The CotoBuzz Journal, Community Journalism

August 2008 ISSUE

We do not make jokes, we simply watch the LA Times, the Orange County Register and CID/HOA board of directors and report the facts!

Trouble in Paradise - Laguna Woods Village

July 27, 2008

Candidates vying for one of three slots in the Laguna Woods City Council, to be filled in the general election scheduled for November 4, 2008, were to speak before the Save Open Spaces (SOS) meeting earlier today: Incumbents Brenda Ross and Milton Robbins (former GRF president), Marilynn Sartino, Arlene Sontag, Ronald Beldner, Jim Kane, , Robert Tucker. Martin Rhodes was a no-show and Margo Bouer, and Mark Stein were not slated to appear. George Portlock dropped out of the 3rd mutual director election, citing health issues.

SOS is an organization working to oppose any changes to the City's General Plan and zoning which in their estimation, damage community. “As a group, we will be attending Planning Committee and City Council meetings to voice our concerns, and force any proposed changes to be submitted to the voters through the referendum process”, according to the organizations website. “The Golden Rain Foundation (GRF) has spent hundreds of thousands of resident's dollars on land use plans to commercially develop the last 50-70 acres of open space and other land within the community of Laguna Woods Village”

During the meeting Milt Robbins did not assume responsibility for San Sebastian, although he was GRF president as the deal was being negotiated. “It was especially upsetting to hear Robbins say that GRF owns the open spaces in the Village. When a resident objected that the manor owners owned the open spaces in trust and GRF was only the manager of the trust, Milt did an admirable job of pretending he had no idea what the difference was” said a Village resident who was present at the meeting. “And this is the problem. If he does not know the difference between owning and managing a trust, why should we trust him enough to reelect him to the council?” the resident added.

On the heels of the Golden Rain Foundation’s (of Seal Beach) decision to appeal the recent Court of Appeals decision, on a financial transparency lawsuit, to the state Supreme Court, the embattled GRF HOA board of directors recently decided to enact rules of engagement for open board meetings to “protect its director members and staff and managing agent from verbal personal attacks in a public forum”.

Resolution 90-08, to go into effect August 5, 2008 requires among other things for the press to identify itself to the Chair, residents can only speak once, and only when recognized and rules of decorum are spelled out - we recently published a piece titled, Abusive LWV Resident or Abuse of Authority where we describe on-going hostilities between the governing body and residents, to the point that the Laguna Woods Village property management company has been asked to call the Sheriff during board meetings, “because residents are getting unruly”. The new rules of engagement are not palatable to a number of critics, leading one to ask: “First, does this new "SHUT UP!" Rule only to the Folsom Prison inmates at Leisure World or does it apply also to the residents?”

Brenda Ross imitating a polished politicians, in attempting to answer a resident's question, expounded on a different, unrelated, topic. “Sounds like she is an experienced member of the council”, said a resident present during the meeting.

Laguna Woods Village, Full of Sound and Fury! - Paradise Lost?

COMMENTS

What the heck's going on at Leisure World, oh I'm sorry, they changed their name how many times? What's their name this week? Is it Laguna Woods? They don't even know who they are! Now they have a "SHUT UP" Rule? What does that tell you about a so-called "retirement" community? Did I say "Community?" Imagine that. Where's the "leisure" in a place like that? It's turned into a cement jungle filled with higher and higher and thicker and thicker density building and construction. Worse yet, my relatives who live there told me that a person doesn't even have to own property there to sit on their board of directors? Would you buy property there? Would any of us risk our personal assets at the hands of those people? How anyone can call that a "retirement" community boggles the mind. This incompetence has been going on for how long now?- S. Tank

Calm down. My parents live in Laguna Woods. They *love* it. They are having the time of their lives. Laguna Woods does have a lot of great community, for those with the attitude (and social skills) to share it.

As for the name change: that was forced on them. The son-in-law of the original developer (Cortese, I believe) owns the rights to the "Leisure World" name, and he kept hiking the fee to use the name. Eventually it just became cheaper to reprint all the stationary and change to a different LW. Also, by incorporating as a new city, Laguna Woods has been getting "start-up" funds from the state. A clever move over all.

Now, there are some real transparency problems with PCM and GRF. But the point is that the community of LW is cohesive enough to be aware of the problem and do something about it (besides moaning like a teenage in a blog post). Tyler

Tyler:

You bring up an interesting point – Dr. Pareto would seem to indicate that a majority of common interest development residents (CID) either do not know, or do not care how the community is managed, unless they are directly wronged.

When local governing bodies wrong CID residents, there are not many options for redress of grievances. The California Attorney General, the Real Estate Commissioner and the California Bar Association will usually point to litigation as the way forward – makes you wonder why taxpayers are burdened with these bureaucracies? – but that is another story.

In most cases, residents are rightly reluctant to pursue litigation – first, because governing bodies use the resident’s own money to defend the governing structure, and then the resident has to use his or her own funds to start the process. Not to mention all the unspeakable governing bodies can get away with, if the case is brought to trial.

As usual, there are exceptions to the rule, last week in a case filed in Superior Court of California Riverside, a jury ruled in favor of residents Richard and Leslie Fredericks and returned a verdict of $1.6 million in damages and $400 thousand in punitive damages against Santa Rosa Cove Homeowners Association, for example.- Buzz

Vico Confino’s Revenge

“For over eight years, Vico fought with the board and pleaded for action. He made phone calls…He took pictures..He shot videos…He wrote letters…He attended meetings…He complained to the state …He hired lawyers…Twice he offered the recreation committee interest-free loans to fix the pool area…The committee board always said No! No! No!” reads the Dedication the book Villa Appalling, self-described as a “Text for Understanding Common Interest Developments Homeowners Associations and Planned Communities”

Not sure that Confino’s Revenge will play out here – on the other hand, we have asked governing board and property management representatives to comment on our stories. We have also forwarded them a number of resident’s letters – mum is the word! - Buzz

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