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