, this was the case until I was called to participate in a “Club” review of the Activity Center Renovation proposal with a board member, the Activity Center Renovation Committee liaison, who by the way is now the president of the board of directors (see how that group works) and members of the Activity Center Renovation Committee, before it was put to a community vote.

 

That meeting and the follow up to it were very enlightening. To me it revealed an underbelly within the community that, as it turns out, was the controlling force behind the decisions being made on behalf of a mostly ill-informed or reticent remainder of the community.

 

Having concerns with the cost and design of the Activity Center Renovation, I became involved with a “Vote No” effort. That revealed the players. It also brought to light the discriminating Board Policy #COM-003, a rule capable of squashing any opposition to the leaders' efforts. I would encourage anyone who reads this memo to find that document (if it hasn’t been taken off the website yet) and read it. It’s a controlling document created after the 2011-2013 efforts in getting the Fitness Center renovated. The leaders didn’t like the fact that there was opposition to their Fitness Center plan and the community's uprising over it which resulted in a shot down of the proposal via the resident vote. They created a rule to make it more difficult for opposition to their efforts in the future.

 

I got involved in Zoom meetings before the community vote on the Activity Center Renovation. I asked questions. Some were never answered. Some were answered by saying they would follow up, like posting all the Activity Center Renovation Committee meeting minutes. Management posted minutes for half of all the meetings with some in between missing. They were posted just before the vote so nothing further could be questioned.

 

I and another designer came up with alternative plans to the original design being presented, that several people who looked at them, agreed would be more efficient, less expensive and less disruptive than the plan being pushed. Other than a meeting with the Committee liaison and the Committee Chair, those presentations went nowhere. It was then that it became really clear to me that this underbelly of the community, would never change. 

 

When the challengers are always being told to just “go along, to get along” and seeing no stress-free way to counter that, my wife and I opted to uproot what we thought was our happy place and leave the community. Since departing we have maintained like-minded contacts. We follow the goings on. We applaud and support the efforts of  "The Disruptors”!

 

In closing, I want to call out an individual. That individual seems to be at the center of the distribution efforts by the leaders to demean and slander the “disruptors”. That individual called me during the “Vote No” effort because I had allowed my phone number to be posted on flyers that were distributed. That individual was overly pleasant with me on the phone.  It led me to believe they supported our efforts. A week or so later, in an email that was forwarded to me by someone concerned about what the leaders were doing, I saw that this individual was really a sneak and only called me earlier to glean information they weren’t privy to.

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This individual, being at the center, had sent directions to Clubs to use their contact lists to distribute information in response to the “Vote No” effort. But yet the “Vote No” group received an email from the association saying they violated Board Policy #COM-003. The hypocrisy was over the top. I lay that all at the feet of that individual woman, whom I don’t know. I couldn’t pick her out of a lineup. But I do know she is a key player if not the chairperson for the leaders. She had not only contacted me in her efforts to degrade us, but another resident  involved in the "Vote No' group, with false and disrespectful remarks.

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Finally, good luck with efforts to straighten things out and make the place we thought it was when we moved there 17 years ago."