DEMOCRACY IS ALIVE & WELL IN SCA – NOT!

                              

                                  

Well, my first foray into the world of political ambition was a bust!  A group of residents here in South Park, SCA, decided to organize and kick the SCA HOA’s (Sandycove Home Owners’ Association) butt.  Why?  Because the HOA decided that they would not fight Parkbridge’s filing for an Above Guideline Increase (AGI) by filing an appeal at the Landlord & Tenant Board.  Why?  Because apparently Parkbridge applies every year for an AGI and the SCA HOA wants to save the $40,000.00 + dollars they currently have in short-term GICs; money paid by its members over the years, so they can fight the AGI next year.  "I'll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today".  Does anyone see the logic in delaying?  I don’t.  Perhaps if Parkbridge is challenged ‘today’, there won’t be an AGI next year?  Oh, and the cost to hire a Paralegal (when the HOA finally got off their asses and moved forward to deal with the AGI), is estimated to be between $1,500.00 and $2,000.00.  Based on that, I would say that the HOA has enough to hire legal representation for the next 20+ years, if necessary.

That’s one reason.  The other and, perhaps, the most compelling one is not only the deterioration of some of our services but the complete cessation of others, since Parkbridge bought Sandycove Acres in late 2013.  The worst?  The snow clearance and maintenance of the common areas in the grass growing seasons.   Yet the HOA Board of Directors voted unanimously NOT to meet with some of the member residents to even discuss the issue of filing a T-6 for a rent abatement.  In my opinion, there are 10, count ‘em, ten useless Directors on the HOA Board.

Parkbridge Adult Lifestyle Communities,  bought ‘us’ just before Christmas 2013, which made it my second winter here in South Park, SCA. The existing Community Manager was staying on and since she was privy to the previous year’s problems, the winter of 2013/2014 snow clearance wasn’t terrible.  OMG, it hasn’t been terrible since then, it has been absolutely abysmal. I could write a book about the problems here in South Park, SCA but that isn’t the reason I am writing this blog post.  It is the main reason I decided to stand for election to the Home Owners’ Association Board of Directors.

It is, once again, about the sense of entitlement and small-and-petty minded residents here in SCA, who think that they ‘deserve’ things, I think mostly because they’re been here a long time; or because they’ve volunteered on some of the committees, that they deserve to get whatever it is they want.  I used to have a next door neighbour like that.    Though this attitude is not unique to The Entitled here in SCA, north or South Park, it is the mind-set I live with and see every day, including the bossy-pants women I’ve met in Aquayak but that’s a sequel, which I’ll get to one day.  

Since most of the SCA Home Owners' Association Board of Directors have been in ‘office’ since Time Began, I decided to run for the Board and hopefully inject new blood and new thinking.  Most of the Directors are dinosaurs and I believe that their creative juices fossilized somewhere around the Jurassic period. Sad to say that the President of the SCA HOA BoD (Sandycove Acres Home Owners’ Association Board of Directors) is the oldest dinosaur still roaming SCA soil and the one I call The DoAsIsayasarus.  If you don’t, you’re out of the herd.  So, 9 people seem to just blindly follow The Leader.  I can just hear my mother now, “So, if your best friend decides to jump off a cliff, will you be jumping right behind her?”  The Leader is so wrong so much of the time and it seems to have rubbed off on ALL the Board of Director members, who don’t even seem to realize that running to be elected, even if only to a Board of Directors, is a political process, witness by this message received on Monday, May 30/16 via bulk snail mail and I quote verbatim: 

A MESSAGE FROM YOUR CURRENT HOME OWNERS’ ASSOCIATION DIRECTORS

CONCERNING THE ELECTION OF DIRECTORS FOR 2016/2017

At the Wheel – Sunday June 12 @ 1:30 p.m.

                                   

“Your Board of Directors has noted with considerable dismay that, for the first time in over 40 years, the election of your representatives has become a “political party” situation with canvassing for support and a candidates meeting.  This meeting, by the way, is NOT an Association event but is being held by a separate group of residents primarily to promote their own slate of nominees.  

                                   

Wrong again, DoAsIsayasarus, we are ALL brand new INDEPENDENT candidates, who had the help and support of some residents, who are enlightened enough to see that change is needed, and instead of the lip service, which is all we seem to get from the current and past SCA HOA BoD.  The group put their money, time and effort where their mouths are and actually did something constructive to help promote the new candidates to become known to SCA residents.  We also helped increase membership in the HOA because only members can vote. 

And it goes on to say, in the typical SCA HOA BoD fascist way: 

"This development – which we feel is not the Sandycove way and most inappropriate – is not of our choosing or to our liking."  

Well now, isn’t that just too bad??!!!!  Tsk, tsk, imagine that someone(s) would DARE to run against the current Board of Dictators, who seem to believe that being on the SCA HOA BoD is for their lifetime.  Which actually just might be so, judging by the way they’ve written their Constitution and By-laws (you can access on their website), and which are woefully out-dated since the last time they were updated was in 2010, pre-Parkbridge.  

There is a lot more that can be said for the two-sided piece of SCA HOA BoD political propaganda I received on May 30/16 (but I'll keep it short), which they were very clear to print on the front of the mailing envelope “(Paid for by the Directors personally)”.  What exactly did the Directors pay for?  Did they pay for just the printing of this piece of s*%t?  If so, who picked up the cost of the envelopes and the postage?  Oh, and talking about propaganda - who paid for the 3 page piece, load of crapola, which I feel is mis-information, half-truths and untruths, which I received via bulk snail mail on March 21/16? 

Trying to get answers on the voting process, in particular the proxy voting, is like getting a root canal – lengthy, half-assed and not satisfying.  Answers were not forth-coming unless I pushed like mad and were contradicted by information which was made public by the HOA, usually right after I asked the questions.  AND, if the President didn’t like my responses, I got this from him a bunch of times:  “We stand by our previous responses and this is our final communication on the matter.”  Nice, huh?

The proxy ballot is a work of art and set-up totally slanted to favour as many of the current Board Members as possible by the way the names are put in order.  Instead of being in a single column and alphabetical by last name, they made two columns and set the names up alphabetically, side-to-side.  Oh, and their rules for the disbursement and pick-up of the proxy ballots are only verbal and are even more slanted. They have holes in the procedure big enough to drive a Mack truck through.  Some of it seemed to be made up as they went along.

So, a few Newbies decided to run for the SCA HOA BoD to try and make a difference in the tunnel-thinking SCA HOA BoD, as dictated by the President.  Two people dropped out fairly quickly, as they were, according to one of the new candidates, “so persecuted for deciding to run, they couldn’t take the heat" and got out of hell’s kitchen.  One other was a late nomination and one I believe was brought in as a ringer to split the number of votes other new candidates might get and thus, diminish the chances of a newbie winning.  And so, the result?  The same 10 dinosaurs were re-elected.  So I assume that we can look forward to another year of the same old close-minded, narrow-minded, petty-minded, tyrannical, despotic ruling by the very committee who seems to be in Management’s pocket, judging by the decisions they make and why.  

And, yes, once again, speaking from both sides of his face as usual, the President informed some members that a count by candidate was available, it just has to be requested and yet, on their website, it is VERY CLEARLY stated:  

”As has been the tradition with the Home Owners AGM & Elections actual vote counts are not made public.   Only the successful candidates names.”    

Man-oh-man, Mad Magazine sure had it right with their feature, ‘What They Say and What It Really Means’. Or, maybe it’s more a case of the Horse’s Ass just not knowing the Horse’s head is doing.  They deserve each other. 

  

We, as SCA resident members, definitely deserve better.

© 2016 Phyllis Mahon aka Undercover Sandycove-r 

LOVE ME, LOVE ME NOT

Funny the reasons some people may like you … or not.  Recently, I had an epiphany about something as mundane as sod.  Yes, I mean sod.  You know, the green stuff which is your lawn, besides the weeds.

As Wiki defines it:  The Poaceae (English pronunciation: /poʊˈeɪ.siˌiː/) or Gramineae are the large and nearly ubiquitous family of monocotyledonous flowering plants known as grasses. The Poaceae include the cereal grasses, bamboos and the grasses of natural grassland and cultivated lawns (turf) and pasture. Grasses have stems that are hollow except at the nodes and narrow alternate leaves borne in two ranks. The lower part of each leaf encloses the stem, forming a leaf-sheath.   Leaf-sheath, leaf-sheath, leaf-sheath.  You try to say that 5 times fast.

I just know my lawn grows like crazy, beginning in mid-to-late April and I usually have to mow it by the first week in May.  This year was kinda weird, in that the grass had grown so high in the first 5 or 6 feet out from the porch, it was almost taller than Sofie, The Wonder Dog.  Sometimes, when that happens, she tends to wander over to the neighbour where the grass is shorter and use the facilities there, ‘cause she really doesn’t like it when the grass tickles her cute little pink belly.  It really doesn’t have to be very high for that to happen. 

For whatever reason, the rest of the lawn right to the driveway wasn’t growing much at all, except for those yellow-headed cheery mop heads, aka dandelions.   Dilemma time.  Should I just mow the part of the lawn that really, really needs it so Sofie would stay on our side?  Or should I mow everything even though 80% of the mowing time and effort would show zero results?

As I stand at my front door and survey my queendom, I sigh and know that I know the answer.  I have to mow.  At least the part gone wild and decide to just get it over with.  I change into my early spring lawn mowing outfit; old jeans (hmmm, they’re a little big at the waist – nice) and a ratty old Taz T-shirt, sweat-stained Mickey Mouse baseball hat and erstwhile running shoes I have kept for the very purpose of mowing.  Oh yeah and sun glasses.  I carry the lawnmower battery to the back door (it lives in the ‘Dora’ bedroom during the winter, as per the user’s manual and gets charged once a month.  The weed whacker battery is charged and ready to go too.

I tromp though the shortish grass out the back to the 3' x 8’ storage shed Management so generously provides and unlock the door.  For some reason, I always scoot back when I open the door ‘cause I kinda expect a swarm of something to come bursting out.  I consider this necessary though, ‘cause when I first inspected my storage locker after moving here, I had to knock down quite a number of small roundish mud wasp nests from the cardboard covered chicken wire, which separates my storage from my neighbours.  And, you never know what other critters may have taken refuge in there over the cold winter months.

A few things need to be rearranged to get to the lawnmower and I finally lug the thing out along with the weed whacker.  I push it mightily, making a trail in the longish grass around the locker area to the back door, where its energy source is waiting and get both batteries inserted.  I lift the yellow handle on the lawnmower and pull it up and the lawnmower starts with a reassuring roar.  I wasn’t quite sure if the battery charger was working, as the little red light is supposed to turn green when the charge is complete (it takes about 12 hours).  The little light hadn’t been turning green anymore toward the end of last summer.  I called the company which supplies new battery chargers (for $80.00 yikes!) and explained the problem and the man I spoke to said that it could just be the green bulb was burnt out.  Well, I wasn’t going to pay $80.00 for a green bulb and decided to take my chances that the charger would charge.   It appears that it is.

I chug off to the front of the house and start with the section gone mad.  It didn’t take too long to get that done and I finally decide to just leave the rest.  There really was no point in mowing something if it didn’t look like you mowed it.  Sofie was happy.

A week later I get home from a meeting and survey my (leased) land.  This time the grass is undeniably long all over and dandelions are running rampant. Sighing, I change into my lawn mowing outfit and trudge out to the storage shed, doing my little dash-backward dance when I fling the door open.  I sometimes wonder what my neighbours think when they see me doing that.

I trek to the front yard and turn on the lawnmower, which shows 2-out-of-3 green lights, meaning the charge is 2 thirds full.  I hope that’s enough to get everything done, especially the insane first 5-6 feet from the porch.  There’s just enough juice to get both front, sides and back yard done and then I weed whack. I’m pretty sweaty by the time I finish sweeping the sidewalk off but it all looks good and I love the smell of freshly mown grass.

So where is all this heading, you ask?  Well, a good friend of mine, Jae, who’s an avid gardener and the one responsible for the little garden I now have at the front of my house, called while I was out.  I called her back and she very casually asks what I plans I had for Thursday or Friday, as she had some gardening in mind.  My gardening and expanding my garden, as it turns out.  Yep, she had been busy splitting some of her mature perennials and wanted to share them with me. Here we go again. Without her sweat-equity though, and plants from her garden, I would still just have Poaceae growing right up to my porch.

Well, it turned out that I hadn’t made any plans for Thursday and it was a beautiful sunny, warm day.  My house faces south, so gardening in the morning is definitely a sweaty affair.  My friend, Jae, does most of the heavy stuff, as a wonky knee does not lend itself to pushing a shovel into the cement-like ground.  Jae seems to push it down effortlessly and gently pries a good-size piece of freshly mowed lawn, now known as sod, out the ground.  Jae casually mentions that her husband, Dave, said "hi", which makes me pause for thought, as we're not exactly friends.  I’m not sure what caused the disapproval I sense from him but I don’t spend a whole lot of time thinking about it or him, if any.   And, really, what it boils down to for me, is that I only care what people think of me, if they are important in my life.

Then Jae casually mentions, that Dave mentioned, that if there was any sod from turning more of my lawn into garden, he wouldn’t mind having it to fill in some of the bald spots around their yard, which is where all the sod from my now-garden went the first two times.  Ah ha!  The penny drops.  Dave may not like me but he loves my sod!  And I just know that every time he looks at the not-so-bald spots-anymore, he can’t help but remember where all that nice green Poaceae came from.  Put that grass in your pipe and smoke it, dahlink!

© 2016 Phyllis Mahon aka Undercover Sandycove-r - “ALL IMAGES AS COPYRIGHTED BY PHYLLIS MAHON ARE PROTECTED AND REGISTERED … IT’S UNLAWFUL TO REPOST, COPY OR PUBLISH IMAGES FROM THIS WEBSITE.”