Hijacked

Outwardly, they have been the poster children for the archetypal community volunteer and concerned neighbor. But underneath their meticulously crafted public image, tireless self-promotion and thin veneer of volunteerism and community service, has been a nine year calculated endeavor to subvert the democratic will of GIL homeowners by engineering at least one election outright, contorting election procedures in every election, keeping a sharp eye out for new homeowners that can be easily manipulated and by making Board service so untenable for the ones that can’t be that they either resign or decide not to seek re-election.

While many homeowners are aware that Kit and Stuart Sutherland are perennial fixtures on the GIL Board, most are unaware of just how finely tuned and synchronized their service has been. There has literally not been a single day since before our Association was handed over by the developer that Kit Sutherland was not either a Board member or appointed by the Board as a ‘Community Officer’ (whatever that means). A timeline of Kit’s omnipresence on the GIL Board since before its inception is included, below.

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One of the primary means by which the Sutherlands maintain control of our Association is by tightly managing homeowner communication with other Board members. All homeowners are instructed to communicate with the GIL Board of Directors via e-mail by using the address ‘board@glenirislofts.com’.

Maggie Jewell, our CMA property manager, has publicly maintained that this address is a ‘group e-mail address’ and that all Board members individually receive every e-mail that is sent to this address. This is simply not true. The screen cap below, donated by a Blog reader, shows the name change history of the 'Board of Directors' e-mail address. It is not the Board. It is, as the Blog has asserted since its founding, nothing more than Kit Sutherland - hiding behind the title of 'the Board' as she continues to run it, even though she has not been elected to do so in years. Your e-mail to 'the Board' goes to - and stops at - the same person it always has. So, if you want to express your concerns to Yoel Bakas, our Board 'President', then you will have to e-mail Kit first. You want to ask the treasurer for a copy of our financial statements?  Again, your request will have to go through Kit first.

Neither the e-mail addresses nor phone numbers for any of our Board members are published on the GIL intranet or any other community resource, for that matter.  This 'non-group' e-mail address is the only means of contacting Board members short of knocking on their door unannounced. The fact that this one e-mail address becomes the only pathway of communication for homeowners to reach those that are supposed to represent their interests on the Board is a fact not lost on the Sutherlands.

So aware of it are they, that they have fully exploited their cynically crafted communication bottleneck – whether homeowners like it or not – to the point that Kit Sutherland has become the Board. And we mean that literally. One needn’t look further than the Glen Iris intranet, maintained by Kit herself, for confirmation of that fact. Log into the GIL intranet, then simply search for the member ‘Board of Directors’, and once the profile page loads, click the link to view the ‘Display Name History’. Presto! The curtain will part and you will see the disturbing truth, cowering right there in front of your eyes - that the Board of Directors is none other than Kit Sutherland herself! Like a refurbished mattress, she simply slid herself inside a comfy new pillow top with a shiny gold 'The Board' label stuck to the corner - without so much as missing a day of dictating the affairs of our Association as though she were still its president, even though GIL voters thought they had left her springs and coils at the curb more than two years ago.

Apart from its obvious quality of being more than just a little weird, it is of course, a circumstance as full of pathos as it is nerve. Not only is her conduct patently deceptive and demonstrative of her complete contempt for her fellow homeowners, it is also a cause for real concern that we, as homeowners, have essentially lost control of our own Association – and its reserve funds of $250,000 right along with it. It has been hijacked, lock, stock and barrel.

Now, there may be a few readers who are saying to themselves, “that’s not entirely true because there are other Board members serving at the moment that would prohibit the complete hijacking of our Association and its funds”, right? To which one would have to reply, “Oh, really? And what Board members would those be? The same ones that no one’s heard a peep out of since their obligatory appearance at the Annual Meeting – the ones that have so little backbone that they couldn’t prevent Kit’s temper tantrum that resulted in a brand new, perfectly good – and perfectly needed – utility cart being thrown in the garbage like some seven year old who sends the entire Candyland board game two feet into the air the instant they aren’t winning?” Surely, there are few, if any, homeowners among us that still entertain the delusion that that meek cast of rubber stamps could prevent Kit from doing whatever it is she wanted to do. They’ve never proven they can, anyway.

Now that the jig is up, Kit Sutherland can come out of the closet and stop pretending that ‘The Board’ is anything other than herself. Whew! You know that must be a relief.  And homeowners can finally do what needs to be done to restore control of our Association to democratically elected representatives – a task that’s long overdue. The era of smoke and mirrors is over. 

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