Oakmont Communications: Risk Management or Institutionalized Amnesia?
The Communications Committee (CC) named at the April 17, 2018 board meeting is comprised of the same members who resigned in a fit of pique in August of 2017. A story they wrote and published on the OVA website told only a disgruntled OVA employee’s version of events that led to her resignation. This raised concerns for the 2017 Board of Directors that later came to fruition when she filed a claim against OVA.
Three of the four writers and editors (Jackie Ryan, Marty Thompson and Jim Brewer) who resigned last summer have been re-appointed to the CC. Also appointed were former members Harriet Palk, Jackie Reinhardt and John Williston as well as new member Grace Boyle.
How is the community to interpret this action, as institutionalized amnesia or a conscious board decision to set aside the realities of risk management?
According to OVA’s 2017 Final Audit Statement, which members received in the mail in March: “A former employee has made a wrongful termination claim against the Association and the Association’s insurance company has agreed to defend the Association.” [Notes to Financial Statements YE 2017 and 2016, Commitments and Contingencies, page 12]
“To appoint the Oakmont Village Association General Manager to work with the Communications Chair to oversee and approve all Oakmont News articles prior to publication and to revise the Publication Policy to be recommended to and approved by the Board no later than June 1, 2018.” [Policy instituted in March 2018]
In the wake of Manager Cassie Turner’s resignation on July 14, 2017 the CC published a one-sided article on the OVA website quoting only Turner and one of her supporters. It was also sent out to the membership using the Oakmont News/OVA mailing list. The article quoted Turner as claiming, “I have encountered an insurmountable lack of collaboration and a high degree of exclusion of myself and some board members.” It also claimed that “board members often acted directly with vendors, effectively freezing Turner out.” “I have no choice but resignation,” said Turner
The article in its original form was published without the knowledge or approval of the 2017 Board. It was also published without having received any response or comment from Board President Ellen Leznik or other board members as it simply stated: “Leznik has been contacted for a reaction to Turner’s resignation.” It was later updated to include a written statement in which Leznik said, “We do not believe it is appropriate or wise to discuss a private personnel issue in public forums and so we have no comment.”
OVA attorney Steve Weil, in emphasizing the inherent risks, stated at the time, “I have recommended that issues concerning Cassie’s employment not be discussed publicly (by the board)” as there are “very important privacy rules” that bear on personnel issues.
Indeed, this was the very reason director Ken Heyman confronted the CC for publishing the article without notifying board members in advance of their intentions. As is their fiduciary duty, the board acted to protect the corporation by requiring all articles involving personnel, legal and contract issues be reviewed by the board and/or legal counsel prior to publication.
On the same day of Turner’s July 14th resignation and the CC’s article, the news of Turner’s resignation was shared with the Press Democrat, which published an article, “Oakmont manager Cassie Turner resigns following pickleball vote.” The PD article quoted Turner with nearly identical statements to those included in the CC article posted earlier that day on the OVA website,
Turner also used OVA communication resources later that day to announce her resignation. Her Friday July 14 eBlast (an email sent to members) had an entry: “Yes, all the rumors swirling around on NextDoor are true. I voluntarily terminated my contract and gave the board a 30-day notice on Friday, July 14th.”
At the board meeting the following Tuesday, July 18, 2017 during her manager’s report (in referring to the written version of her report that was available at the meeting) she said, “Leave it to me to have a typo at the last minute. It says I am voluntarily resigning my position. It should say I am involuntarily resigning my position. And that is all I will state.” When the board president noted that Turner’s announcement in the Friday eBlast had also used the word “voluntary”, Turner said, “On the advice of my attorney, I am not going to comment on that.”
As we now know, she has filed a claim against OVA for monetary damages.
At the same July 18 board meeting Oakmont News editor Marty Thompson confronted the board with charges of “censorship.” He claimed that, because the CC would not adhere to the advice of the board and legal counsel in this matter, they believed they had been fired. A July 21, 2017 article in the Press Democrat used different language: “four retired journalists have quit the all-volunteer reporting staff of the village’s newsletter.”
Quoted in the Press Democrat article about their resignations, Thompson said, “We were not comfortable with having the board approve our story list or with having stories approved before publication.” In this article he again claimed, “That amounts to the board censoring the news,” and, “the terms imposed by (Director and CC Liaison) Ken Heyman were unacceptable.”
Following their resignation, a new CC was appointed which agreed to adhere to the policy that any content involving personnel, legal and contract issues be approved by the board prior to publication. An updated Charter and Publication Policy were written and approved by the board and things ran smoothly for eight months.
However, in March of this year at the urging of the new manager and legal counsel a new policy was instituted that required ALL Oakmont News articles be overseen and approved by the general manager prior to publication. All members of the CC resigned, leaving interim Chair Yvonne Frauenfelder to pick up the pieces and try to move forward. She in turn resigned on April 4, the day after the board election.
This set the stage for the recent re-appointment of the very CC members who voluntarily or involuntarily assisted a disgruntled employee in her legal claim against OVA, evidently without consequences for them.
In his recent article in the Oakmont News on risk management, Manager Kevin Hubred wrote, “my sole function when it comes to the Oakmont News is to identify risks and protecting the Association from those risks.” Under the current policy he is appointed “to work with the Communications Chair to oversee and approve all Oakmont News articles prior to publication.”
It bears watching whether the revised CC Publication Policy “to be recommended to and approved by the Board no later than June 1, 2018” will be less restrictive than the current policy that requires all content be reviewed by the general manager prior to publication. In any event, the current policy will be in place until a new or revised policy is approved by the board.
Since the members of the recently reconstituted CC formerly found any policy that resulted in review of their content prior to publication too restrictive (leading to their resignations), will they accept any restrictions put in place to protect the Association from risk? Stay tuned for further developments.
Thank you for writing this important factual article.
Excellent work Mr. Connolly. It will indeed be interesting to see how the board and the general manager, change the CC policy to be ‘less restrictive’ and therefore, (one assumes) acceptable to the new/old ON reporters. Especially considering Kevin Hubred’s strong, public statement on the importance of ‘Risk Management.’ I expect CC board laison Al Mederios and Hubred will simply ignore the; ‘review prior to publication’ stipulation. I bet that is happening now. Jim Brewer and Jackie Reinhardt covered stories and then posted them on the OVA website the next day! That’s pretty damn fast considering their stories first had to be reviewed and approved by the General Manager.
Thank you for posing this important information!
Mr Brewer is already boasting that he’s writing without oversight (at recent Fireside Chat). Does that sound like “risk management?”
I wonder how much this gang of “crack reporters” will end up costing Oakmont residents before they wake up and smell the stink they cause.
This is an important article for people to ponder on in Oakmont, especially since the actions taken by the new/old CC aided a lawsuit that has already cost the OVA thousands. The drama that they helped foster last Summer is clear and factual. The overreaction in March by Gloria Young, Al Medeiros and a number of other people to one article that never came close to a “risk” to the OVA is what prompted the new “policy”, and I am sure will be labeled as needed “censorship” of rogue writers. It seems they feel they have “righted the ship”.
I do hope that the Oakmont News does not go back to the boring and superficial reporting that was prevalent with the new/old CC. I started reading the Oakmont News after moving to Oakmont in January of 2016 and I constantly had to find other sources of information to get the “real” story, facts or opposing views to fully understand why and how things were dealt with or decided on. I believe the lack of depth in reporting, commentary and perspective in the Oakmont News, during their last stint as CC, led directly to issues blowing up on NextDoor and Facebook. Maybe they have considered these things carefully and it will be different this time… I certainly hope so for the sake of those now living in Oakmont.
I have just, and for the first time – joined a social forum like the Oakmont Observer.
I have never expressed an opinion about the bewildering changes of writers, contributors and policies of Oakmont.
My strong view is that persons who present themselves or are selected as writers/journalists MUST show that they can give us Oakmont people factual information.
I had been selected by the OVA Board to lead the socalled “Pickleball Project”.
I designed the plan to determine whether or not pickleball play violates the daytime SR noisecode. I designed the measurement plan, selected among 3 acoustic consultants the Bollard Co., arranged with the PB club President Melissa B. to give me help in the layout of 6 PB courts on the 2 lower courts at EastRec an the supply of 24 PB players for the test, I arranged through the rep. of ER local residents the selection of 4 houses for acoustic measurement at backyards facing ER, when this was done,in a public meeting, I and a Bollard engineer reported the results and conclusions:
the ST city noise max. for daytime is not violated, in fact the measurement data during the play of 6 doubles of PB are well below the noise code.
Subsequently, the OVA Board requested that G.Goodwin and myself arrange with the city the permitting for the conversion of the 2 lower courts to 6 pickleball courts. City Planning scheduled a meeting for 4/19, and in fact, approved the permit.
Did the City planners have a choice to decide negatively ? I suggest the answer is NO. We Oakmont had taken on the burden of proofing that pickleball play at EastRec does not violate the city daytime noisecode of 55 dBA.
95 % of my voluntary work for OVA and Oakmont was successfully done, all it needed now is to have Adams Surfacing update the cost estimates which I had since last October (they had expired) and the cost of refixing the upper left court back for tennis only.
Right after the permit meeting, Oakmont News published a writeup by Jim Brewer with the title: EAST REC PICKLEBALL GETS CITY GO-AHEAD.
Brewer – who was sitting to my right in the Cityhall room where the permit meeting took place – heard what was said. He also heard me clarifying for the City planner the not quite honorable claims by 2 opponents of the project.
Yet, Brewer does not ask for input from the relevant sources but has his preferred input sources:
Quote ” Harrell” shepherded the project along with Goodwin” UNQUOTE.
NO, Harrell had nothing to do with the project except helping Medeiros (who must have asked Harrell for help) to come up for me last year with a layoutplan for the 6 PB courts for the test and the eventual conversion.
Brewer quotes Harrell that at least 250,000 $ will not have to be spent. No, do not understate, it will be more like 350,000$.
Brewer used my photo without asking me.
Brewer included a diagram which is an obsolete one with the width of the courts wrong. ( I already has an Oakmont resident call about this error).
Brewer quotes Goodwin saying that it was a group effort. NO, the KEY was that we had an unassailable acoustics measurement with convincing data which Goodwin and me put to the City last October.
I had the last few days enough review with OVA Director Medeiros – as he has taken up the project completion of the reposting and resurfacing by Adams Co. – to make sure that this gets done within a few weeks without cost inflation.
Today is the last day for opponents to challenge the City’s permit decision.
If there is none, then tomorrow, 5/1/2018, the OVA Board will approve the funds and I trust that Al Medeiros will manage the conversion correctly to completion.
Long comment but big Oakmont story, inform Oakmont people factually.
Herb Bieser
Thanks, Herb, for taking the lead in shepherding OVA through the necessary steps to get the tennis court conversion approved by the city of Santa Rosa. Many of us thought that the ERC tennis courts could be converted, but earlier acoustic testing indicated that a “canyon effect” would make pickleball courts at the ERC problematic. The new sound testing arranged by you disproved that unsupported claim. Your leadership has helped to solve one of Oakmont’s major divisive problems. We soon will have 6 pickleball courts instead of 4 at far less cost to the association and without impacting the environmentally sensitive area adjacent to the CAC pool deck.
How refreshing to read the rest of a story, not just the sanitized version. Thanks, Herb.
Good points Julie and Luini — Herb should definitely be recognised for his contribution – shameful how Medeiros butted-in and is taking credit for the completion of the project (and saving OVA a boatload of dough