I assume David Berman, AKA, the 8th member of the board, is taking a break in his campaign to promote our new restaurant, and he is now back at his favorite pastime of pulling wings off butterflies, and insulting anyone he thinks will take it. In his latest “tribute” to me, (and I like to refer to them that way, since there are few in this community that he “honors with a banner item” on his blog) he claims my editorial is full of errors. I am more than ready to admit mine, although I doubt he will do the same, he just hits the delete key or blocks the ‘poster.’ (I saw your post and apology Mrs. Weil).

YES, I confused Assembly bill 350 with Senate bill 351. During this session I have read each and every bill involving home owner associations several times and at my age, they have begun to flow together. That makes me guilty of mixing the numbers of the two bills and explains  why I spent more than two hours searching for a particular passage  that I was never able to find when I wrote the editorial in the first place. (I should thank Berman, as I have now). It DID NOT deserve the sarcastic barb of “I can understand Ms. Goodman’s confusion over this matter. After all, both of the bills have a “3” and a “5” in their numbers.”

I forgot, that I’m dealing with the 8th board member, the man who never makes a mistake, that incident in his past with a judges signature, didn’t he say that was a mistake…… No? Oh! That was someone else, sorry….. Marilyn Weil, she signed her note on David’s Journal blog yesterday with a smiley face to show her comment was a joke.  Berman lashed out with such venom, it was a stinging reprisal. Then when the lady pointed out the smiley, he took both posts down to hide the error, didn't he?...NO? Oh! That’s right he makes no errors.

What is most interesting is the fact that, although David Berman titled his piece, “Ms. Goodman Posts a Collection of Errors “not one other error is pointed out. Nowhere does he dispute any fact regarding John Leach’s failure to serve this community. Many times in the past two years he claims to be able to read minds by telling all that I hate John Leach. Let us set the record straight once and for all.
I met John Leach personally years ago when I served on the board of Whitney Ranch. We replaced him for what we perceived a conflict of interest between our developer and our HOA. You cannot HATE a person you don't know. I DO HATE what this man stands for. I DO HATE the fact that it is my belief that he is financially ripping off this association. I also believe that anyone with half a brain, knowledge of HOA law and the Nevada State statutes, could look at our books and see that we have been billed for hours never needed by any attorney.

These are my statements in case you missed them:

#One: In September of 2005 the original Trumpets stopped paying rent. After thirty or sixty days no action was taken to evict or force the tenant to pay rent. John Leach, as our attorney failed in his fiduciary responsibility to advise the board to move forward and evict. It should not have taken two more years for this to happen and then have him rewarded for this failure with a nice consulting contract with Jones, Vargus at the end…TRUE OR FALSE

#Two: Conflict of interest. John Leach and his original firm were hired by Del Webb circa 1999. He has been SCA’s attorney ever since. TRUE OR FALSE

# Three: His advocacy that HOAs are NOT a democratic form of government and hence he ONLY represents the Board and not the residents. TRUE OR FALSE

#Four: John Leach claims to represent in excess of 200 HOA associations.  How can one human being give any reasonable amount of attention to his clients when they are that numerous? Let’s assume he does not. Mr. Leach has a large firm and therefore assigns other members too many of the client HOAs. We are undoubtedly the largest HOA in the state; SC Summerlin may be close, in which case we should have his personal attention for our dollars. BUT then comes his mantra that he only represents “the board,” questions and concerns from the SCA residents per-se’ are of no concern to him. 
TRUE OR FALSE

#Five: Bad advice: Some examples; 1. Advising the Board to allow complaints from residents to reach the level of going to the Ombudsman rather than dealing with them one-on-one. 2. Adding to billable hours by advising the Board to use an attorney for Ombudsman mediation where he knew NO ATTORNEY IS EVER necessary. 3. Although he is touted as an HOA expert, he never informed the Board that secret meeting are forbidden.  TRUE OR FALSE

***NOTE: The passage of the bill I was searching for was in SB 351 and was dumped in it final form, but this is what our esteemed attorney wanted passed:

Notwithstanding any other provision of this chapter, the executive board may conduct a workshop to prepare for a meeting of the executive board. A workshop shall not be deemed to be a meeting of the executive board as long as the executive board does not take any action on any matter discussed during the workshop. If the executive board conducts a workshop, the executive board is not required to:

(a) Provide to the units’ owners notice of the workshop pursuant to subsection 2 or 3;

(b) Permit a unit’s owner to attend or speak at a workshop pursuant to subsections 4 and 5;

(c) Comply with the requirements of this section for creating or distributing an agenda for a workshop; or

(d) Comply with the requirements of this section for recording or distributing minutes for a workshop

I am writing a blog/forum article; ergo it is an opinion piece. I am entitled to my opinion, just as much as this pathetic, self anointed 8th member of our board is entitled to his. But I also believe if I am willing to go out on a limb and attack someone for something, I need more of a reason than my distain for that person to do it. I gave a list of points for my editorial on John Leach, our 8th board member refuted one, and I erred on the number of the bill he authored.

I’m wondering then, since Mr. Berman is always so quick to rush to defend his legal icon, could the reason possibly be, that should a new attorney be brought in as SCA legal counsel, we might one day learn of more things past boards were wrongfully advised about from John Leach? 

Rana Goodman

[To view Rana's original article, Click here.]