The Governance Document Amendment vote confirms that many Owners oppose the Board's power grab

In the last two Owner votes, 182 Owners voted to put Marcie Flynn on the Board, 123 Owners voted to put Al Rattacasa on the Board, and 151 Owners voted against the Board's initial amenities proposal (which has since been shown to have misrepresented both the timing and cost of the amenities additions). Despite the Board's spin that there is a "small group of disgruntled Owners," that "small group" constitutes of over 20 percent of the Owners. Given that only about 75 percent of the Owners typically vote, about 30 percent of the Owners who vote oppose many of the Board's more egregious initiatives. 

Like the past two votes, about 120 Owners opposed the Board's most recent power grabs of establishing a "code of conduct" to apply to future Board members (but of course not to themselves) and to deny access to key corporate documents to most Board members, and supported a proposal to require open meetings of the Board.

There are two ways to look at the governance document amendment vote. I'm confident that the Board will view the vote as another famous victory--after all, 85 percent of the votes cast (excluding abstentions) supported the Board's proposals. But when you look more closely at the vote, the results indicate a community that is quite divided.

Here's the first cut:

• Slate voter (154 Owners):                       27%
• Item-by-Item voters (180 Owners):        31%
• Didn't vote (241 Owners):                      42%
• Total Owners (573 Owners):                 100%

The largest block of voters didn't care enough to vote.

How about the people who did vote? Obviously, the "slate voters"--the smallest of the three blocks of Owners--were all in for the Board's proposals. What about the second largest group--those who took the time to consider each item in the 94-page ballot--the "item-by-item" voters? In my view, there were three clusters of governance proposals: 

Cluster #1: The Board's power grabs--empowering the Board to draft and enforce a "code of conduct" for Board members and limits on access to "confidential information" by Board members. 

• 119 of the "item-by-item" voters (65% of that group) voted against the "code of conduct" proposal and 126 of the "item-by-item" voters (72% of that group) voted against the "confidential information" proposal.
• On those two proposals, the Club's 573 Owners voted as follows:
• In favor of the Board's proposal: 211 (37%)
• Against the Board's proposal: 122 (21%)
• Didn't vote: 240 (42%)

Cluster #2: Substantive Issues (eliminate cap on golfers, allow the Board to set the capital contribution at whatever level it feels like, increase the limit on capital spending, open meetings, and a deep dive into the Club's financials). On those five issues, the Club's 573 owners voted:

• In favor of the Board's proposals (average of the five): 243 (42%)
• Against the Board's proposals: 84 (15%)
• Didn't vote: 246 (43%)    

Cluster #3: The rest of the proposals--most of which appear to be housekeeping in nature:

• In favor of the Board's proposals (average of the 20): 293 (51%)
• Against the Board's proposals: 34 (6%)
• Didn't vote: 246 (43%)    

I was struck by the thoughtfulness of the 183 item-by-item voters. They voted:

• Cluster #1: 66% against the Board's proposals
• Cluster #2: 53% in favor of the Board's proposals
• Cluster #3: 81% in favor of the Board's proposals

There are about 120 Owners who do not favor the power grab by the Board. The people who have taken the trouble to vote item-by-item are pretty evenly split on the propositions where reasonable people can disagree. And those people overwhelmingly supported to housekeeping issues. This group is not "anti-Board"--it's anti-bad ideas.

So how does this vote compare with past votes? 

• This was a low turnout vote. The vote that looks most similar is the entity accountability vote. In the entity accountability vote, 93% of the 351 voters supported the initiative. Both votes were low profile--with no nagging or marketing. But more people voted (351 versus 334) and a higher percentage of the voters approved the entity accountability proposal than approved the housekeeping proposals (93% versus 88% of those voting).
• The dissenting members were similar to the December 2021 Board elections. In that election, 43% of the 418 Owners who voted, voted for Marcie Flynn and 31% voted for Al Rattacasa. In the current election, 36% of the Owners who voted voted against the Board on its most egregious power grabs.

Please bear in mind that the Board has the advantage of the "corporate machinery" to shape the vote:

• The Board offered a "slate" alternative in the instant vote to vote for their recommendations--but did not offer a "slate" alternative to vote against their recommendations. Owners needed to individually vote on each item to vote against any of the 27 proposals.
• The Board knows who didn't vote. To my knowledge, the Board has never asked how any individual owner voted. But they have regularly obtained a list of the Owners who had not voted. My guess is that the 241 Owners who didn't vote would have been more like the "item-by-item" voters than the "slate voters." I doubt that the Board was interested in reaching out to those Owners--but I sure would be. But they have that information and I don't. It would come in handy for the amenities vote.

So the bottom line is that the Board obtained approval for all of its proposals and successfully fended off open meetings. But the bottom line is also that 120 Owners of the 334 Owners who voted haven't imbibed the Board's kool-aid and will be a force to be reckoned with in the future.

Changing a culture is hard work and Rome wasn't built in a day. Like Arnold says in "The Terminator," I'll be back. But for the time being, the Board has successfully adopted "best practices" which empower the Board and management at the expense of the Owners.

In all likelihood, the Board will prevail on the no-accountability amenities vote. And equally likely, the amenities will be delivered late and over the "maximum guaranteed price." But eventually, I'm confident that the Owners will come around to the opinion that transparency and accountability will make our community an even better place to live.