Apartheid means "the state of being apart ". It is a state where rights, associations and participations are selective and limited to some parties. One example of Eastman governance apartheid practice is demonstrated by the recent fiasco lasting over two years where golfers and fellow elitists duped ECA owners into thinking the CETF Committee and the CRC Committee were representative across the community. In fact both committees were made up virtually exclusively of golf members which represent 20% of Eastman owners and 100% of those who think a building is a core value of a community.
Meanwhile these golf members and their elitist allies have scammed the 80% non-golf Eastman owners in an absurd series of charettes (charades?), meetings and propaganda designed to deceive community owners into the proposition of wasting $4.5 million plus interest which brings total waste to $6.1 million. The reason? “To improve the Golf experience.” (See http://eastmanblog.blogspot.com/2014/10/eastman-ownership-assessment-shackles.html)
Some years ago the then ECA Board president announced at a Burpee Hill Special Place meeting, "We need to get the RIGHT people at Eastman". In retrospect, this announcement was a “heads up” that an apartheid state was being put in place. This is exactly what has been done over the last several years under the leadership of Maynard Goldman, Sheila Schulman and the Board. In a series of calculated, deceptive and broad sweeping changes to Eastman governance, most ECA owners who are non-golfers have essentially lost any transparency and participation rights.
Some of these governance changes have been documented in earlier posts. The mind-numbing results of back room governance changes include:
1) Absolute power provided to the Board President.
2) This absolute power allows Mr. Goldman to dictate that he has no conflict of interest regarding any decisions he makes. He has declared that he will not obtain an outside legal opinion regarding the appropriateness of his own decisions.
3) His Committee selection power stacked the composition of the Center Committees to ensure that it was and is almost entirely golf members-- 20% of the community. Does the deliberate conscious elimination of 80% of the members of the community represent apartheid? You bet it does. The Eastman elitists are so smart that pickpocketing their less fortunate neighbors is a game to them.
4) A Nominating Committee selection process of governance officials led by Larry Schulman, who claims that he can't get anyone to run. Of course he can't - who wants to join an apartheid governance other than those who like to deprive people of open, transparent governance with financials that fail the lowest level of acceptable standards? Mr. Schulman's Committee also does not allow write-in candidates and is over loaded with golf and elitist ECA owners. These well-entrenched apartheids will overwhelm any daring soul who wants to cause change in the Eastman apartheid Board.
5) The Council Chair Mr. Parker, now Mr. Niles as the “chief apartheid enforcer” (outside the Board) ensures through his selection process and through his control of the Council Agenda that the apartheid fences are raised higher and higher in the community. He will seduce naïve ECA owners by forming a Committee pre-designed to achieve nothing and ultimately take away more owner rights as did one of his predecessors, Garth Rand.
Any ECA owner who naïvely thinks an apartheid state can be changed from within has not read about Nelson Mandela’s opposition efforts against the Afrikaners. Ultimately the only reason the APARTHEID system was defeated was by external pressure from businesses and corporations led by stockholders, students and employees who demanded they do the right thing. Eastman owners have no such body to support them nor are they willing to be open and transparent to the public about their issues. Non-golf Eastman owners refuse to admit publicly that the Eastman apartheid state empowers Eastman governance to usurp ever more power over Eastman owners.
The seduction is hardly new--it has been used toward the blacks, it has been used in South Africa, it has been used in Crimea and it will continue to be used by those who take advantage of others and step on anyone who gets in their way.
Some ECA owners think that some ECA Board Members are sympathetic to a democratic community. Some Board Members have made emotionally appealing statements; what actions beyond words, have these Board Members taken to stop Eastman apartheid and other destructive actions? Actions which include the elimination of an accountable financial structure, misleading financial reports, secret Board meetings etc. Their silence on these acts empowers the destruction of what was an open accountable governance. Their silence also deprives Eastman owners of any ownership rights to open financial records that include how much money has been poured into the Center wastefully or spent improperly.
Is the Eastman Board hiding inappropriate financial transactions from Eastman owners?
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