Chronicles
From the MyRSF.net archives of the Email Chronicles
A Raucous February Association Board Meeting
Author: Phil Trubey
Date: February 7, 2026
Hello, Phil Trubey here, sending an occasional email about RSF.
Twelve members provided input in person (40 more via email), a packed room, and chaos during deliberations. Another interesting Board meeting.
Let’s jump into the controversy first, more mundane stuff at the end.
There were three Art Jury related resolutions on the agenda.
Board prez Gamboa started off saying that the resolution regarding Association Sponsored Projects and the (non-controversial as far as I can tell) Regulatory Code Chapter 42 changes would be postponed again until March. This is the second time these two agenda items have been postponed in a row. And the documents haven’t changed during that time either. No reason was given for the postponement, and worse, we still haven't heard the Board deliberate on the items. The Board will have received two months worth of comments, yet we receive radio silence from them.
Gamboa then gave what can only be called an emotional condescending diatribe introducing the newly posted “Guideline Protocols for the Art Jury and Building Department”. He raised his voice, he asserted the Board’s ability to pass this, he said we didn’t know what we were talking about.
Director Marks asked the first question regarding the potentially most problematic part of the document. The document could be read such that the Art Jury could only consider items that the Building Department had pointed out were clashes with the PC and regulatory code. It was ambiguously worded.
Gamboa said that interpretation was ridiculous and of course that wasn’t the intent.
Let me clue the Board here on why people legitimately thought the ambiguous wording could have been taken the wrong way. The January Board meeting presented for adoption and without a 28 day notice period, an awful previous version of this document which I tore apart in a previous email.
Last Friday, the Board posted a revised version of the document, which was less awful, but once again, for adoption and no 28 day comment period. What the heck else were we supposed to think? We’ve gotten zero feedback from the Board. The Board hasn’t addressed Members at all in the intervening month. I actually called a few Board members, one of which stonewalled me on the phone saying nothing asking me to just show up for the meeting.
So, yeah, you reap what you sow. Don’t get on your high horse saying the rabble doesn’t know what they are talking about when you don’t provide any information and write ambiguous documents!
Director Simmons agreed with the Members in attendance that the wording was ambiguous.
A free for all then ensued with Members shouting out their other objections and worries about the resolution. My contribution to the melee was to ask whether this had been voted on by the Art Jury, which of course, I knew they hadn’t. Board members Gamboa and Marks tried to gaslight me saying that “Art Jurors had been involved in the redrafting” (One art juror had), but had to finally admit that the Art Jury as a whole hadn’t voted to adopt these guidelines. When I pressed to ask that the Art Jury do so when they meet this Monday/Tuesday, Gamboa outright refused to let the Art Jury give their opinion or vote on the guidelines. From the PC:
Par. 58. (d) (As amended 1973) The members of the Art Jury shall elect from its own number a President and a Vice-President and shall adopt Rules of Procedure and prescribe regulations for submission of all matters within its jurisdiction.
Am I reading this wrong? Shouldn't the Arty Jury adopt its own procedures?
The Mask Slips
A couple of Board members got frustrated with Member pushback. Director LeBeau stated that this effort was to force Art Juries to operate under rules of civility and to be kinder to members. There was no response when we shouted back that this document makes zero mention of that.
Director Simpson said his concern was Art Juror bias. Again, the guidelines adopted make zero mention of bias.
More Gaslighting
At one point, a Member brought up how last year’s Art Jury President wasn’t allowed to present in front of the Board to give a year end report as an example of how hostile this Board is to the Art Jury. Gamboa tried to gaslight us again by saying he never heard that request. Which is a direct contradiction of what Ms. Hilliard said last month in Member Comment (“My request to present the Board with a year end report as Art Jury President, something that’s been done every year, was denied”).
But then, this is the Board that denied Director Simmons' request to be part of the Board sub-committee that worked on these Art Jury resolutions. He is the only Board member who was a former Art Juror.
This Board is quickly earning every last ounce of community distrust.
The End Result
There had been a motion to delay adoption of this document until March so as to give Members their Davis-Stirling legally required 28 day comment period on this new document that only was shown to us last Friday, and only Director Simmons voted for it. Well, nice to have documented that this Board affirmatively voted to not follow Davis-Stirling.
But it's more than that. Isn't it just common courtesy to give Members more than a few days to review and comment on important resolutions that affect the Art Jury? Their decisions and the way they go about their business potentially affect all of us (which is why Davis-Stirling mandates 28 day comment periods). So simple good governance would dictate giving Members more time to process such resolutions.
Director Atkins, who was a moderate and sane voice throughout this heated discussion, proposed that the document get a one word change in paragraph 4 from “the” to “all” to make clear that the Art Jury is indeed allowed to look at the entire submission, not just the parts that the Building Department highlights as clashes. It’s still confusing, but that’s the best this Board can do.
With that change, the Board adopted the guidelines 7-0.
This Is No Way To Run A Popsicle Stand
People might remember before I went on the Board, I had no end of glee writing about various Board failings of previous Boards. However, even those imperial (in my opinion) Boards adhered to the 28 day comment period. So much so that some resolutions took five months before being adopted. They would post a resolution, then discuss in the Board meeting which resulted in modification, then repost since it’s now a new document, new discussion, more modifications, another 28 day period, etc.
This Board simply isn’t following this procedure at all which I’ll remind you is California law.
Civil Code § 4355. Application of Rulemaking Procedures
(a) Sections 4360 and 4365 only apply to an operating rule that relates to one or more of the following subjects:
(1) Use of the common area or of an exclusive use common area.(2) Use of a separate interest, including any aesthetic or architectural standards that govern alteration of a separate interest.(3) Member discipline, including any schedule of monetary penalties for violation of the governing documents and any procedure for the imposition of penalties.(4) Any standards for delinquent assessment payment plans.(5) Any procedures adopted by the association for resolution of disputes.(6) Any procedures for reviewing and approving or disapproving a proposed physical change to a member’s separate interest or to the common area.(7) Procedures for elections.
So a Board resolution changing the procedure for reviewing or approving a Member’s separate interest (ie. their property) must adhere to § 4360 which is the 28 day comment period rule.
The guidelines they just passed are absolutely “procedures for reviewing and approving or disapproving a proposed physical change to a member’s separate interest”. Indeed, the preamble to the resolution states: “These Guideline Protocols have been designed to help create a building and design review process”. Am I crazy or is this not clearly a violation of the law by not having a 28 day comment period? Please let me know.
So, What Changes?
Probably the biggest joke about all this is that these guidelines don’t actually change much of anything. They more or less codify what the Art Jury’s been doing anyway.
There was genuine concern on Member’s part that the Board was trying to usurp the Art Jury oversight via staff, but given that the Board made the sentence change and assured us up down and sideways that that isn’t the intent of this document, then by far the worst potential problem with the document has been laid to rest.
Next month, they’ll probably vote (or maybe they’ll postpone, who knows) 7-0 on the resolution to exempt the Association from Art Jury review, enshrining this Board as the most tone deaf Board in recent memory.
Peanut Gallery Question About Legal Expenses
OK, enough about that. Right after Association CFO Chris Lake presented the Association’s 6 month financials (we are doing mostly fine), a Member asked him if legal expenses were going up to which he replied an emphatic “yes” and then was cut off by Director Gamboa stating this wasn’t the time to ask such questions.
Sigh.
Actually, if you look at the financial presentation materials that were posted on the Association website for the Board meeting, page 2 provides an expense summary. Legal expenses are lumped under “Professional Services” and showed $670,326 for the first 6 months of the fiscal year versus $619,995 for the prior year first 6 months. However, our 2025-2026 budget for Professional Services is $628,808 for the entire year, so yeah, Mr. Lake’s emphasis was warranted.
I can only guess what these expenses are for. You will remember that we are still in a lawsuit with the Inn. Also, no doubt there is a lot of legal advice with respect to the Silvergate project since I know that the anti-Silvergate people have hired a lawyer, so there’s expenses related to that.
I don’t know how the current Treasurer conducts his meetings, but when I was Treasurer, I would run the meetings fairly informally, allowing the few Members who attended from time to time to ask questions back and forth. If things got too lengthy I’d just ask the Member to ask me outside the meeting.
But for quick questions like this one, I’d just ask the Treasurer directly and they should be able to give you a quick answer.
And The Rest
The Board approved various golf club expenses: $900K of turf replacement, and $2.3M for a new snack bar remodel. See the documents about them posted on the Association website for the meeting.
Restaurant Timeline
Speaking of which, the latest timeline I heard for the restaurant (hey, any word on getting a name/brand for the restaurant?) is for it to open October 1st.
Meanwhile, county permits have been lagging to get a mobile kitchen up and operating (as I tell people, the Art Jury is fast compared to the County), but hopefully it'll be up and operating soon.
The Art of Political Interference
For the past year, we've witnesses a time honored spectacle in American politics of the sitting President clashing with the Federal Reserve chair haranguing him to lower interest rates. And yes, this isn't limited to Trump as Truman, Johnson, and Nixon all had their go too.
Similar to how our Art Juries are appointed (the Board president appoints Art Jurors), Fed Chairs are also appointed by Presidents. But after they are appointed, they are by statue independent of oversight. This is intentional since politicians have huge pressures to goose an economy temporarily at the expense of a horrible recession later once they are out of office.
The pressures of Association Board members aren't quite the same, but the possibility for petty corruption is very real. A Member who is golf buddies with a Board member complains about static they are getting from the Art Jury on their house build. Have this happen often enough, and the Board decides it needs To Do Something about the Art Jury.
The Protective Covenant (the name is very intentional) is a contract between all Members and their elected representatives on the Board. It limits Board action and specifically carves out an independent Art Jury who is charged with following rules set out in the PC. It's kinda like the US Constitution put that way, putting limits on government power.
The Board isn't powerless. It appoints every single Art Juror. Moreover, it also writes Regulations contained in a very expansive Regulatory Code, which the Art Jury is also bound to follow. And it is directly involved in mediations involving the Art Jury to resolve issues and ultimately acts as an appeal Board and is given the authority to overturn Art Jury decisions (needing at least 6 votes out of 7). To me, that seems like a lot of power already over an independent committee.
Déjà vu Mirror World
This is the second time I've seen an Association Board try to meddle with the Art Jury. The first time was six years ago when Directors Bill Strong and Sharon Ruhnau decided the Art Jury wasn't being strict enough. A 180 degree flip from this Board. Read this random article from this era to get a sense for how restrictive the Board wanted to get.
They too imposed procedures onto the Art Jury, a time wasting certification step which ended up devolving into a ritual incantation Art Jurors had to rubber stamp for every project.
It got so bad that an incredibly senior, qualified and competent Art Juror quit (a story well worth reading about here).
Collaboration vs Confrontation
Given that no one on this Board deigned to even talk to the Art Jury before drafting their initial "Instructions To The Art Jury", it appears this Board thinks very little about Art Jurors, not worth talking to.
It was also very telling that staff weren't even involved. Normally Boards ask staff to work on policy matters and produce a report. And such requests are done in open session so that Members know what's going on and won't be blindsided when a new policy document appears out of nowhere.
What this Board should have done, and what all Boards should do, is discuss policy in open session, come to a consensus, and instruct staff to work with the relevant experts (which in this case would include Art Jurors, maybe even past ones if they wanted to).
In the end, you'd get a much better set of procedures which might actually accomplish Board goals.
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