I've listened to the tape of the March 19th WPA board meeting. I'm not going to transcribe every word of each report. I'm reporting what I heard to the best of my ability. Please listen to the tape yourself.
Vice President, Garrison gives the report. He starts off by saying that the board discussed the fact at the Feb. meeting that they are having difficulty securing bids for projects in Wedgefield. Some just won't bid, or work in Wedgefield. He says he's not going to spend time going into detail as to why that might be the case. He notes that DeMarchi is having problems in the drainage area. He would like members to offer a solution to this problem. He doesn't mean just saying, "don't do this". He means offering real solutions. He will publish suggestions on the website and in the Wragg. Then he says that if there are no suggestions forth coming he wants you to know the board has considered having work done by (drainage) a firm owned by the president of the association. He goes on to say that this needs to be mentioned now to avoid any possible accusations of impropriety, ethics, etc. If they don't find someone to bid and the pricing (our presidents) is reasonable, there should be no question of the board's action. "This is not the preferred course of action." This completes the first part of Garrison's report.
COMMENTS:
Just when I thought we hit the bottom of the barrel, I discover that it is not a barrel, but a pipeline to poor administration, lack of ethics, lack of responsibility, and the worst management I've ever seen. So members, if YOU (Where's my Uncle Sam poster when I need it?) don't step up and do the board's job, they are going to hold you responsible because "this is not the preferred course of action", but what could the board do?????? I had to think for more than a minute. I listened again. He's basically saying the board knows it is not the best action. Yet, he asked you to do the board's job, and if YOU don't, that's the course that your board is KNOWINGLY going to take. There was also a not so quiet message, that if YOU didn't do their work, you better SHUT UP and put up with it. I do so hope he wasn't speaking about The Wedgefield Examiner! Board, that just won't happen.
Questions began to fly through my mind. Don't we hold elections every year and elect members to govern and fulfill these duties? Did I miss anything in the governing documents that says the board gets to pass the buck to me and you, if they don't want to resign and THEY DON'T WANT TO DO THE WORK IN THE BEST INTERESTS OF THE ASSOCIATION? Next question - how stupid do they think the membership is?
Members, every time any board has had a favored vendor in mind, they cried that they couldn't get bids. The 2009 board proved over and over again that that just wasn't so. You do have to have reputable board members holding conversation and bidding conferences with potential bidders. You do have to have board members making a case for Wedgefield, and effectively seeking bidders. Remember the previous grounds contractor who earned over $700,000.00 doing landscaping, drainage, and even building an unusable landing ramp? That board claimed they couldn't get bids either. Remember a previous road chair who claimed he couldn't get bidders and McBride got several, but many on this current board ignored him, and the state fined the vendor for doing work he shouldn't have been doing? I've been in the files when some of these very same board members allowed other's on the board to have vendors submit more than one invoice a day on the same job to avoid proper approval. I've seen a contract written by a current board member, who was the treasurer at the time, with no total dollar amount on the contract, because they were giving the contractor an outrageous advance, after he hadn't shown up for WEEKS and owed us money! HERE WE GO AGAIN, BUT THEY ARE PUTTING IT ON THE TABLE IN ADVANCE!
I have a few suggestions. First, I encourage the board to ask themselves how they would ever answer to this in a court of law? Not far fetched. We've had lawsuit on lawsuit, in the recent past. Would an insurance company even cover them if they were sued?
SUGGESTIONS TO THE BOARD:
*Remember the membership is smarter than you think.
*Get a proper reserve study done and use it for planning
*Your poor planning is not my emergency
*Plan projects that encompass several small projects, under one contract so it is worth the potential vendors time to bid.
*Write concrete RFP's
*Consider the suggestions of qualified bidders. This board has a habit of saying that "they have the expertise". Really???
*Write legitimate contracts
*Own up to your responsibilities or resign from the board.
*Keep yourself out of legal trouble by avoiding telling the membership that they wouldn't do your job so you'll have to travel down the wrong path and hire the PRESIDENT of the association, to receive payment for contract services.
