November 29, 2010 by bobfrank.

The true path to financial success in the SCA restaurant lease is the catering kitchen–which (the board has been told) is equal to many of the major kitchens of the major casinos where they serve many thousands with their buffets.

There are over 100,000 people living in ABOUT 35,000 upscale homes in the greater Anthem community area who are likely to respond to unequaled, quality food and service–when and where they want it.

* Catering to SCA clubs and SIGs and neighborhood groups.

* Catering to SCA and other Anthem-area special entertainment events.

* Catering to Anthem via meals-on-wheels to seniors and families with 2 or more working adults who can not, or prefer not to cook for themselves.

* Catering to other Anthem communities who do not have a restaurant or prefer an alternative.

The previous Trumpets lessee proved there were millions in the catering business and we were only half built-out and occupied at that time. Boulevard Cafe owners said they were mostly interested in the SCA catering kitchen to augment their area restaurants that could not handle their catering volume.

The bottom line business opportunity in this venue is for CATERING — NOT GAMING!

And, we are seeing proof that AVR lacks food service experience. AVR truly does not seek to develop the FOOD SERVICE business, or gaming would not be the key interest.

Posted in Community Affairs, SCA Board, Clubs & SIGs, Operations, Lifestyle, News! | Print | No Comments »

November 24, 2010 by admin.

(Revised as of Nov 27) Why DID SCA Board and Communications Committee terminate the SCA-HOA message board?

It is simple.  They refuse to allow their judgment to be challenged or disputed.  It is fine with them if the members will just “recreate” amongst ourselves.  But, members dare not post any public criticism about the board, its supporting committees, or their actions.

Board actions to purge the community website of respectful dispute of board actions is a violation of Nevada Statute NRS 116.3103 and NAC 116.405.  Refusing to allow member dissent about board actions on the internal membership media channels could be judged as violating the board’s fiduciary duty and displaying unacceptably poor business judgment.

See this example of the last message board topic concerning the “gaming poll” just before the board arbitrarily terminated the community web site feature.  Notice that none of the member words violated the terms and conditions of the message board.  The Board appears to be clearly in violation of the Statutes and Administrative Codes.
Last SCA-HOA Message Board Topic–Just Before The Service Was Terminated

This type of gross misconduct and statute violation started under the 2006 Favil West regime when he and his collaborating directors shut down the Business Development Club because his business judgment and misconduct were openly questioned by about 100 SCA members.  He and some of his fellow directors appeared they might have some agreements and conflicts of interest with the developer and the restaurant operator that they wanted to be held confidential.

All the club did was sponsor workshops that wound up telling the Board it was wrong to let the Trumpets lessee get away with owing the community hundreds of thousand of dollars of rent for close to 2 years while continuing to use and profit from free access to SCA’s restaurant facilities.

What the club stated was true, but since that time, telling the royal rulers/directors they “have no clothes” has been decreed to be unacceptable behavior by mere (mortal) members.

Since Favil West’s time, all individuals daring to publish public complaints against the board have been viciously attacked and retaliated against.  In spite of the fact that these directors are just fellow residents without unique expertise, their policy is that “thou shalt never disagree with the board royalty.”  Otherwise, you will suffer severe punishments for your disloyalty.

In the past, if a member spoke up on the message board and opposed a board policy or practice, the member’s posting was summarily deleted.  But, lately, there have been so many members with the courage to openly challenge the board’s  actions by posting compelling facts against the gaming/gambling survey that the Board could not stand the opposition.

What happened was sort of an updated version of the Unity board mantra first heard years ago from former director Lanie Berg who shouted at a board meeting, “We have to let THEM speak, but we don’t have to listen!” That mantra was told them by their association attorney and publicly repeated by such directors as Favil West, Kay Dwyer and many others in their social clique.  The current board refuses to even let us openly speak on our own membership message board–that stays within the community.

The whole message board appears to have been deleted (in part) because a Sun City McDonald Ranch member had successfully sued his board for removing his message board postings.  Our board is already facing membership litigation, and it has probably been told to avoid the additional litigation risks of arbitrarily removing individuals from the message board.

While the best board option was to do nothing, the board’s attorney assures them they can do what ever they want–regardless of member complaints.  And, since it is board election time again in a few weeks, the (Unity Party-sponsored) Directors are determined to stifle all kinds of dissent for fear they might get removed or replaced.  Since they are unpaid (and supposedly uncompensated in any way) it is a mystery why the Unity Party group is so determined to retain absolute board control–forever.

Perhaps we now know why the board, and some former directors recently went out of control at being called “gestapo” and “Nazis” for this kind of arbitrary suppression of member dissent.  Perhaps they prefer to be called “fascists” or “communists”, but the fact remains that the dictatorial concepts of “Big Brother” as used in “Anthem” by Ayn Rand is alive and being practiced by your unity-party-controlled board.

And, in case you do not recall the essence of “Anthem“, here is a wikipedia summary:

“Anthem is a dystopian fiction novella by Ayn Rand, first published in 1937 in England. It takes place at some unspecified future date when mankind has entered another dark age as a result of the evils of irrationality and collectivism and the weaknesses of socialistic thinking and economics. Technological advancement is now carefully planned (when it is allowed to occur at all) and the concept of individuality has been eliminated (for example, the word “I” has disappeared from the language). As is common in her work, Rand draws a clear distinction between the “socialist/communal” values of equality and brotherhood and the “productive/capitalist” values of achievement and individuality. “

This stimulates a question about why Del Webb used the name “Anthem” for so many of its HOA  developments?  Maybe the basic governing rules were always intended to be more diabolical/dictatorial than we have realized?  The previous AV blog about “Del Webb’s outrageous policy requiring 6,431 members to show up at the annual meeting to reject a budget” may be a clue to the developer’s true intent of how SCA is to managed under unquestioned board authority.

In the near future, we hope more residents will feel motivated to help SCA members oppose the suppression of individual behavior by our director-dictators, and continue to speak and act out on the various message boards and blogs.

Freedom is not free–not even in Sun City Anthem!  We need to remember that a new board majority from the next election could quickly reverse the misconduct of the “Big Brother/Unity” party and put Anthem on the right path for the future.

SCA homeowners need to capture the spirit and energy of the “Tea Party Grassroots Movement” and elect a board in 2011 that honestly and ethically serves member interests as its top priority.

Posted in Truth Squad, Ann_Small, SCA Board, Community Affairs, News!, Other | Print | 3 Comments »

November 24, 2010 by THE VOICE.

Since the Board terminated the SCA-HOA message board resource this week, Anthem VOICE has activated a “Community Questions” blog category for member convenience.  Hopefully the other blogs will activate similar services, and all readers will be well-served.

Any SCA member can send an email to anthemvoice@cox.net with a request to post a question of your interest and we will put it up under “Community Questions” with your name.

Other members can then respond and/or comment on the posted questions and comments as they wish.  We will moderate the postings and responses so the new service category is  a useful place to find non-political homeowner-focused questions and answers.

Please feel free to send us email recommendations on how else we can serve homeowner interests.

Posted in Community Questions | Print | No Comments »

November 24, 2010 by THE VOICE.

SUN interview of RMI CEO Wallace reveals interesting facts, and stimulates many comments and questions from those of us in SCA.

http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2010/nov/19/q-kevin-wallace/

“What will HOAs look like in 10 years?

I still think we’ll have homeowners associations. There’s more good that bad that comes out of them. I think there will be more active adult associations as the population changes and more age-restricted communities are created. That’s a trend that’s still viable. I think some projects will evolve. Not all the condos may survive but it will be difficult to unwind.”

Agree.  Even the detractors of HOAs can agree that the “bad” that comes from HOA management is directly from the insensitive, uncaring, arrogant and dictatorial (often referred to in the industry as “Nazi-like or Gestapo-like”)  management behavior of some elected directors.  (Even members of our own NV Legislature have used such terms to describe the need for statutes to anticipate and prevent dictatorial HOA board misconduct.)

It sounds like Kevin Wallace sees the handwriting on the wall.  He knows better than most in the industry that community leaders (such as those in SCA who have opposed the frequent misconduct of our boards) will eventually be successful.

There is a (slowly) growing recognition that for HOAs to prosper in the future, the system must improve the abilities of HOAs to clean house when finding themselves burdened by directors who fail to place the homeowner interests ahead outside interests and the director’s personal interests.

Some even believe the unprecedented success of the 2010 grassroots, “Tea Party” movement in the US has begun to wake up the citizenry to be less afraid of questioning authority, and to be more willing to demand that elected officials serve the community and not themselves.  If this takes hold within the HOA markets, people like Kevin Wallace will see much faster progress than expected.

Every day of a senior’s life is especially valuable, and misbehaving directors can be considered stealing valuable days from the homeowners they claim to represent.  Senior HOA unit owners often try to ignore board misconduct while they are trying to enjoy their retirements.  But, eventually, they discover it is smarter to quickly purge the misbehaving directors than to tolerate them for untold months or years.

Because the boards of large HOAs are able to totally control the information (propaganda) flows to members (except the really bad news that gets into the public news channels), HOAs such as SCA take longer to deal with their management problems.  But, history shows it is impossible to fool most of the members–forever.

By the way, a few questions we wish could have been asked in the interview are:

1. Has RMI partnered with Del Webb/Pulte (largest USA developer) on a multi-State basis to accomplish its rapid expansion?
2. Why does RMI send less than fully qualified Community Managers to SCA and they wind up leaving in less than 2 years?  Is SCA a “training site” for RMI’s rapid development plans?  How much does SCA save by accepting provisionally-licensed CAMs who are in on-the-job training status for up to a year?
3. Why are RMI’s community managers so often charged with violating Nevada Statutes and Administrative Code?  Are they not properly trained, or is the RMI management policy to ignore the Statutes if directed by a Board President?
4. Why does RMI market its unique capabilities to manage an association’s records using all-digital capabilities when its largest (and RMI’s most profitable) customer (SCA) is still paper-bound and often unable to find records in less than 2 weeks?  Is this a case of false RMI advertising, or is it the SCA Board’s policy to stay with higher-cost paper records that are easily lost while withholding information from unit owners?

Perhaps our AV readers can think of other questions they would like to ask CEO Wallace?

Posted in Truth Squad, SCA Board, Laws & Rules, News! | Print | No Comments »

November 21, 2010 by admin.

Monday, November 22nd at 9 AM is the 2010 Annual Membership Meeting.  The most important item on the annual membership meeting is the ratification or rejection of the Board’s proposed budget for the subsequent year.

As every Sun City Anthem member should know, it is IMPOSSIBLE for Sun City Anthem unit owners to reject a budget. Thanks to what some of us consider fraudulent behavior by Del Webb and the subsequent continued behavior by SCA boards since 1999, SCA Boards always have a blank check to do whatever they wish on the budget.  That is not what is intended by Nevada Statutes.

We have vigorously complained about this outrageous situation for over 4 years; but, it has been a waste of time.  Without there being an ethical board majority who understand the true meaning of “fiduciary duty”, there is no way to force any changes to anything in the budget or in the rate of assessments. For anyone to pretend otherwise is plainly insulting.  For example:

* SCA CC&Rs have always required (originally inserted by Del Webb in 1999) that over 90% of 7,144 unit owners much show up in person to reject a budget.  Otherwise, whatever the board wants in the budget is automatically approved.  We believe that rule is a license to financially abuse/defraud the members. 

* Even if 90% wanted to attend the annual meeting, there is no place large enough to hold a meeting for so many thousands of members.

* NRS 116 only requires 50% +1 to reject a budget, so the Del Webb and recent boards have been knowingly forcing unreasonable/bogus budget rejection criteria on SCA members for over a decade.

* Even if only 50% +1 was the SCA rule, it would be impossible to find a place to seat over 3,572 members.

* So, the only feasible way to conduct an ethical budget ratification process in SCA would be to implement the State standard and to conduct it by secret ballot by mail.  The ballots/votes on the budget, and any other ballot measures placed before the membership, would be counted during the November annual meeting–as we do for the May board election membership meeting.

While serving on the SCA Board, I proposed CC&R changes to remove Del Webb’s outrageous 90% budget rejection requirement, revert to the State criteria of 50%, and conduct a secret ballot prior to the annual meeting for ratification. But, that was soundly rejected by the other directors in 2007 and 2008.  The main objection was that is would be too hard to do.  But, the objections were based on faulty assumptions on how the membership approval would have to be conducted. Where there is the will, there is a way–always!

Those who attend the annual meeting on November 22nd @ 9 AM are encouraged to support this idea.  And, since a “decision” is impossible during this annual members meeting, the matter will have to become a issue for the next board campaign.

It will be interesting to see what lame barriers will be used to argue against this practical issue.  No matter what anyone says, the members have a right to meaningfully participate in the budget approval process.  That right does not truly exist at this time.

How could any reasonable person argue to retain such an unreasonable/fraudulent budget ratification process?  Could you not agree that no matter what it takes, the outrageous “90% budget rejection criteria” and the “no voting on the budget by mail” must be fixed in the future?

Should every board candidate in the future be required to sign a pledge to repair this broken process?

Posted in Ann_Small, Truth Squad, SCA Board, Laws & Rules, News! | Print | No Comments »

November 16, 2010 by admin.

Throughout the US, many homeowners living in HOAs are claiming their Boards of Directors are dictatorial and have called for help through public media channels.

The SCA Board’s poor reputation has recently earned it exposure on the NV hoa-advocate site.
http://www.the-hoa-advocate.com/

Channel 13 has also picked up on the “HOA Hall of Shame” topic.  Here is a link to the site.
http://www.ktnv.com/Global/story.asp?S=13406544

And, here is an example of one post to the Channel 13 message board by “homeowner advocate”:

“Some people missed the point of the HOA Hall of Shame. The purpose is to highlight the widespread abuse by HOA Boards, HOA Community Managers and their companies, Association Attorneys, Association Auditors, members of the NV Commission for Common Interest Communities and Condominiums, Real Estate Division members, developers, CAI leaders, etc.

Sure, some homeowners act badly because they are jerks or maybe because they have been treated very badly and unfairly by one or more elements of the “controlling powers” listed above. When one digs into the details of the most outrageous disputes, it is rare to find a jerky homeowner. Usually we find jerks on the boards. Sometimes it is a mystery how a poor homeowner can ever receive justice.

The NRS 116 and NAC 116 laws and rules read like they are homeowner-friendly, but the enforcement is often spotty and disputes can take many years to be resolved. One of the biggest problems is that the HOA system violates some basic principles of the American Justice System. For example, free speech and due process are not normally guaranteed to homeowners.

This outstanding effort by Channel 13 and Mr. Friedrich and others involved should be supported for doing the public a great service.”

Posted in Truth Squad, SCA Board, Community Affairs, Laws & Rules, Operations | Print | No Comments »

November 14, 2010 by bobfrank.

I did not attend last week’s Restaurant Advisory Committee meeting due to hosting a house full of family visitors; but, the report posted on the board’s surrogate blog site confirmed the meeting was a waste of time, and only 35 members attended.

Verbal statements pumped out at such meetings are easily misunderstood and/or only partially answered to suit special interests. As in the case of other types of “corporate meetings,” only written answers to specific questions should be accepted by the membership . If the vote was “above board,” all pertinent questions would have been answered before the ballots were mailed out. Has anyone explained the rush?

Meanwhile, members are reminded that even after many weeks of waiting, NONE of the relevant questions from various member sources have been answered in writing by the board, CAM or lessee. Examples of unanswered questions are:

1. Who will pay for what?

2. Why is there a vote held before the details are known?

3. Why should the voting results be trusted as valid?

4. Why did the board refuse to allow ‘member opposition statements to the ballot issue’ be included in the Spirit mailing as required by Nevada Statutes?

The only written responses received to detailed questions have come from a former board member who is married to a current board officer. He claims he is only stating his opinion, and he does not really know the facts. And, yet, none of the questions are hard to answer, and none of them qualify as “board-restricted” information.

What does this improper/illegal board and lessee withholding of vital financial information tell the membership?

Posted in Truth Squad, Ann_Small, SCA Board, Community Affairs, Operations, Laws & Rules, News! | Print | No Comments »

November 7, 2010 by admin.

Because the bar code on the address list of the ballot can be scanned and compared to the association’s membership list, I am not worried about Ballot Box being able to validate the accuracy of the addresses of the ballots.

But, there is no way to confirm a unit owner actually submitted the vote received. 

A simple Word file can be printed to enter addresses with bar codes on any label, card stock or piece of paper of any kind that will feed through a printer.  Any quality printing company could easily duplicate the paper stock used for the official ballots.

There is nothing trustworthy about this poll/voting process.

It appears to be a scam.  Why is this poll/ballot process being tolerated by the Board, CAM, association attorney and SCA membership?

Posted in Truth Squad, SCA Board, Community Affairs, Operations, News! | Print | No Comments »

November 3, 2010 by bobfrank.

Form: Board of Directors
Community: Sun City Anthem
Submitted By: ROBERT E FRANK at 2374 SANDSTONE CLIFFS DRIVE

Addressed to All SCA CAI Directors, CAM, Finance Committee, and Association Attorney:

Let’s see if we understand what has been said about the gaming poll:

1. This is ‘just a poll–not a vote‘, but a decision will be made by the Board to implement gaming if at least
   1,252 ‘ballots’ are delivered by the lessee with markings in favor of implementing gaming.  Is that a fact?

2. Since the lessee controls the voting process, it alone will know how many ballots were received and what
   the results were.  Is that a fact?

3. While the Ballot Box company will tally the votes, it will be bound by a business confidentiality agreement 
   the mail with the desired number of yes votes to control the outcome.  Is that a fact?

As has been said numerous times before, this is an UNTRUSTWORTHY process. Without verification and validation
controls established, fraud could creep into the process and corrupt the results. As it is, the disclosed
procedures can NOT produce results that could be used to force the members of this community to accept gaming
in our facilities.  Only a secret ballot as spelled out in NRS 116 could minimize the SCA liabilities.

Out of all the CPAs, attorneys and other smart people serving on the Board, committees and CAM, why
has this flawed process been accepted? Why did the association attorney go along with it?  Is there anyone on
the board with the knowledge and strength to tell the Board President he is creating a huge liability by
following this process?

Robert E. Frank
Former SCA Director

Posted in Truth Squad, SCA Board, Laws & Rules, Operations | Print | No Comments »