Saturday, April 22, 2006

THE CALL OF THE WILD: A Call to terminate Coto de Caza's General Manager

THE CALL OF THE WILD: A Call to terminate Coto de Caza's General Manager
A dialogue in the Coto Discussion Forum between a former Coto de Caza board of directors and a current district delegate with the argumentation that C.J. Klug, Kestyone Pacific’s employee assigned to manage Coto de Caza’s affairs should be terminated:

-----Original Message-----
To: Kesytone Pacific
Subject: CZ - Certifying Our Streets

Cary: Prior competent CZ Boards spent the money on Traffic Studies and proper signs to certify Coto De Caza Drive, Vista Del Verde and the main streets that connect them. Since Keystone Management and our current incompetent CZ Board allowed some of those certifications to lapse, I would think Keystone should be on the hook for some of this cost to re-certify those streets that were allowed to lapse. We do need new traffic studies for all of South Ranch because CZ had not taken over those streets when we did the initial certification and no doubt there are signs there that will need to be changed out in order to implement pro-active CHP traffic enforcement. I know the current CZ Board is incompetent; but that is no excuse for Keystone Management. Keystone staff members should have been on top of this. So, if your people including Klug blew it, which is no surprise, now Keystone should foot part of the bill to fix the problem. When we did the contract with Keystone, I think we inserted an indemnification provision that should cover this screw up. Varo and Company don't have a clue; but Keystone should have known and done better. Joe Morabito

P.S. Klug, our "Executive Director" should have caught this. This is his fault. And, though our incompetent CZ Board selected and hired him, he is on Keystone's payroll at higher than normal salary. Keystone must take responsibility for your employees. It really is pretty simple.



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From: CotoBuzz@yahoogroups.com @CotoBuzz
To: cotobuzz@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [COTO] CZ - Certifying Our Streets and Many More Breaches!

Hi Joe: You are not only right on, holding Keystone and the CJ Klug responsible for the expiration of road certification, but may we humbly suggest that this is way overdue? - you have consistently given Keystone the benefit of the doubt, and turned out to be not deserving of it. We have documented Keystone being front and center of every major mishap affecting the community, yet nothing has been done about it. Here is a summary: Public Safety:When CJ Klug first came on board, we volunteered to meet with him and to provide him with all the information we had regarding public safety, including CHP statistics, William Pilot’s seminal White Paper on the State of Coto security (click here for copy State of Coto Security, a White Paper) critical of Keystone personnel and the board, and copies of a number of comprehensive security proposals which include traffic control, crime and vandalism prevention and invasion of privacy issues. He refused. OCR coverage of traffic controlWhen other Coto concerned residents invited CJ Klug to see first hand the dangerous driving conditions within the community, he refused. After the first fatality, OC columnists and reporters started using the terms, “The CHP published traffic statistics”, and more recently, in the 04-21-2006 issue of CanyonLife, OCR reporter Mark Eeades. Writes: “Recently, the California Highway Patrol sent a letter to C. J. Klug, manager of the CZ Master Association of Coto de Caza describing the amount and types of citations the CHP is writing. According to the letter, the CHP issued 64 citations for people failing to stop at stop signs, and 67 speeding tickets. All in all, the CHP spent 158 hours patrolling in Coto in the month of March and handed out 149 citations and 33 warnings” and in covering the April 13, 2006 Coto de Caza board of directors meeting that “CZ Master Association Manager C.J. Klug reported on continuing speeding problems along Coto’s main roads, and said people continue to run stop signs" Conveniently, no mention of the recent fatality that did not occur on a main road, and that all main roads are not traffic patrol worthy because he felled asleep at the wheel and let road certification expire H"e presented a California Highway Patrol report which showed the CHP issued 64 stop sign citations and 67 speeding citations within Coto in the month of March.” First, the CHP is not in the business of publishing traffic statistics. The CHP is the official state agency chartered with the collection and investigation of the traffic incidents. CHP management will go out of their way to provide communities with the information they need to prevent traffic accidents: When we have asked for daily reports, the CHP has provided the information. When we asked for weekly reports, the CHP obliged. When we asked for monthly reports, the CHP responded! – yet the board of directors calls the CHP extortionists and refused to provide them board meeting time for public awareness campaigns, but readily turn over control of board meetings to the producers of the Freaks! “Published” reports or not, these are the same CotoBuzz has been publishing for years and which we had asked Keystone and the GM to publish – we were ignored. In fact, Keystone’s senior management told CotoBuzz that Keystone did not have the authority from the Board to use meaningful public safety statistics! We should also mention that Klug met with CHP management, early on, and even then refused to publish CHP data! “Official Published Sheriff’s Report”By the way, we have also commissioned a report dealing with crime and vandalism, from the Sheriff, identical in format, to the one we worked on with the CHP, and have now started to make it available to Cotobuzz readers. No evidence of due diligence in firing largest private security company in the worldKeystone and CJ Klug participated in the firing of the largest private security in the world, in Securitas and replaced with one of the smallest in the region in UPS. When Klug was asked about due diligence, he mentioned having received six quotes, but an audit revealed no signs of due diligence ever used in the process. When we started to question the Securitas-to-UPS transition plan, we were told that the GM was responsible for the transition plan. We never did get a copy of such a plan, and we all know what happened. Transponder FiascoNot unlike the Transponder Fiasco. When we asked the GM for a copy of the Transponder Plan, his response was “define what you mean by plan”! Participation in the Sheriff is coming ruse – working with the Coto de Caza board of directors in support of Orange County Supervisor’s Trojan Horse, that allows the board to turn Coto into a city, as an excuse for not having the CHP in place. Use of Keystone’s List of Prominent Coto ResidentsWhen we first reported on Keystone’s List of Prominent Coto Residents, Keystone refuse to provide us with the data in the format we requested to confirm UPS management’s denial being erroneous, that their employee had never used the term. Arbitrary Decisions Architectural/LandscapingWhen we reported to Keystone various architecture/landscaping issues the response was “the association is not doing any work” in that area – we have the “before” and “after” pictures documenting otherwise. Keystone election manipulationWe have documented a number of instances where Keystone has participated in election irregularities, including the counting of ballots by non-residents, non-inspectors and “verbally approved results by legal counsel”. Irregularites in the 2006 elections include: Keystone employees soliciting proxies and delegate candidates on behalf of the board, using mis-marked and manipulated district delegate ballots, encouraging collection of proxies after election deadlines, etc., etc. – yet the GM claims no responsibility Other breachesOther Klug breaches include ignoring Coto resident’s request simply because these residents are critical of his or the board’s performance – a classic case of the tail wagging the dog! Sent: Saturday, April 22, 2006 8:09 AM
To: Kesytone Pacific
Subject: RE: [COTO] CZ - Certifying Our Streets and Many More Breaches!

CJ Klug should be FIRED. Keystone is going to have to deal with Klug and soon or they should be FIRED too. I can't continue to give Keystone a pass if they do not manage their employee even if it means confronting our current incompetent CZ Board. Remember, our former attorneys walked away from CZ business rather than work with this Board. As a former CZ Board Member, who has worked with four or five property management company "Executive Directors", I can say with some authority that Klug is not up to the job. Klug just does not have the energy, temperament or skills to do the job. If he was an Account Director at my company, first he would never have gotten the job; but second if he did get the job, he would have been fired long ago for his behaviors. This is particularly aggravating given that Klug is earning a higher than normal salary. This is just one more example of many of the fiscal mismanagement we continue to see at the hands of our current incompetent CZ Board. In addition, since Klug can't do the job, CZ must retain high priced Consultants to do it for him which is a double whammy for our Members. Specific to the failure to maintain our street certifications, of course the buck ultimately stops with our current incompetent CZ Board. This is just one of many fiascos we have seen from Varo and Company during the last four years. Yes, the Varo/Mezger/Thagard Team is incompetent; but Keystone is not off the hook on this one either. I am pretty sure I installed an indemnification provision for screw-ups just like this one in the contract I did with Keystone five years ago. And, assuming the current incompetent CZ Board did not take that provision out of the contract in later versions, I believe that Keystone should be paying for any additional cost that CZ incurs to get those streets re-certified. Ultimately, as the so called "professionals" in this picture, they must be held responsible as well for this mission critical failure. Joe

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