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Meet the Candidates Wed 6PM??, Special Board Meeting Thurs 7PM by Kevin Wine, Sep 27, 2022, 10:28 PM, reply, branch, edit

It sounds like there will be some form of a "Meet the Candidates" event at the weekly community Zoom meeting. This is the meeting organized and run by community members. I do not know how many of the current Board candidates will be attending. The meeting is Wednesday at 6PM, via ZOOM:

https://us06web.zoom.us/j/82762303583?pwd=OG5DQ2FGZm1kWlhVMFZxTzJUaEN4dz09

Another September Special Board Meeting
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After cancelling the regular September Board meeting last Thursday, the Board then decided that they needed another September meeting after all, and scheduled a special meeting for this Thursday. In case you missed the announcement, here is the ZOOM link for the 29th at 7PM:

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89531025304?pwd=MStsemVaM3dWbllKY2V2TEFVSGpOZz09

I guess there is suddenly a lot of work to be done, as this is the most agenda items we've seen in years:

https://www.savethehill.org/Board/Agendas/2022/Agenda_9-29-2022_SpecialMeeting.pdf

I see they are going to appoint "inspectors" to review the petitions for their removal, further delaying the whole process. I'm not sure what they hope to achieve by further delays, other than maybe buying more time to figure out some trick to ignore the petitions altogether. We will see how that works out for them - there are dozens of owners who have committed to suing the Board to get the petitions enforced, so maybe it will come to that.

Also I see on the agenda that the Board may finally be re-evaluating their $2,000 special assessment. I am not going to hold my breath though, because any reduction in the assessment would be admitting they were wrong, which is too much for our Board President to swallow.

2022 Annual Meeting and Election
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In spite of the fact that the Board has petitions signed by over 51% of all the homeowners for a special election with 6 open seats, and in spite of the law, the Board is charging ahead with its 2-seat election plans. There are 6 candidates for the 2 seats:

https://www.savethehill.org/Election/Profiles/CandidateProfiles2022.pdf

The law is very clear - the Board is legally obligated to combine the special and annual meeting when the petitions are presented within 60 days of the annual meeting/election. This is found in PREDFDA section 5:28-8.11(d), which states:

"2. When the annual meeting of the association membership is scheduled to occur within 60 days of the
submission of the petition, then the [special] election shall be held at the annual meeting."

The petitions were received by the Board on September 8, 2022. The annual meeting/election is scheduled for October 24, 2022. From September 8 to October 24 is 46 days, which is less than 60 days. They seem to have a lot of trouble with math. Although the petitions were delivered after the 2022 annual meeting mailing was sent out in late August, the Board had the petitions 11 days before the September 19th candidate nomination deadline, and 15 days before they planned to send the 2022 election mailing on September 23rd. They had a reasonable amount of time to redo the call for nominations mailing for 6 seats instead of 2.

By the way, they keep insisting that the petitions were received on September 12th, when in fact they were received on September 8th:

https://www.savethehill.org/Legal/2022-9-9_PetitionsDeliveredBoard.pdf
https://www.savethehill.org/Legal/2022-9-9_PetitionsDeliveredRadom.pdf

As I'm sure you have noticed from the candidate profiles, our Board President Tong Zhou is not one of the candidates. I don't communicate with him so I don't know exactly why he decided not to run. You may have also noticed that I am not one of the candidates either. I am still very conflicted on this decision, as my instinct would be to run. In my mind, there is a lot of unfinished business here, and I am not one to give up easily on things. I know there were and still are many owners that supported the way the Association was run in the past, and the vision we shared for where it was going. There were always a few that had other visions or plans, and for a while now they have had the upper hand. Based on the petition response, it is pretty clear that a majority of owners would rather have the Association run by logical, rational, benevolent leaders. We are on the opposite end of that spectrum right now, but I think there is finally some light in the darkness and this rather ugly chapter will soon some to a close.

As to my role going forward - the honest answer is that I really don't know. I guess I will see how things play out in the near term, and like with many thing I've worked on or projects I've done, the answers and the paths will develop in time. I have long since compartmentalized all the personal attacks on me over the years. They are an annoyance, and they burn my time, but I do find some entertainment in debating issues with others. What bothers me more is the systems-level failures that create the environment in which people in leadership positions fail those they lead. Humans in general seem to struggle with decision making - maybe they get it right more times than they get it wrong, but it's a very bumpy process.

As far as my thoughts on the immediate issue of this 2-seat election, my thought is to wait. I think that one way or another, this election is going to get cancelled and replaced by the 6-seat election. They can't ignore all those petitions. And only replacing two trustees this year is not enough to get control of the Board and control of the situation. If there is any justice, the 6 Board members that have created all this friction and heat and burned by now a thousand hours of our collective time will not be on that board anymore.

Kevin