Death to Mickey Mouse, Death to America, Long Live the Coto de Caza Delegate System

Death to Mickey Mouse, Death to America, Long Live the Coto de Caza Delegate System

April 6, 2008

The most recent CZ Master Association Newsletter painstakingly uses the law of attribution to make the argument that the defeat of the changes to the association CC&Rs that would have finally brought the association covenants in line with the spirit and the law of the state of California (read Direct Popular Elections), Mickey Mouse notwithstanding, was all due to CZ resident apathy.

There is no mention for example, that the Uber-SECRET instructions used during the CC&R changes were so convoluted, that we predicted the outcome as soon as we saw them. In fact, we compared such instructions to the recent Los Angeles Double Bubble Trouble that disenfranchised over 40,000 voters.

There is no mention either that the state mandated Direct Popular Elections, since 2006 and the CZ boards have used the “it is too costly to prevent fraud with direct elections” and the “there is not enough time” excuses to keep postponing the inevitable.

There is no mention that CZ boards consistently mislead CZ residents into thinking that the current delegate system is representative. It is not. Where the Democrats can use Super Delegates to anoint candidates, these delegates must make their selection public and is typically aligned with the will of the people. In CZ’s case, the delegate vote has been SECRET, hence no transparency and no accountability.

There is no mention that the CZ Newsletter explicitly promotes the delegate system encouraging residents to engage their respective delegates.

Finally, there is only one candidate for the CZ Master Association board of directors willing to go on record that the current delegate system must end now.

Sorry Mickey Mouse, apparently your input has been taken under advisement.

Hello All: Mr. Varo and I have met and we have made progress toward an amendment that we all can support. We discussed the e-mail that I sent regarding procedures for recall and amendments going forward and I would say that we were substantially in agreement. The only question was should it take 60% of our Membership to change our governing documents or 67% as is the case today. I argued for 60% as a sufficient super majority because that would be a sufficient barrier to frivolous changes and yet still make it possible for a super majority to change our documents when needed. We will see where that goes once the Board has a chance to discuss it. And, the only remaining issue is what percentage of our Members must vote for an election to be valid. In most HOA’s where direct popular vote is the only means of election, the percentage is quite low to achieve quorum. Mr. Varo argued for 25% which I think is much too high and would still require Delegate existence which I argued against. We are gathering information to see what is typical. I assume it is 5% or maybe 10%. I will argue for whatever is typical and nothing more as soon as we get the information. In any case, I am pleased to report that we should have a common sense Amendment by this summer that we should be able to put before our Members and Delegates in October that all should be happy with. Joseph Morabito, former member CZ Board of Directors

Hi Joe:

While we applaud and encourage your efforts, when the CZ board continues the Obama-Drama approach to Direct Popular Elections, Coto de Caza will not join the free and democratic CID community any time soon.

That is, when a board continues to pay lip service to Direct Popular Elections, while continuing to encourage residents to rely on the current system, and use overly complicated instructions to overturn the arcane delegate system, it is hard to see how democracy can come to Coto de Caza.
As you have noted many times, for the message to stick, it has to be compelling and above all, repetitive - there should be a series of educational events leading up to elections, rather than simply hold a couple of meetings in a board-friendly environment, then blame poor results on resident apathy.