My Year on the Coronado Neighborhood Association Board

[hazeymarie]

A year ago I was enthusiastic. I was optimistic. I had large dreams and visions for where I could take my community. I didn’t want to run for office, not originally. I had run in the previous election because James Hogue, then director of Block Watch, had strongly encouraged that I do so. At that point, my involvement with the neighborhood was mostly just as part of the Block Watch Logistics Team, a team I joined (and helped form) out of spite after an internet argument in which a neighbor asked “but what have you done other than complain on the internet?” I ran for Secretary that year (2018) because it’s the position I’ve had experience with on other, somewhat less established organizational boards. I didn’t win. I was relieved to have not won. My nervous tremors were prominent in my election speech and two fairly influential neighbors stood up to blindside me with questions I didn’t have great answers for. My opponent was clearly the better choice for the job, regardless. I voted against myself that year.



Fast forward to election season of 2019. Block Watch Logistics Team had for the most part disbanded and become Safety Team, a group of neighbors who volunteered to don bright orange vests and protect the (mostly drunk) community from themselves during large events. I filled the rest of my time volunteering at the community tool shed on Monday nights. James once again was encouraging everyone he knew to run for CNA office. My relatively new friend Scotty had decided, for spite reasons very similar to my own - incidentally, an unrelated internet fight with the very same neighbor who previously “encouraged” me to become involved - that he wanted to do more than just volunteer for Safety Team. This neighbor had accused Scotty of only being here “for the party.” So he ran with that, designing a campaign around his ideas for more frequent neighborhood events and for saving, improving, and utilizing the mostly desolate Community Center. Given his apparent reputation of only being here for the party, he asked for my help in gaining favor among voters and I quickly became his “campaign manager.”

As a fun side note: This project is how Scotty and I went from acquaintance-friends to best friends.

Not too long into this campaign, I gave in to the pressure to run for office. I put my name down for Secretary again. At that time we had five members of Safety Team on the ballot for CNA. We shifted gears from the party theme to “Safety Team for Board” and after a couple of drop-outs, the Safety Team candidates ended up running unopposed. We started a new year on the CNA board with fresh ideas and lofty goals. We were going to have an extensive Block Watch program, an overall strategic plan for the future of the board including instruction manuals for all board positions, a overhaul of the very confusing and vaguely written bylaws, saving the Community Center and/or securing a new location for when our lease runs out in two years (now just one), and so many fun events you couldn’t schedule your life around them.

None of this happened.

The first two months went well. We had intermittent “working meetings” to hash out plans for goals and operations that needed to occur between official board meetings. These were largely unofficial meetings at board members homes in which business was discussed over adult beverages. We kept notes but not minutes and no official voting or actions were taken. It seemed like a fun and productive way to handle otherwise boring or complex business.

It was in these meetings that I first started inquiring about my role on the board. I took a class in college (admittedly congruent with high school, so it had been a while) which studied Robert’s Rules of Order, and I had served as Secretary on a few organizations: Society of Future Journalists at SMCC, PTA at the kid’s school, Arizona Browncoats… and, for one whole meeting roughly seventeen years ago, the Coronado Neighborhood Association. However, each of these organizations ran just enough differently that I wasn’t sure what the role of Secretary meant to the CNA as it functions now. So I inquired...  and I waited.

The message I received: take minutes. Other than that, I was encouraged to learn to write grants (all officers were encouraged to do this) and to join one of the newly formed committees. I chose the Community Committee, as I felt that would put me in the right position to help save the community center.  There was no need to handle membership, the President (Michael Anderson) usually does that for CNA and he’ll take care of it. That one was a relief, I delegated membership when doing Secretary for the Browncoats, it’s not a strong suit for me. Would I be responsible for filing documents anywhere? No, Anderson had that covered. Will I be taking over the PR side, I don’t love talking to the press but I’m pretty good at social media. No, Anderson does that and we need to have only one voice so as not to have conflicting messages going out to the public. Okay but surely I should at least upload the meeting minutes to the shared drive. Absolutely, if I wanted to take that on, I should. Great! Hey, I don’t actually have the passwords to any of that. Oh, he’ll get those to me ASAP.

*crickets*

A couple months and some practically public reminders later, I was sent the list of passwords that the Secretary should hold. Unfortunately, as I discovered gradually over the following year, a good number of those passwords (certainly the more important ones) had either been changed within the past six months or required me to possess Anderson’s phone for access codes which would allow me to log in. Coordinating to hand off those codes proved nearly impossible time and time again. I still to this day cannot update the membership database to add missing information, or log in to our shared docs account to upload minutes. I have to send those to Anderson so he can upload them for the general public. After a year of reflection, these account passwords are permissions I consider essential to my job as secretary.

Our first official board meeting was rather uneventful. We went over the budget proposal we had already discussed at that first working meeting. There was one typo. At the working meeting Anderson had proposed doubling the budget for WayneFest and essentially making the event twice the size as its inaugural year. Considering we barely broke even that first year, the majority of the board declined the proposal to increase the budget. Yet the final budget presented to the board for a vote had the doubled numbers for WayneFest. Anderson had mistakenly brought the old proposal along. I caught the mistake and pointed it out. He scribbled a note on the paper and stated he would make a correction before presenting at the general meeting.

Our second working meeting was again held over drinks and this time discussed topics such as neighborhood clean up events, a pet project of John (director) but overall a neighborhood favorite. John put together a rather impressive proposal for setting up these events, complete with probationer volunteers, a city-provided trailer of tools, and a request for funding for advertising flyers. Scotty disagreed strongly with the need to create advertising flyers which would undoubtedly follow the same fate as our other event flyers… forgotten on light posts and/or lost in the wind along the streets, essentially creating the very problem they serve to solve. Scotty had a social engagement before that meeting which involved a few beverages already, but he accepted the beverages handed to him at this meeting. By the time it was his turn to voice an opinion on the flyer topic, he wasn’t incoherent or belligerent, but he definitely repeated himself a little too much and didn’t recognize when he had the majority of the room agreeing with him. He continued to argue his point for probably a couple of minutes too long. The next day he acknowledged that he had been unprofessional and vowed to not repeat the experience.

A week after this meeting, and a week before our second board meeting, James contacted me wanting to discuss an important issue regarding the board. He had also called Scotty, as it turns out. We went to James’s house to discuss Block Watch business knowing he had a “but also” to bring up. He handed Scotty a beer and dove right into it. He was concerned about the way Anderson and Mike Logan were handling the planning of WayneFest. Combined, WayneFest and Home Tour are the CNA’s two main income providing entities (in theory anyway, as WayneFest had yet to yield a real profit by this point), otherwise we supplement that with grants and membership dues and this is how we pay for our programs and community center. We determined at the first working meeting that all board members would be required to be involved with Home Tour and WayneFest, they were all hands on deck events. Yet no one had heard anything about WayneFest. James was co-chair of Home Tour and had binders full of organized data and volunteers. Neighbors had been approaching him asking about how to become involved with WayneFest and, after he directed them to Anderson or Logan, he was told they tried that already but were told they weren’t needed at this time and would be contacted when they were ready for volunteers. Other neighbors contacted him complaining that they attempted to inquire about how to submit their band for consideration to the event and were turned down. Rumors were flying that Logan only selected his own personal friends to perform at the festival. It quickly became evident to James that no one had information about the inner workings of the WayneFest plans. Our CNA board and various project teams use the Basecamp app for team organization yet James’s request to be added to the Basecamp group for WayneFest fell on deaf ears. He wasn’t even sure if they had even created a Basecamp group at all. Furthermore, James was concerned about the legality of our use of the name “Wayne” for WayneFest after it was revealed by Logan in an interview that the event was named after Wayne Newton, who lived in Coronado as a teenager and attended North High School. James had done some research and compiled an organized binder of legal sources regarding this name use as well as other facts and observations surrounding the lack of transparency within the planning committee and the secluded atmosphere of Anderson and Logan seemingly planning this event on their own.

James was telling us this because he was planning on confronting Anderson at the board meeting and wanted to make sure we backed him on the plan. He had already talked to other board members on the same topic. He made a compelling argument. We had heard the rumors from neighbors as well and agreed it needed to be addressed. We followed him into that board meeting and sat in silence as, not James but Eddie (VP) flipped through James’s documentation and voiced all the same concerns James had met with us about.

In the following weeks, things were heating up within the Community Committee entities. Scotty had started asking questions and making suggestions about how to improve the Block Watch program. James was looking to step down in the next year and wanted to find a protégé to pass on his vision. Scotty was interested in stepping into that role and learning the ropes. He was told he was too young, too inexperienced, maybe step back and watch for a while but his ideas were impractical and naïve. For the most part, he was ignored, or else engaged in two hour telephone conversations full of big buzz words with ultimately empty meaning and no real promises. It’s all an autonomous mechanism. That’s the key to running a successful volunteer operation: tangible autonomy.

I was also starting to see some tensions with my role as a shedtender (our word for tool shed volunteer). Almost THE shedtender. I had originally started volunteering at the tool shed on Mondays because they announced they’d be reducing the open “hours” to just a half an hour on Friday evenings. I had to argue my way into getting them to remain open on Mondays, promising I would take every Monday shift. Originally they declined, citing that there wouldn’t be enough volunteers… to serve the shifts I promised to serve… and eventually I repeated myself enough that the message got through and I was given Mondays. All Mondays. Jackie Hogue, James’s wife, was director of the tool shed at that time. She was struggling with personal hardships and was often absent. She maintained the minimum requirements, coming in quarterly to clean up the shed and take inventory, scheduling people for Friday shifts… mostly, etc. A lot of Fridays were left vacant with no-show volunteers or else no one scheduled for the shift. Neighbors would complain about the absence publicly on social media. I became known as the primary shedtender. Within about eight months, neighbors would contact me directly with questions regarding the tool shed. I didn’t have a problem answering questions or making special accommodations for neighbors who couldn’t fit the posted half hour on Monday or Friday into their schedules. I had the time and I was nearby. There were some donations offered, and originally I would ask Jackie if we needed them before responding, but her schedule sometimes had her not answering me for days. Every once in a while there’d be an offer of something I personally believed the tool shed could benefit from and I accepted it without asking Jackie, then told her about it after the fact. I didn’t hear any complaints at the time. Jackie was putting in a lot of work loading the inventory into a new online community lending software that would streamline the way we run tool shed and improve it for all. She was doing a lot, despite all the hard times in her personal life, many of which had her traveling out of state for weeks at a time. I admired that.

James began ignoring Scotty’s requests to take on a bigger role in Safety Team. Safety Team was essentially benched as we didn’t have any major events through the summer, but Scotty wanted to do more, such as taking the Safety Team golf cart out for evening patrols. There had been a series of night time car burglaries that summer, and we were just off the cusp of that flasher who had been plaguing the neighborhood. Scotty and I already been running nightly patrols as part of our Phoenix Neighborhood Patrol / block watch duties, but we used Stinky (my personal golf cart). Why not use the branded Safety Team cart, which the neighborhood had thrown some hefty money into already, and get some good publicity out of it? After a week or two of ignored calls and messages, Scotty started tagging various neighbor’s social media posts with #WheresSafetyTeam. Someone complaining about a vehicle break in? #WheresSafetyTeam. Porch pirates? #WheresSafetyTeam. Liquor store arson? #WheresSafetyTeam.  Admittedly not the most mature way of handling things, but it certainly got James’s attention.

At our first official Community Committee meeting, the four board members on the committee attended… and so did Michael Anderson (president). James explained that he and Anderson had a Home Tour meeting to attend after so Anderson decided he’d sit in on our committee meeting and get the feel for how we’re handling things since it was still a relatively new concept to have an overarching committee guiding the various community programs. Anderson pulled Scotty aside after the meeting and gave him a small heart to heart regarding drinking at working meetings (a thing most of the board had been doing) and also being careful of the use of social media and how what we say and how we act might reflect upon the CNA. James also made a small speech to the committee about how the use of the hashtag #WheresSafetyTeam could suggest that we have some liability for the crimes that occurred in our absence. Scotty, being new to politics and believing us all to be friends, took the advice to heart. He stopped posting antagonizing comments to social media. He stopped posting anything of substance in general to social media, really. But notably, he stopped drinking at any CNA board functions, official business or otherwise.

Around that time, more and more neighbors had been voicing their desire for more/different tool shed hours. 6:00pm-6:30pm Mondays and Fridays simply didn’t work for everyone. It seemed as though the majority of neighbors were interested in Saturday mornings. Scotty had been spending a lot of time working at the garden and was there most weekends anyway, so he offered to take Saturday mornings as a shedtender. Jackie wasn’t available to train new volunteers and hadn’t been for a while, we had a few offers for help come and go due to scheduling conflicts. I took the liberty to train Scotty on tool shed procedures and started a discussion in the shedtender group chat regarding the proposal for Saturday mornings. Jackie had not answered the request for weeks. She was in the group chat, I figured it was harmless to start a conversation. The group was largely in favor of the Saturday option and thankful that Scotty stepped up to volunteer. Jackie stepped in with a be-all-end-all statement about us not having enough volunteers for it and having to decide which of the Friday or Monday we wanted to shut down in exchange for Saturday. She also stated that the new software would prohibit a third day (the new software which already required us to switch to a week long rental period rather than Monday to Friday and Friday to Monday because it couldn’t handle the 3-4 day switch off). When I argued that point, she essentially gave me a “no, because I said so” response. In the heat of the discussion I informed her, definitely not using the best words to convey the message, that since Scotty and I were half of the Community Committee, we could just take the issue back to the committee and then the board to force a vote. I meant to point out that she wasn’t being a team player, but it came across as pulling rank. She privately messaged me and was Not Happy.

I got a call from James and got to listen to an hour long lecture on how the tool shed was Jackie’s “baby” and the community committee isn’t in control of anything but rather we are there to just gently guide the programs and act as a liaison between the leads and the board. How it’s important that program leads feel they have autonomous control and aren’t being directed by the board in any way. He also had some choice words to say about Scotty’s take charge attitude, in a very “reel in your friend” kind of way.

[This next paragraph is a side story and this is a trigger warning for anyone sensitive to sick/dying animals and gruesome scenes of potential violence or just huge conspiracy theories. Please skip the paragraph if that will be an issue for you.]

Earlier in the summer, the community center chickens died. There is strong debate over whether it was natural (they were 5 years old, had stopped producing eggs, one had a nasty skin condition, and it was getting hot outside) or if something more sinister was afoot. There had been unfinished to-do’s regarding the coop’s misting system (and whether we even needed one, as we were already not growing plants over the summer in an effort to save money on the water bill) among other debates. The chickens were a point of contention. We all loved the chickens, but no one could agree on which configuration of environment was best for them. When Gertrude died, Betty wasn’t looking too great. The garden team decided Gertrude’s death was heat related and temporarily moved Betty into the house at the community center. We turned the A/C on for her and kept her in a kennel in the kitchen. We took her out for multiple yard time breaks and she had a bedtime song (Blackbird) sung to her nightly. The plan was to see if she recovered in the A/C with added electrolytes and minerals in her diet and then decide if she could return outside. We were informed that the budget was tight enough that we couldn’t be running the A/C for a chicken and she needed to go. I decided I would take her home and hope her existence didn’t cause issues with our young chickens, but I was doing overnights at a client’s house and decided to wait until I was back home and could be there for her transition to the new environment. Betty was found dead in her kennel the day before I was scheduled to take her home. Scotty and I weren’t told right away. Then we were informed that it appeared her neck had been snapped. I went to where her body had been placed and felt around. I’m not an expert at chicken anatomy, but it did seem the neck wasn’t connected by much more than skin and feathers. I went inside the house and there were feathers all over the kitchen counter, down the hall, and in the bathroom around the toilet and sink. Maybe chicken necks are like that when they die. Maybe the airflow in the house and the dirt tracked in from the garden just coincidentally set the scene in a compromising fashion. We’ll never know for sure.

The neighborhood loved the chickens. One of Scotty’s biggest events when running his “for the party” platform was the Chicks and Beer chicken appreciation party. After the chickens died, neighbors repeatedly came to us expressing their grief and asking about when we’d be getting new chickens for the coop. The garden team had countless debates over the summer on what to do with the coop and how to improve it for bringing new chickens into the garden. After months of talking but not actually doing, Scotty and I came up with a design that encompassed most of what the team had discussed, we consulted with a couple of builder neighbors on the best way to accomplish the plan, and we took the panels off of the front of the coop because it was something we could do to just get the ball rolling. Perhaps this wasn’t the best decision we could have made. It was a decision mostly made from frustration, but I don’t know how I would have done it differently aside from just waiting around indefinitely for something that may never get done.

Similar to my taking initiative with the tool shed, and Scotty pushing for Safety Team activity, we received backlash on the coop dismantle. Essentially, Scotty and I had noticed a pattern of “hurry up and wait” within the CNA and we were being told we were out of line for taking charge in trying to accomplish tasks on our own all while we were supposed to encourage others to do just that.

The shedtenders called for a meeting to discuss the status of the software (a project almost a year in the making at that point), the idea of Saturday hours, and when we could start training new volunteers. Jackie rescheduled the meeting four times. The meeting went from being schedule two weeks before the CNA’s September General/Board meetings to being scheduled for the week after.

Scotty and I cartpooled to the board meeting as had become our usual routine. We encountered James in the parking lot and attempted to exchange pleasantries. He didn’t acknowledge us and walked quickly into the building. It was odd, but maybe he was having an odd day. We walked into the board meeting and nearly the entire board was already seated… as was Jackie (not a board member). I looked to James and nodded inquisitively toward Jackie. He responded simply with an exaggerated raised brow frown and large shrug of the shoulders. He did not make eye contact with Scotty. Tom (director) was apparently running late. Anderson opened discussion with “before we begin...” and proceeded to completely blindside Scotty with various accusations of undesirable behaviors brought forth by concerned neighbors. While Anderson did not hold the accusations on hand as he wished to maintain the anonymity of those filing the complaints, he assured everyone that these complaints were formally filed with him as president by members of the association, and that Scotty merely needed to be held accountable of his actions. Multiple neighbors had supposedly witnessed Scotty drinking while driving the Safety Team cart. One neighbor reportedly stated that Scotty was openly advocating the beating of women in a social media post. Points were again rehashed about drinking at working meetings and being combative on social media, making it appear he had been accused of repeating these things after the initial talk he had with Anderson and James. Scotty was speechless. I was speechless. The room was silent. James was noticeably smug. Scotty scoffed audibly at the mention of advocating women beating. It’s no secret he enjoys his beer, argues on the internet, and drives golf carts… so those three were at least plausible rumors to spread. The support of women beating, however, he had no clue how they would even come to that one. John, a fellow director of the board, chimed in that he was there for that one and could speak to its validity. It was a social media post that Scotty had argued on and, according to John, Scotty’s comments were definitely advocating beating women.

All eyes were on Scotty. Nine to one. I couldn’t not stare along with them. I knew the accusations to be false but I was so blindsided by the train wreck of this meeting that I couldn’t look away. I certainly didn’t know what I would have done were I in that position. Anderson said something along the lines of “well, what do you have to say?” Scotty hadn’t blinked for several minutes. He stared straight past Anderson, James, and John, straight into the wall behind them. He said “I resign?” with a solid uptick as if it was asking Anderson if that was the right thing to say. James spoke immediately with wide eyes and an enthusiastic “okay!” and Anderson gave a polite “thank you for your service” or something to that essence. John nodded. Jackie gave a smug smile as if she were proud of Scotty for making the right decision. Eric (treasurer) looked down at his lap awkwardly. Eddie and Annie (director) just kept staring. Scotty got up and left the room. I watched him walk away out of the corner of my eye but I also couldn’t stop staring at my computer… wondering if that really happened… wondering if I had to put that in the minutes. The meeting was never called to order, but wasn’t it all official stuff I was technically supposed to record? It wasn’t stuff I wanted to record. It wasn’t even true information.

As Scotty walked out, Tom walked in. He quietly said to someone “Did I miss the…?” which I presume was answered nonverbally as I didn’t catch anything after that. I was still speechless when James quickly prompted that we continue with the board meeting as we were running out of time and had other topics to cover. Tom noticed my shaking and asked if I was okay. I told him I didn’t know what to do with the minutes. Anderson and James both insisted that the resignation needed to be entered into the minutes. Anderson told me to just write that the meeting had been called to order at 6:00 rather than the current time of 6:14, as it was important that the minutes reflect the resignation accurately. I was allowed to be vague regarding the other content, but needed to state that allegations were addressed… in case those who made the complaints checked the minutes to make sure their concerns were covered.

We covered a couple of mundane topics, I couldn’t focus on anything they were saying and Tom basically had to feed me brief summary statements of everything to enter into the minutes. Finally it was time to figure out why Jackie was there. She had come to address the board regarding a certain shedtender undermining her authority and pulling rank by claiming the Community Committee could overpower her decision making. It was my turn to be ambushed. She went on about things both Scotty and I had done that were out of line, overstepping, questioning of authority. I tried to speak up to clarify a few of the statements she was making to the board. She yelled that I would get my turn to respond but this was her time to voice concerns and I needed to sit back and listen. I texted Scotty to tell him what was happening. He didn’t respond. Association members were filling the adjacent room and we were already a few minutes late for starting the general meeting. We needed to wrap up the board meeting. Jackie finished her brutal take down and Anderson adjourned the meeting. That was the first time, the only time, I ever didn’t submit the minutes to the board within minutes of the meeting ending.

Roughly twenty minutes into the general meeting, Scotty sent Anderson an email retracting his resignation. He had gone home feeling completely betrayed by friends and neighbors, the lowest of the lows, ready to just tuck his tail between his legs and give them what they want… but then I texted him about Jackie going on and on about all the bad things I’d done to her with tool shed and he realized that things didn’t add up. The accusations (on him) weren’t true. The claims against me were wildly exaggerated, miscommunication at the very least. Scotty spent roughly a half an hour pouring through the association bylaws to see if his resignation was official and what he could do. Incidentally, the bylaws, as we had determined earlier, are quite vague. They do, however, state that a resignation must be given in writing or else voted upon during a formal meeting. He had not given a written resignation, no vote was taken, the meeting hadn’t even been called to order.

That evening Anderson sent out an email to the board indicating Scotty’s desire to retract his resignation. Anderson wanted to put it to a vote on whether we would accept the retraction. Initially I replied with a vote that Scotty remain on the board, then followed up with a brief statement of how the bylaws play into account, how I was uncomfortable being told to adjust the minutes to reflect untruthful timing and would not be doing so, and how any vote being called now would need to officially be a vote by the board to remove Scotty rather than whether to uphold a resignation and this would require an official motion and 75% of the board’s approval. James replied simply stating he considered it an official resignation, didn’t want to continue the topic, and voted “he’s off.” Anderson listed three accusations, referring to it as “reviewing the facts.” Subsequent replies repeatedly referred to these complaints as “facts.” His overall theme was that our job as board members is to “protect the integrity of the Association.”  I replied to the thread referencing the bylaws, specifically the part indicating we set a code of conduct prior to elections… something which was never done. Then, as inebriation and hypothetically being seen with alcohol while “operating the CNA branded golf cart” were repeated themes of their argument, I added some photos of James and Anderson openly brandishing alcoholic beverages while working neighborhood events in branded CNA apparel.

I regret not having pictures of all the times James and Jackie were cruising the neighborhood in the Safety Team cart with beers in the cup holders. I even more so regret not including a picture of the Safety Team cart keychain that James put together… an orange lanyard with a bottle opener on the ring.

In a separate email I inquired about the complaints. I wanted to see them. Anderson sent me just two .doc files where supposedly all he did was remove names to maintain anonymity.  One complaint was clearly from Jackie. It recounted the night James finally let me and Scotty use the Safety Team cart for neighborhood patrol. I was driving. We stopped by the community center for our vests and surprised her in the office. Scotty had grabbed a beer out of the fridge in the community house… because Coronado is the kind of neighborhood that has a fridge full of beer for our volunteers. This was shortly after our shedtender exchange regarding Saturdays. We had what I thought was a healthy discussion with Jackie and were looking forward to the shedtender meeting. Scotty finished his beer in the half hour we were talking to Jackie and he very clearly disposed of the can in the recycle bin, in front of Jackie, on the way out. Jackie’s complaint recounted most of that, other than the fact that Scotty got the beer from the fridge in the house and that he discarded the can before getting back on the cart. She did clearly state that I was the one driving.

The second complaint, again with name removed, was evident through context clues to have originated from Belen Boll, the “resting bitch personality” neighbor who has had a problem with half the neighborhood for the entire time I’ve known her. This was the woman-beating complaint. She referenced a social media post she made on her personal page two months prior. A family had engaged in a physical altercation at Disneyland and someone recorded it and posted it to the internet. Her comment was “but what about the children” or something to that nature. The discussion went on in the comments thread, multiple people debating who was at fault as the man was clearly beating the woman on the streets of Toon Town but the woman spat on the man and went back to repeatedly slapping him on the head after the fight had been presumably broken up by onlookers. Both parties were at fault. That was Scotty’s comment. Everyone above him was “that poor woman” but Scotty dared to point out that both parties were at fault. He was “advocating violence against women.” The post was deleted the following day.

Both complaints were dated within the week leading up to the September board meeting, despite one event taking place in early July and another in mid-August. I was later informed by an unaffiliated neighbor that someone (I wasn’t told who) had been soliciting complaints against Scotty. This neighbor, despite having had public disagreements with Scotty in the past, offered only a letter of support. We were never presented with this letter of support.

Back in the “voting” thread, Anderson only replied with appreciation that I brought up the point and suggested we all do a better job of representing the CNA when acting in official capacity, but circled back to the “facts” again using the phrase “operating a branded CNA insured/registered vehicle while consuming alcoholic beverages.” As Scotty had not been included in these emails or given a chance to defend himself (outside of the ambush that left him speechless and confused), I chimed in to correct that “fact” as well as the other three complaints. I also reiterated how official board operations were supposed to run, citing our own bylaws as well as Robert’s Rules of Order.

[Fun fact: the Safety Team cart wasn’t even insured at the time because Anderson had failed to pay the insurance for that month.]

John chimed in only to express his vote to remove Scotty.

Tom did not add to the email thread but instead called our lawyer to get advice.

Eric jumped in to acknowledge that we were out of order in how things were being handled and had apparently spoken to Tom as he stated that Tom and I had a good understanding of the process and could help, but ultimately that our first step would be to have an open and direct conversation with Scotty as a group, without a scolding tone, before deciding the next steps. Annie and Eddie both agreed with Eric.

No meeting was scheduled to hear Scotty’s side. No one reached out to him via e-mail. After a couple of days, I sent a formal letter of complaint to the board. Seemed like the trend to follow. My letter was a lengthy timeline of events, basically an outline of what you’ve read so far but color-coded and with specific dates as bullet points. My complaint specifically referenced James and Jackie Hogue, Michael Anderson, and John Swift as, whether intentionally or through third-party manipulation, taking part in a plan by the Hogues to seek retribution against both Scotty and myself for personal clashes in program management. I outlined how removing Scotty from the board benefitted both James and Jackie, how every one of us (not Annie, she’s a saint) has something that could be officially complained about - I outlined each of those specifically - and most importantly, how the board was was acting in a very immature and unprofessional manner which did not follow our own bylaws or official guidelines for governing board conduct in general.

Eddie and Annie both thanked me for my input. Anderson denied having any part in a “master plan” but again repeated his assertion that “facts” had been presented. John decided to step back from his offer to mediate the shedtender meeting scheduled for the following day, though he did so by referring to my letter as “unsubstantiated claims.” Eddie called out John on his use of the term “unsubstantiated claims” in regards to my letter when he had been backing the “facts” of the claims made against Scotty. Eddie offered to mediate the shedtender meeting in John’s absence.

Eddie and Shawnee (co-chair for Home Tour, volunteer for various neighborhood projects) ended up mediating that shedtender meeting. Anderson also attended and sat in the back of the room. We discussed only what needed to be discussed and it’s my belief that Eddie and Shawnee were both pivotal to that meeting being productive. Shawnee threw a poll up on the message board asking neighbors how they felt about offering Saturday morning hours. Unsurprisingly, the idea was an overwhelming hit.

John Swift officially resigned from the board, submitting his written letter of resignation to the Basecamp group. James resigned from the board, creating a “resignations” folder for documents on Basecamp. Jackie resigned from the tool shed, in a text message to the shedtenders group chat. We later discovered that she deleted the data from the new software, which was in theory ready to be rolled out in just a matter of days.

Within a couple of weeks, we had three candidates in the running for filling the two now-vacant director positions. I had met two of them briefly in passing within the neighborhood. I pet sit for the Leal’s neighbors and had exchanged small talk with Sandra once maybe a year or so earlier. I met Amy walking their dog passed the garden shortly after that. But I had never heard of Cheryl Varosky. Wanting to be an informed voter, I stalked her on the internet. She seemed pretty cool, like someone I would be friends with. We had a mutual friend. I texted my friend to get details. She had given him the pool table we played weekly on. Alright, she’s winning favor in my book for purely selfish bias reasons. I still didn’t know much about her politics, her views on the neighborhood, her potential affiliation with other board members or neighbors. I asked around. Another, slightly more blunt and outgoing friend, covertly arranged to meet up with Cheryl for shenanigans in the traffic circle. I met them there “coincidentally” and got to talk to her. I discovered she moved to Coronado from Willo, specifically because Coronado was more fun and Willo was snobby and exclusive. More importantly, she chose Coronado because of the sex doll I helped rescue from an alley in Willo and turned into our unofficial neighborhood mascot. Cheryl was fucking cool. I needed her on my team. Now I just had to choose which Leal I liked better, that was less easy of a choice.

The day before the October meeting, Eric resigned from his position as Treasurer. This one came as a shock. His resignation letter highlighted “non-standard practices” he was constantly having to add disclaimers and caveats to, policies he proposed and effectively got put in place only to have them not followed in operational practice, a lack of accessibility to bank statements for monthly reconciliation, check signers having unnecessary admin level access to accounting and payment systems, a debit card tied to the checking account (technically against our bylaws), no opportunity to review tax documents prior to filing, and cash withdrawals from the account which were not authorized in advance by the board. He went on to discuss the board’s lack of access to financials as they relate to grant funding and dispersal, with no reporting back to the board or membership as to those expenditures. He indicated that our annual budget is approximately $50,000, yet we have grant funding adding an additional 10,000-20,000 each year which we do not fully account for. Finally, Eric expressed that decisions and transactions, while well intended, were sometimes executed by the board president without board involvement or approval.

I believe this was entirely new information to almost all of us on the board. It was to Scotty and me, at the very least. We didn’t know what to do with this information right away. Scotty’s fate on the board was still uncertain until the following day. I knew I wanted to call for an audit, but I was debating whether doing so at the meeting, on the very next day, while Anderson was out of town, was too tacky.

The remaining board members held the October meeting with Anderson attending via phone. Eddie facilitated the meeting and gave a very diplomatic discussion about board practices, expected conduct from ALL members, and a strong desire to move on from the drama and back toward being productive. We invited in prospective candidates for filling the vacancies on the board. Only one person entered the room. Sandra Leal. She apologized on behalf of Amy, who was stuck at work. She gave a good speech on what she and Amy could each bring to the board. I’ll admit it was very convincing. They were clearly independent minds with talents of their own. It was awkward to try and choose one of them and vote against the other in front of her. I brought up concern that maybe we didn’t want two board members from one house, unsure if being a married couple would have them teaming up against us and collaborating on votes. Plus, I still absolutely loved the idea of Cheryl. Why hadn’t she come to the meeting? I basically gave a speech on Cheryl’s behalf. Scotty chimed in some support, he had also done some research, but mostly he was against the idea of a married couple having voting powers… something about married couples affecting his board position? Hmm.

Ultimately the board voted to appoint both Sandra and Amy Leal to the vacant director positions.

I later discovered that Cheryl had been strongly discouraged from running for the board due to her short history in the neighborhood. She had only been here for six months or so at the time. She was also not clear that her presence was requested at the board meeting rather than simply being informed that the board would be voting at this meeting. She stayed home. An interesting parallel to Scotty being told he was perhaps “too young” to run for director just months before.

At the November meeting, we discussed filling the vacant treasurer position. Anderson had reached out to four community members we felt would be strong candidates for the job, yet all had declined the opportunity. It was determined that Tom would temporarily fulfill the duties of Treasurer, but we decided against fully appointing him to the position as he admitted he wasn’t best for the job and would step away if and when we found a suitable replacement. He offered this as a solution to allow three new directors to the board, but we didn’t want to lose Tom from the board in the event we found a new Treasurer. Amy and Sandra agreed to fill the vacancies left by James and John on the Community Committee, and we quickly learned how invaluable they were. Team players, but also people eager to get stuff done in a timely fashion. A huge relief.

A couple weeks later, the toolshed door was mysteriously broken into. It seems the master lock had been cut, though nothing was missing. A garden team member reported to have walked up on someone kneeling in the garden, but the person ran past him and out through the alley as soon as he noticed the broken lock. The story changed slightly each time it was retold. We made a police report for the damage and I purchased a new latch and lock and a chain and lock for the back gate. Tom, being the director of the Community Garden, accepted the obligation of replacing the locks, securing the door and back gate. Given the controversy with the chicken coop, I decided to wait for Tom’s lead on this project. Tom decided the lock was insufficient and it took at least a month to get the door back in working order. In the interim, the shabby wooden shed door was screwed shut with a handful of hex screws that could only be opened by anyone with that particular drill bit and a drill. It was annoying to say the least, and by far not at all secure. Yet we had no issues with it.

Six weeks later, I received a call from Shawnee. She had difficult news she didn’t quite know how to express to me. My mind jumped to the dark side. I pet sit for her and immediately assumed she was going to tell me her dog had died. So I was taken aback and almost laughed when she told me that Willo (our prized, headless alley sexdoll I helped rescue from our rivaling neighborhood) had been violently, and potentially sexually, attacked in a break-in at the community center. It took me a second to process that information. The community center had been broken into. I told her I was on my way and I headed out the door. I ran into Scotty as he was walking up my driveway on my way out, I told him to get in the car and I would explain on the way. I didn’t have much information for him. We arrived on scene to find Shawnee, Anderson, and a volunteer discussing the break in. Tom showed up, I can’t remember if I called him or if he came on his own but it had become tradition that I call Tom when there’s a security issue at the community center. It was becoming that frequent. I got a brief rundown of information from Shawnee. She entered the house by unlocking the front door and went to the office to grab something for Home Tour business. On her way back to the office she ran into a garden volunteer who startled her in the hallway. He had come in the back door. I’m unclear on which of them first noticed the disturbance, but block watch meeting posters had been torn off of the walls and one was covering Willo, who was laying in a strange position on the floor, mostly undressed. Her breasts had been cut off and were completely missing. Her leg had a large slash across the upper thigh. It’s unknown whether she was sexually violated. Several officers arrived shortly after we did. At first it was one car with two officers and it didn’t take long for that to grow to six cars and twelve officers. They were very sympathetic to Willo’s personal trauma, but they were also definitely having a good time with the story. The police dusted for prints and did a DNA swab on Willo. Essentially a sex doll rape kit. Approximately $1500 worth of equipment had been stolen, including all of the block watch radios and the new tool shed purchases. An officer asked to talk to me in private. I followed them to the garden and they informed me that it looked to them as if it were an inside job. There was no obvious forced entry. Both volunteers claimed to have entered through locked doors. It was speculated that maybe this could have happened anytime in the last week, as no one had been inside the house to know for sure when the last time it was intact, but either way the intruder would have locked up after themselves. Another mystery for the books.

Community Committee ramped up. We now needed to buckle down for real on securing the community center. We proposed to the board that locks be changed and wifi be added to run the sizable collection of Ring cameras we found left in the office from a block watch event. It was fortunate that those weren’t taken, despite being in a box immediately adjacent to the radios. We wanted to review our insurance policy as we quickly discovered that our policy doesn’t include “personal property” coverage and thus we couldn’t recover the cost of items taken. I was excited to review the policy anyway because back when Scotty was planning events and we were attempting to utilize the center for more community activities (such as allowing Caring Coalition to package boxes of food at the house), we were told that the insurance policy doesn’t allow for use of the house unless an elected board officer is present at all times. A loose rule considering the non-board volunteers we have going in and out of the house on any given day.

I had previously been given Insurance Guy’s contact info when we needed to add drivers to the Safety Team cart policy. This was, incidentally, when I discovered that the insurance policy for the Safety Team cart (and potentially all of our insurance?) had lapsed due to non-payment. I had already had a back and forth with Insurance Guy regarding drivers for the cart as we changed board members. This was one of the only official things I’ve been allowed to do. I felt important. However, Insurance Guy had been alerted that we weren’t allowing Scotty to be listed as a driver on the insurance. Scotty had voluntarily given up his permission to drive the Safety Team cart in an effort to placate the drama in September, and when I contacted Insurance Guy to remove James, John, and Eric, and add the Leal’s, he informed me that Anderson told him to hold off on Scotty’s coverage. Fast forward to January, with permission from the board, I emailed Insurance Guy to inquire about our policy for the community center. He informed me that Tom had already emailed him asking for the same thing and he was recommending I speak to Anderson about consolidating a single point of contact because he was tired of talking to the three of us. The Community Committee never did get to review the policy. We also never got the police report from the break in, which Scotty requested from Anderson multiple times after having been assigned the task of giving the board a follow-up report on the incident.

It took a few months of being asked for statistics and numbers and eventually our proposal to fund the security measures for the Community Center was tabled until the next budget (June) as we were presumably out of money for expenditures for the year.

Around the same time as the community center break in, there was a huge community-wide argument on Facebook originating from a lost dog post. It was a dog who is frequently out roaming, we are familiar with him. The picture they chose to post this time displayed the dog’s shirtless owner on the couch in the background. Though not the focus of the photo, the owner had an unmistakable swastika tattoo. I didn’t even notice it until someone pointed it out. I also hadn’t realized it was the first day of Hanukkah. This spiraled out of hand so fast, we didn’t see it coming and couldn’t keep up with it. Suddenly an angry mob was calling for this nazi to be removed from the neighborhood. Neighbors were fighting amongst each other. Friends were blocking friends. Some members were banned from the message board entirely. I was saddened by the entire thing. I had originally admired the dog owner’s snark in past posts. She’s the wife of the nazi guy. I suggested we give her the benefit of a doubt and let her explain herself. This was the wrong thing to say. She came on shortly after and defended her family’s beliefs. I was disappointed, and I had already lost three clients and a few friends over the whole ordeal, simply for asking that we give the nazis a chance to explain. In retrospect, maybe a time I would have been better off sitting on my hands and keeping my mouth shut.

Shawnee runs the Coronado Message Board, a privately owned Facebook group mostly unaffiliated with the CNA. She also was co-chair of Home Tour, our largest income producing event. To make matters worse, Anderson was a moderator on the message board. We as a board have previously suggested that Anderson step away from that responsibility. The CNA has loosely enforced, yet strongly encouraged, guidelines on social media use when it comes to board members. Not just because of Scotty’s hashtag fun... we’ve all been warned multiple times. As most of you know, I have a reputation for being combative on the internet. I have been talked to frequently about being careful with what I say online now that I’m on the board. I mention this 15 pages into a tell all blog, haha oops, guess there was some substance to their fears.

Yet, Anderson has probably collected most of the flak on this one. His determination to be The Voice of Coronado has had him holding onto control of the media relations under the claim that it’s best to only have one person posting. We have repeatedly asked for at least board approval of posts, but some posts were reportedly too time sensitive to wait for approval and somehow all other posts followed that trend as well. It all came to a head with the great Nazi Fight of 2019, however. Anderson, the neighbor and moderator of the message board rather than the president of the neighborhood association, promised to meet up with concerned neighbors at a neighborhood restaurant and hear their concerns. A crowd of neighbors ranging from supportive to angry showed up and spoke their minds. Opinions were heard, anger was spread, further promises were made… that the CNA would host the next meeting to discuss concerns of the angry neighbors, many of whom simply wanted nothing more than to have Shawnee removed from admin of the message board (again, unaffiliated with the CNA) and some expressly stating that they won’t rest until she has been “socially destroyed.”

Now it was on the CNA to provide solutions to this internet argument, which in all reality, didn’t have much to do with us other than our president happening to be a moderator and the admin being one of our volunteers. We were now all catching hell from angry neighbors. Inboxes for all officers filled with everything from desperate pleas to hate messages and we had an obligation to organize and fund a community wide meeting on, what, stuff we had no control over? We originally left planning for the event up to Anderson. He struggled finding appropriate speakers/facilitators for the meeting. Our “in January” meeting was pushed to February and eventually held in March. I didn’t attend. I was having a really rough anxiety week and knew I couldn’t handle even a small thing. This meeting, originally intended as an airing of grievances, later switched to a panel of speakers on topics such as racism and hate speech, and eventually a single speaker presentation on effective communication techniques and sensitivity, was certainly not going to be a small thing. I think neighbors left relatively satisfied with what they did receive, yet not at all amused at the path it took or the lack of what they were promised.

Following this ordeal, we revisited our social media guidelines no fewer than three times. In March it was determined that all board members may post from CNA accounts but that posts should only be informative and not opinion based and posts should be on previously agreed upon topics. Posting members should include their initials at the end of each post made so we could identify who made each contact. Most importantly, all Facebook posts should first be made to the CNA page directly and secondly copied to the CMB without ever posting to the CMB alone, as there are several dues paying members without access to the CMB. This new policy has, much like Eric’s financial policies, not seen its way into practical operation as of yet.

On the financial front, I had asked for a full audit in December, and again in January. I also requested that board members be presented with a current register of bank transactions so we could visualize the money we have vs the budget and see where it’s all going. I was basically told this was impractical for various unspecified reasons. In February, we were presented with a spreadsheet of year to date budget vs actuals, but we were told that the data was “flawed” due to the approved budget not being loaded into the system for quite some time. Anderson admitted we needed a full budget and at the board meeting we determined he would look into hiring a CPA to run a full audit. We were never given access to the register, current balances, or transaction information.

Home Tour went off mostly without a hitch. After James stepped down, he handed block watch over to Michelle, who appointed Scotty as head of Safety Team. Scotty went all out with planning for this event. He held multiple strategy meetings, had printed maps and information for his entire team, bought snacks and beverages for everyone as encouragement, made sure they were included in the volunteer shirt order, and argued to get last minute orders of replacement vests, radios, and flashlights to recover items lost in the break in. He paid for a significant portion of this out of pocket with some funding he received after soliciting donations from neighbors. Ultimately, the money he requested from the board was said to be unavailable. The funds we thought we had remaining in the block watch grant, funds that weren’t quite enough to replace the dying batteries in the Safety Team cart, were somehow unavailable now. After paying out of pocket, however, Scotty received word from Anderson that there were some funds in the budget after all and he could order those flashlights and a couple more radios.

The yo-yo effect of financial reporting within the board is not unfamiliar to us, and while it was an inconvenience, it was not a surprise. It was announced at our March board meeting that the finances have been inaccurate since last year at the very least. It had previously been determined that a CPA would be too costly to incorporate into this year’s budget and that, like the community center security measures, would be tabled until June. But we acknowledged we needed a new treasurer, someone to do more than guess at whether a request fits within a line item and sign the check. Each of the board members was requested to go out and approach at least one neighbor they thought might be good for the job. That didn’t end up panning out, or at least I was never given any updates on that front.

When it came time to declare whether we would be running for the board again, most of us fell silent, scanning the table to read faces before responding. Everyone needed more time to answer. Eventually, the Leal’s decided to step back and focus on volunteering at the garden and events but not deal with the board side of the deal. Annie finally decided she would run again. Tom wanted to talk Eddie into taking over the treasurer position, but Eddie already had plans set for another term as VP so he could learn the ropes for president. Scotty realized his repeated rants on how the finances could and should be handled more productively, made him a much better fit for treasurer than his previous delusion of making a difference as director. As Tom was the acting treasurer, Scotty called him to get his feedback on the idea. Tom was busy and said he would call Scotty back. He wouldn’t call for three more days. I had heard from Annie that there was a potential shuffle of positions regarding director/vp/treasurer and was holding off on putting names on the ballot for that reason. Scotty and I talked to Eddie and discovered he had turned Tom down on the request to run for treasurer, yet Tom was still not replying to Scotty who only wanted feedback on his idea. Scotty presented his idea to Anderson, who asked him to provide a sample ballot. Scotty needed to prove himself whereas Tom was given the position mid-term without such a request and it’s doubtful that previous treasurers have been required to provide samples. Scotty formulated an intent-to-run email and sent it to the board. He clearly outlined his platform, focusing on transparency within the board, access to information for all, eliminating cash transactions, so much more than just a new budget. No replies. This could be another case of the CNA’s famous hurry up and wait attitude, or something could be up. We’ll never know.

These past few weeks we’ve been asked to approve a sizable financial donation to Caring Coalition who is providing food boxes to needy families within the neighborhood. Neighbors had been taking up a collection and Tom suggested we add to it. We voted to donate directly to Caring Coalition rather than contributing to the fund neighbors were personally collecting. I voted this way for accountability, despite personally knowing of the well-established trend in this neighborhood of giving donated money to one or two well-known members of the community, because these individuals hold more trust within the community than the CNA ever could. The amount we voted on was more than enough to cover the new batteries for the Safety Team cart, way more than necessary to provide security to the community center, and pretty close to what we would have needed to pay a CPA to run an audit. Last week we had an unexpected $800 invoice from Home Tour. We paid that. This week Anderson proposed we allow Caring Coalition to use the community house indefinitely for their food box packaging operation. Volunteers would need access to the house, so we need to purchase those keypad locks sooner than expected, and we’d need to run the A/C for the foreseeable future.

I didn’t even bother asking how this money suddenly manifested when we were tabling important items until the next fiscal year. I didn’t ask about the supposed insurance policy that doesn’t allow use of the house without an elected board member present. I didn’t ask about running the A/C through the summer when we couldn’t have it on for a week to save our beloved chicken. I’ve almost gotten to a point where I don’t care anymore. But that’s not true either, because if I didn’t care, I wouldn’t have stayed up all night writing this eighteen page tell-all manifesto, and I wouldn’t be running again for a second year and an opportunity to finally do something about this mess now that I’m not standing blindly in the midst.