I have read many comments about the board referring to past boards doing wrong that put us where we are today and the new board not listening to residents, being incompetent, not fixing the problems and in general not doing their jobs.
The fix is easy but implementing it will take time. This board works under a thing called Title 10 as all the boards before them have done. How has this worked so far? How long does it take before changes to the way we do business are called for?
Arizona has a thing called the Arizona Open Meeting Law. In the past 20 years I have used this in two different states. The results cannot be denied. It works. Please look up the Arizona Open Meeting Law 101 and read it for yourself. Make up your own mind if this is the change we need. The changes I think we need are to adopt the Arizona Open Meeting Law as the way we conduct business, mandatory eduction for all board members and board members should not be on committees.
If a board member is leading a committee with an agenda, the results of that committee are known before the committee begins. Committees belong to the residents.
We should also form a board of directors oversight committee - not to control the board, but to ensure the rules are followed and hire qualified directors and allow them to do their jobs by getting them the tools they need to get the job done. They still report to the board. If they are not doing their jobs then we need to find people that can.
This is just a start. It will take time after doing things the same for 20 plus years with questionable results. Is there anybody that thinks that changes are not needed? If the current board of directors is not willing to make the changes needed, we have a few choices on what needs to be done.
We can vote five new members to the board this fall. At that point, they control the board and changes can be made. Or we can recall the entire board of directors according to our bylaws. The last and worse way is by lawsuit. Nobody wants that, but it is a heavy-handed way to get the boards attention.
I could not have been more proud of the residents of Sun City than I was at the April 8 meeting. In my almost 20 years of public service, I have never witnessed anything like that. Thank you for that.
All that being said now the work begins. It is up to the residents of Sun City to finish what they started. Sun City is more than just a library. Change can happen but it takes both time and a lot of work.
