SaveTheHill.org

Candidate's Night Report, Board Member Removal Begins! by Kevin Wine, Aug 29, 2025, 12:41 AM, reply, branch, edit

Sorry for yet another message, but things just keep happening.

Here is the 2-word executive summary of the Candidate's Night event: Total Disaster.

5 of the 7 candidates tried to attend.
The Board dictator banned 2 candidates from the event that he didn't like.
The event was not well organized and degenerated into a complaint session.
Management/Moderator/Board interjected way too much.

***LATEST*** Board President Mohiuddin Syed has initiated the removal of me from the board, for allegedly releasing board secrets!

Proxy/Ballot Instructions
-------------------------
The Proxy and Ballot procedure is a little different this year, which is probably on purpose, so I have prepared a diagram explaining what goes where. There was an "address page" in the mailing, and you have to tear off the bottom third, sign again under your return address, and insert that torn-off third in the return envelope so the address show through the windows in the return envelope. The instructions are part of a two page flyer, the first page is a list of all the things the current board leadership is doing to silence any opposition and corrupt the election process. The second page is the instructions:

https://www.savethehill.org/Election/Samples/2025Instructions.pdf

Remember - if you want to vote for Candidate Zahid Khan, you have to write his name on one of the write-in lines and check that line. See the picture in the above instructions. This is crazy, but it is what it is for now.

Candidate Night Overview
------------------------
There were about 10 residents attending in person, and about 15 on zoom. Candidate Zahid Khan, Mark Kelsey, and Mohiuddin Syed were attending in person. Candidate Vincent Marchitto attended via Zoom after being illegally banned from attending in person. Candidate John Fakla was also arbitrarily and illegally banned. Candidate Yogesh Patel was missing (work conflict we were told), and Candidate Kalindee Desai was completely missing. From management we had community manager Sonia Danquah, and regional director Meaghan Cannon. Board President Syed had his personal armed security detail, and from Piscataway we had 3 officers to kick off the event.

The three candidates in attendance sat at the front of the room, along with the two management company personnel, and oddly Trustee Matthew Phillips ("Mr. Sticker") also decided to sit himself up at the front even though he is not a candidate. The event was moderated by the community manager.

Hopefully they will release the recording this time. Two years ago they recorded the 2023 Candidate's Night with every intention of releasing it, however after realizing how bad they looked, the file was too big. The best summary I could provide of this event would still not do justice to the actual performance. My guess is it will be "accidentally" erased.

I can see some owners are clearly frustrated by the lack of access to the Board, with limited open meetings and limited speaking time only at the very end. The event was more like an overdue "board open forum" session. Candidate Mohiuddin Syed and the moderator dominated most of the event after the initial introductions. Candidate Zahid Khan was able to get in a few points. One hour was not really enough time to get to many questions as most of the time was spent re-hashing the same old distortions of past events. Candidate Syed left shortly after 8PM. I was able to slip in one quick question about his vote to NOT mail out a corrected ballot with all 7 candidates, which he didn't answer, and Anthony got in one question about Candidate Syed casting the deciding vote on the $97/month maintenance fee increase but Syed had conveniently just left the building. The meeting disintegrated shortly thereafter without any closing statements from the candidates, except of course Candidate Syed.

If you missed the event, you didn't miss anything. I don't know if there is enough interest or support in organizing an actual candidate event, but that is probably what should happen, with no arbitrary exclusions and a level field. You can sense the desperation when it becomes necessary to manipulate the ballot, ban the critics, arbitrarily cut people off, and distort and lie about the past. That all came through loud and clear on Wednesday evening. I don't think they intended this event to really be a candidate night in the first place. It went exactly as they had planned - embellish what they did, blame everyone and everything else for the problems, and keep the meeting short and chaotic to limit the exposure to any tough questions from the audience.

The only marginally useful thing that came out of the event for me is that I was able to talk briefly with the FSR regional director. She says all the ballot issues were just straightforward mistakes, and there is nothing more to it than that. I do need to make it clear that FSR did offer to do another mailing with BOTH all 7 profiles and a new ballot with all 7 candidates, at no cost to the association. It's the board that turned down the part about a new ballot. In one sense, FSR is certainly caught in the middle of the situation which is a very awkward position. While they claim to be neutral and treat all board members the same, there was some pretty obvious bias in the way candidates were handled at this event. Furthermore, where was FSR when President Syed had his secret meeting with the attorney and select board members. They have got to be aware of what the law is. So I'm not totally buying the neutral stance, and I'm still not totally accepting this was all accidents. Even if it was, FSR should have enough experience with condominium elections to realize the critical importance of getting it right the first time. By now you would think they would have well established internal procedures, oversights, and redundancies to eliminate errors. Not even knowing the rules for ordering the candidates by last name is very strange.

The Retaliation
---------------
After I updated some of the candidates on what had been going on with the multiple mistakes on the ballot, I received an email on Wednesday August 27th from President Syed accusing me of "public disclosure of internal Board matters". Clearly he suffers from a profound misunderstanding of the relationship between the board and the owners. You are entitled to know what your board is up to, and especially if it is doing something underhanded, self-serving, and illegal. Every thing the board votes on and does is supposed to be captured in meeting minutes and made public. Excluding a qualified candidate from the ballot and putting the candidates in alphabetical order by the first name (and even screwing that up) are flagrant violations of state laws. And then we have trustee who are candidates in the election, voting on a motion to exclude another rival candidate of theirs from the ballot. While maybe not technically illegal, it is without any doubt a conflict of interest. It is no wonder he doesn't want these "internal Board matters" revealed.

Most of the board's business is conducted in secret, and I keep reminding the board that they should not be operating this way, but neither they nor the association's attorney find anything wrong with the practice, and so it continues. The board and specifically President Syed feel very comfortable keeping information from the owners, so it is coming as a shock to him when the owners find out about something they should have already know about from an open meeting. I should really file another complaint with the DCA over the board's secret business. Clearly it has grown totally out of control and needs to be stopped.

The next day, Thursday, I get an email from the property manager with and Alternate Dispute Resolution (ADR) form attached. She says I need to fill it out. After some teeth pulling, I find out that President Syed has begun the process of forcibly removing me from the Board of Trustees. This guy has some nerve. The ADR process is to have a neutral (supposedly) third-party hear the dispute and try to negotiate a resolution. In this case, it is to "put me on trial" to determine if I have breached the boards confidentiality agreement and released internal board matters. It is a little more complicated, but I'm sure he has no case in the long run, but in the short run he can create a bunch of trouble. He is starting to behave more and more like our previous Dictator Tong Zhou. Funny how I eventually end up fighting with people like this. They are certainly the embodiment of everything I despise about politicians and individuals in leadership positions that corrupt the process for their own preservation and make ridiculous decisions about things they know nothing about, impacting thousands or millions of people. I'm sure I'm not alone in this feeling.

The other form of retaliation we are seeing is against any owner that complains too loudly about their problems or other associations issues. How dare anyone disrespect or criticize the king. We all know there are plenty of other places in the world right now where such actions would land you in jail and quite possibly dead. Fortunately such options are not available to our kings, but they have long since developed other methods of achieving a similar end result - which is to take you out of the picture. Two of our candidates have been the target of such methods, in an attempt to shut down their critiques of the board and certain members. I have not directly witnessed any of the exchanges, but I hear about them and apparently there is sometimes some yelling involved. But that has been it - no threats, no "fighting words", no physical contact. But it's just enough to blow it out of proportion by the king and to exaggerate the incident into something that it was not. With no direct evidence, it's the perfect he said, she said scenario, ripe for exploitation by those with a political agenda to silence and cancel their opposition. President Syed is so full of himself that he has now insisted that an armed security guard be at every meeting because his personal safety is not negotiable. If he keeps moving like he does he probably should be worried, but that is something he has brought upon himself. For example, manipulating the election like he has, or at the very least exploiting some "innocent mistakes", is going to get people angry with him. Hopefully this all eventually resolves in a civilized manner, but he should understand when the very system by which we resolve these matters in a civilized way becomes itself corrupted, there are going to sparks.

The Piscataway Police were called preemptively to the candidate's night event to prevent a show down at the door. Society Hill is private property, so the police don't have the authority to enforce an internal trespass, lacking a court restraining order, of which there were none. All the owners here "own" a portion of the common element and public areas, and you can't trespass someone from their own property, with the limited exceptions of landlord/tenant, domestic violence, and court order. While technically the two banned candidates had every right to enter and sit themselves down at the event, in the interest of avoiding the chance of further escalation, the two impacted candidates did not enter the building. However, this is not a settled matter, and is another example of the totally unacceptable and technically illegal intimidation tactics used by the board to quiet their critics.

Kevin