The Trumpets Fiasco: a preview

What's the Board's problem?

Sadly, in the Board’s ill fated attempts to secure a qualified restaurant operator for Trumpets, the Board has failed to address and perform their primary mission—to serve the interests and dining needs of the entire community of over 10,000 homeowners.

Instead, the Board has ignored those interests, focusing their attention on efforts designed to meet the parochial and self interests of the few over the needs and desires of the many. One glaring example of such misguided efforts is the demand of the Women’s Club, a well managed organization that would prefer to bring in their own outside caterer. So what? Does the Women's Club even care if their self-serving demands are not just ridiculous on their face but ultimately demands of this type will prove to be deal killers in attempting to secure a restaurant operator for Trumpets. That is exactly where our Board has taken us in their "search" for a restaurant operator. Little wonder the Board has toiled fruitlessly in their misguided attempts to meet our virtually forgotten overall Community dining needs.

To date and in large part, the Board’s efforts have been expended in attempting to accommodate such perceived needs, however inconsequential or self-serving those needs may be. Especially galling is the plain fact that such misdirected efforts not only have little to do with meeting the general dining out needs of our homeowners, but they contribute to creating distrust between any prospective operator and the Community, something we should be sensitive to and striving to avoid.

If the Board really cared about securing a restaurant operator for our isolated and troubled plagued facility, one might expect that they would be bending over backwards to make this limited opportunity as attractive as possible. Instead, the Board seems content in hampering and putting unnecessary roadblocks in the way of securing the interest of a qualified operator. The Board has deluded itself into believing that a qualified operator will want to accommodate our so called needs, even when those needs appear to hinder an operator’s ability to make a successful business from their restaurant and catering operations. Why would the Board want to do that?

At some point soon, the Board will have to decide whether they really want a new restaurant operator and the best way to go about securing one. To date, the Board has failed miserably in their efforts to do just that. The Board will need to reexamine their priorities so that they are addressing the Community’s needs and not the needs of this or that special interest group.  

Ron Johnson 6 July 2008.