SUN CITY CENTER – Indicating satisfaction with their leadership, about 17 percent of the community association members here have returned two familiar faces to the board of directors and approved a dues increase in 2013.
Following the annual balloting last week, Chuck Collett, Mike Killian and Neil Rothfeld were elected to three-year terms as directors of the SCC Community Association, according to David Floyd, CA board secretary who certified the election results.
Collett will be serving his second and last term under provisions of the organization’s by-laws. Rothfeld, the board’s treasurer for a number of years although not an elected director, returns to the board in 2013 as a first-term director. Killian, a newcomer to CA leadership, also commences his first term in January.
Election choices are based on simple majorities of the votes cast by CA members. Rothfeld, whose career was in corporate accountancy, garnered 1,404 nods of approval, racking up the largest number by a single candidate. Collett, a former Maryland attorney in private practice and business executive, received 1,192 votes, the second highest number. Killian, an automotive industry engineer, was accorded 1,132 votes and outdistanced another potential newcomer to the board, Gerald Collings, by just 53 ballots, according to the final tally.
Barring extraordinary circumstances, the customary staggered board composition process each year produces three open seats out of the nine places around the directors’ table. This year a combination of situations affected the openings. One open seat was due to expiration of Collett’s first term, another by the departure of Ann Marie Leblanc who had completed two terms and a third by Martin Hurwitz, who chose not to seek a second term. Come January, Rothfeld and Killian officially will take the seats vacated by Leblanc and Hurwitz. The board will have its full complement of nine directors.
Following certification of the election results, board members re-organized to create their leadership team for the forthcoming year. Ed Barnes, who will be serving the last year of his second term in 2013, again was tapped to be board president. Jane Keegan, still in her first term as a director but with several years of experience with the board, was named vice president. Directors Floyd and Rothfeld were designated corporate secretary and treasurer respectively, taking on for the coming year the same responsibilities they discharged in 2012.
Voting CA members also approved by a substantial majority a six dollar increase in the organization’s annual dues, Floyd noted. Beginning in January, CA membership dues will be $269, up from $263 in 2012. A total of 1,765 votes were cast on the dues question, Floyd added, with 1,274 approving the proposed increase and 491 opposing it.
Board directors have pointed out previously that even with the increase, the dues amount remains considerably less than that assessed residents in some similar communities where the monthly fee can top Sun City Center’s annual rate and yet fewer amenities exist.
Barnes, looking ahead to the CA menu in 2013, emphasized directors will have three primary objectives on their plates. The board president said he expects within a matter of days a final report from the task force formed in October to pin down means of accomplishing specific items identified by the community at large in a comprehensive survey last summer. Laying groundwork for implementing those objectives as part of long-range community planning tops the list of 2013 goals, he said.
The board in 2013 also will be working out details related to integrating residents of Freedom Plaza and Sun Towers as members of the CA, Barnes added. And, as importantly, the board must finalize a long-term plan to support maintenance of the planted north and south Pebble Beach medians when the current support by the community’s last developer, Minto Communities, is withdrawn as its building program ends.
The board president also said he anticipates the contingent of directors now at the board table will be up to the tasks at hand. “I see this board as action-oriented,” Barnes said, “well equipped to meet the challenges, to handle the necessary accomplishments, and able to work well together.”
Copyright 2012 Melody Jameson
