Dick Arendt Asked on 8Mar11:  Assuming no illegal activity has taken place, if a club or service group elects a leader, should a Board of Directors have the authority to override that decision, and refuse to seat that individual as it’s leader?

ALSO

Does a board have the right to demand to see actual vote totals of any club’s elections summarizing the number of votes each candidate received prior to seating any individual as their leader?  If so, please cite the CCR’s regulation that permits that action in both cases.     Thank you.

Response to Dick Arendt’s 8Mar11 Questions:

Dick, thank you for your questions. They get to the heart of some important issues in this community.

1. Concerning “refuse to seat that individual as it’s leader?”:

No. Once a Committee, Club or Service Group has elected its leaders from among its membership, the board should accept and support them. The Board should help its service group leaders and volunteer members be successful through POSITIVE leadership. Volunteerism is seriously damaged when the board is engaged in manipulating a group’s leadership.

2. Concerning “does a board have the right to demand to see actual vote totals of any club’s elections?”:

Yes and no. Everyone has the right to see the vote results, but not the ballots. Secret ballot elections are intended to protect the privacy rights of the voters–not the results. All SCA elections should implement procedures to assure candidates and the voters for that election process it was honest, and that the results could be quickly audited/verified by a disinterested 3rd party.

The Board’s liaison member could observe the ballot counting process from a distance, but not be involved in the actual counting.

Unfortunately, SCA members also have a community-wide issue with secret ballot handling practices. Our community does not faithfully implement a valid “secret” board election as required by law. Last year was a total disaster, and once again this year there are radically new, last minute, and untested ballot handling and counting procedures for the board election.

If we are to trust the results, our members must be demanding far better election planning and processing practices from RMI, Election Committee and the Board. None of those individuals should be allowed to take offense at being questioned. They should be proud to show and tell about how they are guaranteeing absolute integrity in the election results.

Dick Arendt 13Mar11 Questions About Communications:

I believe that lack of communication is perhaps one of the biggest problems that we face today in our community.  So many decisions are made behind closed doors, and as a result, apathy has been the result.

Do you feel that to be the case, and if so, how would you promote open communication within our community in order to reduce it? Do you feel that all emails sent to board members should receive a response?

My Responses To Dick Arendt:

Thank you for pressing this issue as the solution involves more than just simplistic promises from yet another batch of new directors. I apologize for such a long response, but I can not help but be passionate about truly “fixing” this chronic problem.

Of course, all correspondence with the board should be answered in respectful and professional styles. All members are equal, and the board members should demonstrate they know they came from the membership, and eventually they must return to being just another member.

Candidate promises to “improve communications” are often well-intentioned, but extremely difficult to implement. Every candidate ever elected to our board has promised to “improve communications”, but few were able to make tangible improvements during their terms.

I learned as a former director that the cause of the reversal of candidate promises vs. director actions has been the controlling influence from the association attorney, RMI management, CAI training, and the carry-over board member influence. New directors are told they MUST favor the “corporation’s interests” over the interests of the membership that elected them.

They are told they MUST function as a “corporate board team” versus a “shareholder leadership team”. Directors are wrongfully instructed they have only a duty to the lifeless “corporation” and that they must allow members to speak/write, but that directors do not have to listen or respond. This is totally wrong.

New directors are intimidated/bullied into feeling guilty if they dare to speak out in public against the majority will. They are told they are violating their fiduciary duty to the “corporation” if they do not always appear to be a well-oiled, robotic machine that is working in perfect sync and not responding to member complaints or concerns.

They are told that the members do not approve if it appears that there are significant differences of opinion within the board. I passionately believe that members must not be treated like potted plants with no brains and no life experiences.

New directors are also told that a HOA is not a democratic body, and that the US Citizen rights under the Constitutions (US and NV) do not apply to the corporate contract the members signed at time of purchase.

While this is not entirely true, it is also not entirely false. The trick is for smart and compassionate directors to navigate the middle ground, and do what is right for their fellow members.

If a director can not help but follow their conscious and vigorously oppose a bad decision by the majority, the director can be reminded by the “omnipresent controlling force” (the developer’s preferred association attorney–the “minder”) that such an independent/rogue director can be severely embarrassed and punished by the board majority through sustained legal actions and other serious sanctions. I consider this behavior to be a form of extortion.

As a result, you see most directors willfully participating in illegal secret meetings, cover ups of past financial misconduct, and practicing total silence about widespread dissatisfaction with so many board decisions. And, you see that directors never fully respond to complaints or allegations of law violations because the association attorney advises them to keep quiet while he protects them through the government chain. Meanwhile, the SCA HOA web site refuses to allow open and full communications and the association law firm gets wealthy on the backs of our SCA members.

The first step towards implementing professional and respectful communications is to change the secret policy of not listening to members. To do that we have to REPLACE the association attorney with a firm that has no conflicts of interest with the developer and the CAI trade association.

We also have to change the board training by RMI to install the proper balance between concerns over shareholder interests and corporate responsibilities for the common properties.

Directors who are capable of doing that, will be highly successful in implementing open and respectful communications as they will have their priorities aligned properly.