Ritzman: Remember those who voted to boot McAdam from Sun City rec board
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When I watched the last of the Recreation Centers of Sun City board meeting June 24, President Sue Wilson said the next board meeting would be Sept. 13.
Apparently that was not true, and I say apparently because I can find no record of another board meeting, but a duly-elected member of this board was dismissed from the board during a “closed door” meeting supposedly because of a “conflict of interest.” Since there’s no record of the vote, or the meeting, I think it happened on June 25. I don’t know how they voted, but the other members of the board (still members) are Mike Ege, Dale Lehrer, Sheila Rooney, Darla Akins, Steve Collins, Rich Hoffer and Dan Schroeder.
Remember these names because if they voted against Karen McAdam, I think they are all part of a problem. Who are they a board for? Apparently not the voting public of Sun City. I don’t know about you, but I vote for someone, for any office specifically because they represent views or issues that I care about.
Karen McAdam spoke on behalf of hundreds of residents of Sun City who play, and love, the game of pickleball. Her concern, and that of hundreds of others, is what RCSC has planned for the Mountain View Center. This board, I guess, can only deal with one thing at a time. While nearly every other surrounding community is building more pickleball courts because it is the fastest growing sport in the country, the RCSC board apparently think they know more than the rest of the country and plan to get rid of the seven current courts at Mountain View as part of the phase-in of Mountain View updates. All this without anything but their “word” that if the numbers show it, at some point in the future they might make pickleball part of another phase.
People, including me, moved to Sun City specifically because of the pickleball facilities. All McAdam was trying to get was an acknowledgment that pickleball would be on a future phase, but that was asking too much, and obviously, to the board, a conflict of interest. If this board has taken 12 years to get to this point on Phase 1, I can understand why they can’t deal with more than one thing at a time. You were giving this board too much credit, Karen. They are more suited to deciding that only one ball should be played if people are waiting in miniature golf, even though to you, that is a waste of the board’s time.
My experience with boards is that, first, nine people is probably too many to get anything done, and certainly it’s too much to ask of a group that doesn’t want anyone on the board to care about anything that they might discuss or vote on. That’s unrealistic, and frankly, ridiculous. To ignore hundreds of members of one of their member clubs, and think you know more than anyone else in the country, and can buck the trend that is crossing America is arrogance and ignorance by this board, and maybe it’s time that the voting residents of Sun City choose a board that does pay attention to their interests and concerns.
