TLPOA is finally have an election for the Board. The power group (yes. the same three that brought you community politics, discord, and chaos) wants to make sure you DON’T vote but instead give them your vote as a Proxy.
They will tell you that they have done a fine job, are better at this than you, and a vitally concerned about your welfare. They will pressure you to give them your vote. They a politicians and what they lack in character they make up for in patronizing you.
The truth is more like that they have floundered around in indecision without a plan, have shown no leadership, are doing a worse job than you would ever do, and don’t really give a damn about you,
After all, it is all about them.
It is their need to have authority, power, and public acclaim. Their need to be recognized, that is part of their lives that is missing, they need to be somebody, that drives the whole thing.
It is easy to be a big fish if you find a small enough pond – and TLOPA with only about 200 members is such a pond.
My advice is to learn about what is going on and VOTE FOR YOUR SELF! Even if you are not sure, do it yourself.
Why take this advice from someone as noisy me?
Simple, as citizen you owe it to your community and yourself not to be stooge of some who says nice things to you. You need to be an honest full unique human being, and you can’t to that by giving away you vote.
Tag: Lakeway
WTF?
An email to me from Duane Dobson, Provocateur General for Rick Thompson, King of the Board of the Travis Landing Property Owners Association (HOA) and Friends
“Ho Barry The so called “survey” was done without Board approval with the ” results” on our web site. The Board has effectively cut off any critical discussion of the electric gate on Discussions@TLPOA . The Nominating Committee has exceeded their authority. If Jamie were President I would object. D”
Next posting will be the evolution of the assentation of Richard Thompson to his Kingship – Why it happened – How it works – Why you must genuflect or be socialy skewered in Travis Landing.
Trying to plug the holes
Your TLPOA Board has become a typical HOA, hiding behind a wall of obfuscation – hiding the truth so they can go off on there own claiming the do it to you, when it really is about them. This is a profound act of moral corruption. Ben Franklin said “to see a man’s character, don’t give him money, give him some power”, this is so true with our Board (and if you look at the web about other HOA’s you will see becoming SOP in this country). Retired folks seeking the importance they never had in there worker-bee life.
Joe Mancuso’s public resignation was a brilliant solution to this matter. It was the only way to get to you. Rick Thompson’s take over of the Board a few years ago through the power of the proxy allowed Greg , Maggie, and Margie to orchestrate a sold block on information flow from the Board in which only Thompson approved propaganda could get out.
Joe found a way through that dike that Rick and his Tech Committee team could not block. And boy are they mad.
Congratulations Joe for having the fortitude, strength, and moral conviction to try to let you to see the there is stench in this Board of narcissism that will you gag.
Resistance is Futile
On Saturday the TLPOA had its big annual meeting and it was a great show. We were to be taught a lesson for not supporting the political side of the community, but it didn’t quite work out as planned. We were not assimilated, not this time anyway.
Rick Thompson organized his people for a major attack on the community. Carefully managed, his minions were well prepared and briefed from meeting the night before. This was to be a follow up of the April meeting as an attack on those who wanted to update the By-Laws and clean up the growth of TLPOA proxy voting manipulation. Rick had to stop this effort or they couldn’t deliver the BIG SURPRISE and teach us the lesson we must learn.
Why all this effort on the By-Laws? Simple – election reform would stop his plans. There is desperation in the need to retain power. He and his side-kick Greg as well as minions personally pitched home owners by phone and visits to get “NO” votes for the By-Laws reform and give their proxy vote to his political party members.
THE SURPRISE – Was that after not running for the open election, Rick chose the invisible door and ran a completely secret scheme to be Treasurer again. A Secret Write-in supported in secret by his minions and proxies (too bad this included the Chairman). He is desperate to control the money but the real purpose was to teach us that he commands the voting here in Travis Landing.
If he won, then it would be clear to all that he doesn’t need to go through the standard voting process anymore. He believes he has enough followers and proxies that he and he alone can choose who is on the Board of Directors and thus what the community does. He no longer needs to be a member of the Board to run the Board. In the end, the voting majority on the Board owes their jobs to Rick’s Proxies.
Total anonymity with no accountability and total power – how perfect can you get? What kind of a mind needs that?
The real eye-opener is the poor Chairman/President who sacrificed his integrity to protect Rick in last year’s lawyer issues.
On Saturday hopefully even this naive young man began to realize that he has no real power on the Board, he can be out-voted now, even removed by the will of Richard Thompson.
And now we sit back and watch this madness proceed. I wonder who the new appointees will be? I have more on this coming, stay tuned.
Chaos in TLPOA Land – three lawyers are at it..
We have been in a lull, no meetings for the long hot summer, everyone out of town, now they are all back, with a vengeance. The pot is boiling.
Your Beloved King has been feeling neglected so he decided to spark it all up and has been sending Emails about how great he is and about women in the community he is blaming everything on. He has sent the same to a female homeowner. At least 4 women in our community are in his spotlight now. Not many men, but lots of women.
What I can tell you is that since we became a politically based community I have seen some of the worst hubris come out in many our highest leaders. I would like to believe that it is just our HOA but my investigations of other such groups tells me this is common.
Tune in, more later when this starts to unravel and the security blanket lifts….
Fooled again by Proxies
I am saddened to again see our democracy plagued and failing. Two issues hit home.
First, our new President is like the last one – failed to win through achieving the popular vote but winning on the back of the King’s Proxy power.
Like Greg before (who won by two votes) Brooks won by a single vote. Now you can bet your whatever that none of the King’s proxies went to Jamie so they all went to Brooks as they did for Greg in the past. That means 20 to 30 votes from one political party made the difference. Another way of saying this is that 20 to 30 more people voted for Jamie than Brooks – the Friends and the King made up the shortfall with proxies.
I would like to point out that the King won his Board Seat by only one vote when Greg was elected, same count issue to bypass our democracy.
Second disappointment comes in two parts. First in an effort to get rid of a motion by Cindy Wyatt, Greg tried to pull a fast one and suddenly change us from a homeowner vote to a voice vote, which he did and his front row peanut-gallery of supporters out yelled everyone else. Just as he tried to pass his judgment the crowd of homeowners figured it out and stopped the scam (it is all in the recording for you to listen to). A regulation vote was taken, the entire board voted against it but the motion was passed by a 40 to 30 vote. The most emotional board members demanded a recount, we did it with the same result.
What was most sad with all this, was it showed the world how out of touch with the community the Board really is. They live in private isolation and don’t want to hear from you. Now we have a President who again is highly influenced and in debt to the King and Friends and not the people.
As the Who said, ‘Hope we don’t get fooled again”. But we did.
What’s with the Proxy verification?
How come the Board can’t get around to verifying the proxies from the Special Meeting?
The President told us at the last Board Meeting he was delayed and waiting on a invoice from Dr Steed, an acknowledged vote proctor.
Dr Steed tells us that he has received no correspondence about the counting from the President and didn’t know what the President was talking about.
Were we publicly lied to?
We know several property owners that received no ballots, was this selectively intentional?
Could it be that ballots with their names on them are now in the count?
Could it be that one of the signed Proxies is from a man who died before the ballots were sent out?
Could it be that the King got too greedy for Poxies and has now gone beyond bad ethics to the outright illegal act of voter fraud?
Proxy
A Proxy is defined as the “authority or power to act for another”. Obtaining and voting a proxy is not illegal or unethical and is a well viewed and reviewed democratic procedure.
The conditions and issues that make it relevant to our HOA revolves around the questionable act of soliciting proxies for political purpose.
In the 2016 Annual Election of the TLPOA Board our community was introduced to the political use of Proxy voting.
A political party was created by Dick Thompson for the purpose of gaining control over the Travis Landing Property Owners Association. The political party offered a complete list of party recommended persons running for positions on the Board of Directors. The party acted as a single entity organized to solicitate votes both personally and remotely using tactical deployed groups of party individuals under a common leadership with a common goal.
This was a classic political organized solicitation supported by propaganda, use of rumors and mud slinging, and misdirection while fostering cronyism, favoritism, and rewards for followers. Essentially it became the Party versus the People. Although of highly questionable ethical nature and on the edge, it was and is not illegal.
It is the American Way of Politics.
The reaction you see amongst your neighbors to this is the reaction to the transition from a custodial view of the HOA to the Political view of the HOA.
As the Party was successful in its actions in 2016 there is no reason to change its tactics. The problems with the Special Meeting Election are a replay of the political power issues of the 2016 election.
Everything takes time and slowly the community is becoming sensitive to the politicalization of its democracy.
But the Party is alive, kicking, and still wants to rule. That is why it exists.
Deja vu – The Park Gate and How We Got Here.
We are now being pushed to install an electric gate for the Park. An interesting way to get control over the King’s backyard. He tells us he will have the power to bar anyone from using it electrically if he decides. So not only will your picture be taken while you access the park but then you will be monitored and moderated too.
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What is most interesting is how all this came about – that is the problems with the Friends, the Proxies, the Board, all come from an electric gate for the Park proposal from years past.
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In the old days we used to have meetings, even held annual meetings, in folks homes. We had to move to the Water District (neutral grounds) when one of the home owners became so vial that no one wanted him in their home.
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At an annual meeting in the then President Zbasnik’s house, Dick Thompson offered up a plan for an electric gate that had been floated in the community. He did a nice presentation and as an engineer he did the details.
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It was voted down; not a popular idea.
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Dick took it personally and thus fired up the rage smoldering in him, all that you see today is the revenge for that vote.
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And again we are being pushed for an electric gate.
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This time your agreement is not needed.
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Why? Simple.
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A year and a half ago Dick’s #1 Stooge, the president, set in motion the resignation of 5 Board members over his belief that the rules covering his office let him do anything in the name of the community.
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Now he does the King’s bidding and the King wants to avoid the potential embarrassment of a second failure to get the votes for the gate. So all he has to do is direct the president to sign off on it and it’s done. Once the work on the gate is contracted, then between the King and the Friends they can pressure the rest of the Board members to go along because of the obligations of the signed contracts to do the work.
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Thus you will get an electric gate regardless of what you want.
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This has a second advantage for the King.
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This will take your mind off the Proxy issue that will affect the next election in May.
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Simple math here if you understand the variables.
An open letter to the Board of TLPOA
There has long been a shadow cast on the Board over the question of legitimacy. The rise of the Friends and associates, the introduction of the use of Proxies, the rise of the political party, all are disturbing in such a small community.
Each of the last three voting based events, that is the last two Annual Meetings and the Special Meeting, have seen the use of political processes around the matter of voting.
I think it is time to question this. Let me offer this as it is now before us.
The Board did not trust the Special Meeting Petition signatures and insisted on checking each of the write-in signatures. This was an appropriate action. As such each signature was verified by a call to the signee. Further this process was made clear to all the who was engaged and what they did. It was a transparent process.
We just had a vote of the community that was driven by Proxies.
Would not it be appropriate that we make this process transparent.
We should do the same for the Proxies, that is report on who collected who’s Proxy. We further should do as done with Petition,
that is test the veracity of the signatures on the Proxies in the same manor.
By any definition the Proxies themself now become “best evidence” in a matter of serious consideration with possible legal ramifications. The Proxies need to be consequently treated as such, legal evidence.
Thank you
Barry Thornton