How to Choose a Board Candidate

As the DBR election for board members gets closer and closer, we need to choose candidates carefully, so as to avoid having the same old problems but with new board members.

First, if you voted for board members who later acted in defiance of our interests, whether due to incompetence, material self-interest, or an urge to control or destroy, then you need to think carefully about how you reached your decision earlier. Charm? Popularity? Bandwagon effect (everyone else votes for this person, so I will mindlessly follow the crowd)? Those are bad reasons.

USA politics nowadays includes major social pressure from the media for dark-skinned people to vote for specified people else they would be betraying their heritage. These pressures, allegedly for the benefit of those people, instead treat them as mindless and incapable of making autonomous decisions and are demeaning and controlling. Watch the media carefully. Look at communications from existing board members and from candidates. Does their content resemble, subliminally or per the emotions that they elicit in you, such political messages about shaming people into voting just so? If it does, then don't vote for them.

Precision destroys sexual attraction. Watch the nerdy boys and young men struggle with dating and seeking girlfriends. See also girls and young women who speak simply and explicitly, offering no mystery in what they say, discover that they cannot obtain worthy boyfriends. This concept is relevant here as we decide to vote. Here's how:

Preventable vagueness, the concept of providing hints and innuendoes about something while knowing more about it than one says, induces emotional reactions in those already interested in what is said. Mystery. Intrigue. A sense of wanting to learn more. (And often, sexual attraction, which is irrelevant here.) If you encounter a board candidate who talks or writes about something and uses preventable vagueness, then expect an emotional response. If the response is irritation at caginess, good for you! Your guard is properly up, and you recognize the pattern as a deterrent to your vote. If instead it is excitement, a wish to learn more, or a sense that the candidate is thereby made more attractive, then you have been emotionally hijacked and your analysis is not rational.

Precision, by contrast, bypasses the emotional give-and-take that is so vital in male-female mating. It also destroys any components of mystery and intrigue. It's dull, in itself. But the content of what is being said or written about can instead by interesting and worthy of fair debate, discussion, and perhaps even excitement. If you seek emotional involvement, prefer fair debate. Relying on preventable vagueness for your fix of excitement is selfish and, in the life of an autonomous adult, a habit that will lead to unbalanced personal budgets and destructive relationships. Don't.

Developer relations

As I understand the history of the building, it was sold by Holiday Inn to a developer (a direct or indirect precursor of the current developer), who in turn sold the rooms with their Easement Agreements to individual investors, who were our direct or indirect precursors (and may include a few original owners). The sales by the developer were arranged with seller financing with a small down payment and low monthly payments, also a balloon payoff a few years in the future. The sales pitch emphasized the low money down and monthly payments, not the eventual large payment after a few years. Buyers tended to be those who do not plan ahead, who wanted a trophy beachside place, who were rich perhaps with money that they did not earn personally, and who were careless about long-range planning. Such people would congregate with their own kind only,* receiving social approval and validation from each other, and refusing to consider alternative ways at reacting to what was happening around them. The fact was that most of the units were foreclosed because the purchasers could not make the balloon payments, allowing the developer to pocket the prior payments and sell the rooms again. Clean out the purchasers, rinse, repeat. That's a good investment strategy, until some investors bought and did pay in full, removing the rooms from developer control.

With room owners that differ from the prior ones, room owners who insist on fair accounting and on paying what they are supposed to pay and nothing more are thwarting the developer's strategy. The rational choice for the developer is to shut down portions of the building that he controls that cost more to operate than they generate in revenue and retain those portions that generate more revenue than they cost to operate. Abandon the parking garage and pool but open the restaurant, bar and conference room, for example. (I cite these as examples without knowing the legal details that allow or prohibit the developer from making those decisions; these are mere examples here.) That's not what the developer is doing. In case the developer wants to sell, perhaps to us room owners and perhaps to some other entity, it would make rational sense to prepare a record of good revenue and low operating expenses, or at the very least good revenue and known operating expenses. That's not what the developer is doing.

First, there is the unspoiling that results when we the room owners no longer hand over money when we are not required to do so. As does a two-year-old when parents crack down on formerly permitted but rude behavior, so do some adults, with tantrums.

Second, there is the potential hope that by temporarily ruining the facility, the developer can induce us owners to make concessions that are not enforceably legally necessary. That explanation is less credible than the former one because if it applied, then there would be no pattern of defying the city authorities and a clear motive for staying on good terms with them. If a fight with us owners were to occur, why arrange for the local legal system to be an enemy?

Is there interest in buying out the developer? We would need a cost-revenue analysis to set a fair price. Else we may be better off forcing the developer to withstand his own expense. We're stuck with upkeep expense, sea wall rebuilding, etc. in future years if we own the entire building. If the developer is trapped in a money-losing situation, that's his problem.

Vote for board members who approach the developer realistically, not with unearned good will and a willingness to concede without compensation. Sure, negotiation is necessary on several issues. But giving more than we take? Don't let that happen.

Several months of legal fees and low rent revenue? Ouch. But the long-term results of a fair outcome will be worth some strain and expense to achieve. Remember that we own; we are not on medium-term leases. We more or less have to think of the far future.

Board-member relations

Major interference with letting dissenting board members speak at board meetings is obvious, from a recent one in which David was shut out after other board members spoke repetitively so as to use up time then note that there was no further time. We obviously need a protocol, enforceable, to prevent such behavior in the future.

We also need information about the developer's positions if negotiations are in progress, to the extent that fair offers are made (developer gives X if in exchange we give Y).

And of course we need competence so that such things as security, janitor work, and desk-clerk duties are properly handled, also to the extent that we are responsible for the maintenance and operations of amenities as they are reopened that they are properly maintained and operated.

I recall that some board members have complained on social media, "Don't trust what is posted on social media. Come to us directly for information." Not credible. What is spoken in direct or telephone conversation is not recorded for verification and can be denied later without penalty. A shyster board member can say one thing to one person and another, contradictory, thing to another and thereby stir up distrust among us. A social-media post, "Don't trust blindly what is posted on social media. It says X and the truth is Y; see for yourself and here's the reference" would defend a board member's integrity and assure honesty and transparency easily. It would have been used if board members in fact wanted honesty and transparency. If it isn't, watch out!

Personal attacks between board members, which are not the same as firmly stated disagreements between them, need to be identified and those members and/or candidates removed from or kept out of the board.

How did board members get elected if they are prone to use personal attacks and dishonest methods of doing business? Because we the owners voted for them. It's easy to acquire a liking for people who fight for things you agree with even if they do so by shaming their opponents or otherwise using unfair tactics. But a willingness to do so in any context is a willingness to do so in others, including self-serving monetary contrivances and interpersonal game-playing for petty power-games. Such behavior is common among immature girls in elementary and high schools; let it stay there.

Watch what happens when you and a board candidate or member disagree on something. Do you receive in response a clear statement of why the board person believes just so, allowing for a fair rebuttal by you (fair debate)? Or is the response some variant of a nonverbal signal to stop talking, or a changing of the subject or a reference to majority opinion or doing what is simplest damn the long-term consequences?

Vote for candidates who express themselves with precision, have a rational approach to the developer dispute and its sub-disputes, have a track record of acting in our best interests, and give us transparency. Pretty words are insufficient; vote for credibly anticipated results. If you want pretty words, buy a poetry book.

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When people interact socially, their ratio of authority to responsibility must be more or less equal. A corporate president has high authority and high responsibility. A janitor in the office building has low authority and low responsibility. They can interact cordially as they encounter each other during the workday. Business executives, with high authority and high responsibility, can socialize on golf courses, country clubs, or other places to gather. Meanwhile, unskilled laborers can befriend each other and set up social gatherings with each other. A groundskeeper and a painter can get together and enjoy each other's company. Low authority and high responsibility? The military, fire and rescue workers, and police resemble each other in that way. Of course it looks as if police officers have high authority. But what they are required to do and required to avoid doing are very restrictive; their personal decision-making is limited. Meanwhile, they have responsibility for our lives, an immense burden.

And as for high authority and low responsibility, the idle rich who have not earned their wealth? They will be envied by the poor and thought of as personally worthless by the self-made rich. Therefore, they socialize if at all either by buying companionship or by seeking others of like kind and quality. Put them together in the same facility, and as they validate each other's mindsets they will become more and more hardened in their outlooks, eventually becoming forced to face reality only by a foreclosure or other monetary catastrophe.