David's Anthem Journal

ACE Statement Issued

Jack Herlihy, Jose Madrid and Rich Pendleton, co-leaders of the ACE organization, today issued the following statement:
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"ACE was formed last year to address community apathy that resulted in low voter turnout in the 2006 election. In addition many important issues were either being ignored by the Board or being resolved in a way that promoted divisiveness in our community.

"ACE defined those issues and backed candidates for the Board who agreed that these were issues that needed to be resolved or implemented. We made those issues very public.

"ACE is proud of its accomplishments; all four of the supported candidates were elected to the Board. Yes, there are still some issues that need attention, but seven out of nineteen are completed and 10 more are being worked. All this in the first five months of the new Board is a strong indication of the success ACE has achieved.

"However, in spite of our successes, the leaders of ACE met on October 10, to discuss whether to proceed with the ACE agenda. We reviewed the results of our September general membership meeting and came to the conclusion that there was limited passion and interest by the members to do anything at this time.

"It is obvious that a serious split was created when Bob Frank was not elected Board President. In addition, the fact that an ACE founder was involved in that politicking has caused many ACE supporters to denounce their membership. Many of these were our most active and passionate members.

"Therefore we, the elected leaders, have decided that ACE should go dormant at this time. Should new issues arise, such as we experienced last year, and there is a need for ACE to reorganize, we will consider doing so.

"In the meantime, we thank the entire membership of ACE for their interest and the Board for its attention to the ACE issues. We will continue to support the Board in any way we can to further the lifestyle that all Sun City Anthem homeowners desire.

All the best to our Membership,

Jack Herlihy
Jose Madrid
Rich Pendleton

A Message to the Community From ACE

Today, Aug. 23, the day of the Board meeting, a steering committee of ACE met to decide its future. The meeting was attended by about a dozen or more ACE members who have been very active from the beginning. The fact that a very unpleasant event occurred at the Board meeting gave a special emphasis to making a decision on whether or not to continue the mission of ACE.

ACE has encountered resistance and negative publicity since we declared our endorsement of 4 candidates for election to this year’s Board. Compounding that problem was the fact that some vocal critics of current Board members are recognized as ACE members. People began losing respect for our organization when some people said that prominent ACE members were responsible for Mike Dixon being elected President and not Bob Frank. Anger in the community has continued to grow, culminating in today’s ugly confrontation following adjournment.

Whether or not ACE members have been involved in dealing behind the scene, they have done it as individuals and not as an ACE initiative. Our problem is that we are not an incorporated organization and no member can tell another member what or what not to do. In fact, we really do not know who all of our members are.

In order to address these problems and restore respect for our organization, we will be holding a general membership meeting at 7 PM on September 11 in the Penn room in Independence Center. Known members of ACE will receive email notice of the meeting. We also welcome any interested homeowner to come to our meeting and join ACE if they like what they see. We ask only that you RSVP to Jack Herlihy at jack_h@cox.net (that is an underscore between “jack” and “h”) before Sept 4 so we can make sure to arrange for enough meeting room.

At this meeting, we expect to elect a person who will act as the sole spokesman for ACE. When issues require the attention of ACE, the spokesman will be the only person to present the ACE position at public meetings or in private communications with Board members. ACE was originally founded to define issues that mattered to our residents. When election season started, we interviewed candidates to determine which ones supported our issues most thoroughly. We supported them and they all won (because a huge number of non-ACE homeowners believed in our goals). We are sorry that there are personality problems on the Board, but resolution of issues is what is important to ACE and all the candidates we helped elect are working to resolve those issues.

In our general meeting we intend to continue our mission and will set up groups to identify new issues and to follow progress on our original issues. We will also deal with organizational matters.

Signed:
Rich Pendleton
Jack Herlihy
Jose Madrid

A Report From ACE

Some members of Anthem Citizens for Excellence recently met to discuss the future for the group. They expressed a shared opinion that a number of homeowners have the wrong impression of our group. This impression has been fostered by one or more members of the previous Board of Directors and is more descriptive of them than it is of our group, ACE.

ACE was formed last year because many important issues were either being ignored by the Board or being resolved in a way that promoted divisiveness in our community. ACE defined those issues and supported candidates for the Board who agreed that these were issues that needed to be resolved or implemented. We made those issues very public, and they can be viewed under the Categories header on the left side of this blog.

Obviously, our concerns and recommendations were well received by the homeowners, and the candidates we supported were elected in a major landslide. Approximately 70% of the votes cast were for the 4 winning candidates. Of course, ACE could not have succeeded as it did without the help of many volunteers and we thank them for their contribution to our community’s future.

ACE is proud of its accomplishments to date and intends to follow up on them to keep our homeowners informed of the new Board’s progress in dealing with the issues we defined. Several of the issues have already been addressed and we are pleased with the progress so far. Look for an announcement on just how this “report card” will be provided. We will be looking to the ACE membership for help in deciding how to put this together.

We also recognize that there will be another election next year in which 3 seats will be filled. We plan to repeat last year’s process. That is, we will solicit community participation to determine the most important unresolved issues. If there are more than 3 candidates, we will try to meet with them to determine which ones best support resolution of those issues and we will work to get them elected.

We are proud that ACE is a positive organization and was able to accomplish so many of its objectives by highlighting issues rather than personalities. That policy continues despite the attacks by some who falsely attempt to link ACE to efforts to oust the Minuteman Foundation. If we should again decide to take a position on a controversial matter, such as we did on the proposed Trumpets contract, we will do so with our name prominently attached, and with the reputation for credibility that we have earned!

For Anthem Citizens For Excellence,
Rich Pendleton

ACE Applications

I've been asked many times over the past two or three days how to obtain a copy of the application to join Anthem Citizens for Excellence (ACE).

If you'd like a copy, even if just to see what it looks like, please send me an e-mail request and I will send you the application form as a pdf document. The only requirement to read and print out the form for completion is that you have the Adobe Acrobat Reader on your computer.

I am making the form available as a courtesy; the residents who the forms will go to are Bob Sansing or Bonnie Weitzman, whose contact information is on the form.

You've Been Dealt an Ace

Introducing ACE

About 25 Sun City Anthem residents, representing a wealth of experience as committee members, Board of Directors members and community volunteers, recently got together to discuss common concerns about issues related to the operations and governance of our community. As a result of this meeting, the group decided to form Anthem Citizens for Excellence, known as ACE for short. (Click on logo above for a larger image).

We know that a large number of residents share these concerns. There are issues over the lack of support for our volunteers; the ineffective process by which our standing committees work with the Board and with residents; the frequent failure to share important information with the community; the apparent lack of respect for issues and suggestions that residents bring forward, as well as for the residents themselves.

If you share these concerns, you are cordially invited to join ACE. Without your participation, along with broad-based community support, we will not succeed.

ACE will not single out individual community leaders for personal attacks. It may be that specific leaders are closely associated with concerns and actions that we will address, but our focus will be on those concerns and actions, and their consequences, not on individual personalities. In fact, ACE does not and will not dispute the fact that all community leaders, regardless of the capacity in which they volunteer their services, have a sincere interest in the betterment of Sun City Anthem.

A chief goal of ACE is to assure that we have a presence in every Sun City Anthem village. ACE members will join together to discuss important issues, which we will thoroughly research, after which reports and “white papers” will be published to analyze the issues and recommend policies and procedures to resolve them. We will also, through a process of collective input from our members, determine which issues are important enough to us -and to the community- that we will ask Board of Directors candidates to make commitments to those issues in exchange for our endorsement and our campaign support in the villages.

One has to only engage in every-day conversation to realize the current breadth and depth of community concerns. ACE is your vehicle to harness these concerns by bringing residents together to achieve common goals in a constructive manner. We will be in frequent communication through meetings, a newsletter, an Internet ACE blog, and through other channels.

For more information, including a membership application, feel free to contact Bob Sansing at 269-7690 or e-mail to robertsansing@yahoo.com.

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ACE Mission Statement

Anthem Citizens for Excellence (ACE) has been formed to address the community apathy that resulted in a historically low voter turnout in the 2006 Sun City Anthem Board of Directors election. ACE consists of concerned residents who strive to improve communication between and among our elected Board of Directors and our homeowners. ACE’s activities will be directed toward the goal of improving operations and expanding the pool of highly qualified Board candidates. ACE will engage in activities to assist these highly qualified candidates in getting elected to the Board, with the result being improved operations.

To accomplish its results, ACE will engage in the following activities, among others:

·          Develop position papers and analyses of issues deemed critical to the well-being of Sun City Anthem.

·          Build an organization of volunteers in our villages to assure that all residents can be efficiently reached when there is information to disseminate.

·          Identify concerns unique to specific villages and propose solutions to address those concerns.

·          Develop a reasonable set of campaign issues that candidates will be asked to endorse in order to obtain ACE’s support and assistance.

·          Propose and develop programs and initiatives specifically designed to improve communications within the community.