Over the past 12 years
or so the ECA Council has gradually abdicated it's former responsibilities.
These included:
1) In 2001 the Council was an autonomous body designed to
be a legislative authorization entity and legislative check and balance on the
Board and General Manager’s activities and expenditure decisions. Special Places
were independent and autonomous entities. Special Place Reps had equal responsibility
including the Special Place Chair whose role was to facilitate dialogue amongst
members, reps and document with the secretary what occurred at meetings. There
was no reporting relationship of anyone in a Special Place to the Council President
or any member of the Council. No Council
President meetings with Chairs occurred to dictate what was occurring in the
community governance.
2) In 2001, Paragraph 8.6 (a) of the Declaration of Covenants
read: "The Board may purchase new capital items so long as the purchase
amount for such item does not exceed two
percent (2%) of the revenues budgeted from the combined Operating and
Capital assessments. New capital purchases exceeding this amount shall require
the approval of a majority................". The current version of 8.6 (a) enables the Board to expend
hundreds of thousands of dollars to replace any existing capital items such as upgrading a vehicle to a more improved, powerful
vehicle or fitting up South Cove as deemed necessary, or replacing components
of a building, be it air conditioning, septic system, ovens or whatever suits
their fancy with no oversight of these decisions.
3) A Quarterly Council Financial Review of the Year-to-Date
performance of the community Operations and Capital expenditures. The reviews
were given by the Finance and Budget Committee Chair. Tony Crecca was the last
one who did this task in an open and transparent fashion. Tony and his
predecessors knew it was their responsibility along with former general manager
Tom Wade, to not only report on the community's financial performance but to
address any questions and educational needs of Council Members. This
responsibility was gradually removed in the past 10 years through the combined
efforts of Ken Ryder, Garth Rand, Bob Parker and Maynard Goldman. The
Board President has taken over almost all financial authority using Board Policies
to place additional authority in the Board.
4) In 2006 the Golf Committee reporting relationship was
changed to the Board, once again using Board Policies as the mechanism. Previously,
Quarterly Golf Financial Reports were given by the Golf chair, who was
appointed by the Council Chair, to the Council and were accountable to that
body.
Today's Council is
essentially a governance deception to inexperienced, uninformed ECA members. Little
individual due diligence is done by members as they are not provided meaningful
historic and current detail information. It is a waste of time, money and energy
other than to ensure there is little or no Council or community decision
authority as to what the Board and General Manager are doing with our monies and
community infrastructure. The deception is orchestrated by long serving
council reps primarily from Greensward and West Cove, joined by newbies (often
golfers) accompanied by a few others. Their efforts are supported by Ken Ryder.
(For example see http://eastmanblog.blogspot.com/2014/07/a-shell-game-renovate-center.html)
A key player in the dumbing down of the
Council and its members has been the General Manager who joined the community
in 2000 from a position in the Lebanon Public Works department. Mr. Ryder has failed
to be open and transparent to members of the Eastman constituency by not
providing a complete audit trail as to all changes in the Declarations of Covenants
on the website. The deception has included the gradual dilution of meaningful
financial reports and the illusion that the current Council responsibilities
were consistent with its former authorities.
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