HSVPOA BOD Election Process for 2020

By Lloyd Sherman, November 1, 2019

Some may recall that during the election process for 2019, I was openly critical of the process being utilized to elect candidates to the 2019 BOD. We are now at November 1, 2019 and I am yet to see any movement on improving this process before the next election. Below is what I put together and sent to the Board last year, made it publicly available and commented on before the count last year.

Urgent Request to POA Board

3/19/2019

In our current environment, suspicion seems to be running rampant, and while efforts are being made to become more open and transparent, a general lack of trust still exists.

A current one centers around the upcoming vote count for the POA Board and is generally related to a fear that it won’t be transparent. So, in the spirit of showing transparency and at the same time garnering some trust in those who continue to distrust, I recommend that at a minimum you ensure the following is done as part of this process:

1. Provide a copy of the invoice reflecting how many ballots were printed – simply providing a count that can be challenged will not be deemed as being transparent.
2. Provide a count of the ballots mailed to residents.
3. Provide a count of the ballots mailed to non-residents.
4. Provide a count of the “replaced” ballots from the affidavit log.
5. Have the remaining non-voted ballots counted as part of the counting day process.
6. Provide this accounting immediately following and in conjunction with the election results along with a copy of the invoice for the printing.
7. Post-election and when available from the post office, update the accounting to include postage-paid numbers provided by the Post Office. While this will by itself not prove anything, it does show another sign of transparency.

Without doing this process as a minimum, this entire voting process is, and will continue to be brought into question. Just because this is basically how it’s always been done, won’t be acceptable given our current trust issues, and keeping in mind that the environment has changed. I suggest this should have been foreseen and taken into account during the establishment of the voting committee.

We can’t stick our heads in the sand and not recognize there is an undercurrent of mistrust currently widespread in the Village. You would think this would be enough for the Board to consider this subject of high priority and would be taking steps to ensure that the level of mistrust is removed by making the necessary changes needed to the process used last year. Now, no one is being accused of wrong-doing, but rather, it is being suggested that ALL appearances of impropriety be removed from the process.

I am once again encouraging my fellow property owners to demand that this process be modified before another year passes and nothing has been done to ensure that our voting process is absent of any appearance of impropriety. These elections are expensive and we have a right to know our assessments are being used in the most prudent way that they can.

By Lloyd Sherman, November 1, 2019

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