Having Reasonable Expectations Is Not Unreasonable
We all live in an incredibly magical place, this Hilton Head Island. Our environment is mediated geographically by the Atlantic Ocean with its extreme tidal variations influenced by the South Atlantic (Georgia) bight, and weather-wise by somewhat hurricane-protective atmospheric steering patterns. Our flora is stunning — the stately live oaks, palms, palmettos, elegant and colorful landscapings, and even the invasive straight-and-tall pines (forgive me) make for a truly unique setting. Around our island dolphins play, turtles nest, eagles soar, alligators sun, lizards scamper, snakes slither, anhingas dive, and beautiful birds on stilts wade in slow motion. Just off of our shores hundreds of aquatic species thrive in acre after acre of our unique, brilliantly green Spartina grass accenting the shallows of the Intracoastal Waterway. Seems almost perfect, but things always change even if change isn’t particularly welcome.
Take our wonderful Spartina grass, for instance — it’s no longer Spartina grass since DNA studies revealed this specific cordgrass is not sufficiently related to other plants of the Spartina genus. Unfortunately ladies, your coastal- stylish purses and golf bags should now be referred to as Sporobolus — not quite the same vibe so apologies if you’re hearing this for the first time. That’s an unfortunate change fashion-wise, but a change that became necessary after examining previous assumptions more closely.
We at HHP360 are wondering aloud whether some things may need to change in our community? But what? The best answer is that we don’t precisely know except for that one thing — more openness. In short, our Association Members (property owners) should be able to look more closely at our previous assumptions, the figurative DNA of our Board and Management — it could very well be we have “Spartina grass” after all. Or maybe we don’t. And that’s the point — we should be able to know.
In our previous, and first, HHP360 issue we mentioned the confusing presentation of multiple choice potential capital projects on question #26 of the 2024 Resident Opinion Survey, the confusion being an absence of any cost/ timing projections and the possible inclusion of a dog park and/or possible “band shelter.” Wouldn’t it be nice if we could get more detail by just dropping an email to that POA Board member our neighbor knows? It would, of course, but our elected Board members do not have designated email addresses so emails to the Board go through the General Manager who can choose to share or not share your messages. OK, how about popping into a Board meeting for that 15 minute Q&A session for residents? Sorry again, Board meetings are not open to the public and Article VIII, Section 1 of the Amended By-Laws states, Regular meetings of the Board shall be held monthly without notice at such place and hour as may be fixed from time to time by resolution of the Board. Anybody get their invitation? Ok, how about the Committee meetings? According to the General Guidelines for All Committees those are supposed to be announced and open to the membership. Yet to our knowledge, we haven’t ever been informed of Committee meeting schedules so we could attend.
Shouldn’t we have a clearer picture of the relationship between the Board members we elect and the management they oversee? There’s no denying our Board is somewhat out of reach, with our only real view mostly constrained to meetings’ minutes posted weeks after-the-fact. Yet, the 2024-2028 Strategic Goal of the HHP Board’s Communications Committee is to “Improve the value, quality and effectiveness of communication between residents, staff, Board of Directors and potential property owners” and one specific objective, objective # 2, is to “Continue to optimize face-to-face communication between residents, staff and Board of Directors as relevant and appropriate.” We would humbly insist that relevant + appropriate = ALWAYS (with a few exceptions for “executive session” issues with legal and/or privacy concerns).
And, by the way, many of us are familiar from our days of strategic planning and performance reviews with the fuzzy phrase “continue to….” (optimize communication in this case), which usually means “we know we should have been doing this thing but we haven’t really started yet.” In fact, “continue to….” is an almost sure sign that optimizing face-to-face communication between residents, staff and Board of Directors comes directly from the previous Strategic Plan (which is not posted on HHP’s website so we can’t be certain).
Many HHP Association Members (property owners) will be thinking we should “leave well enough alone,” to quote a popular idiom. After all, according to the 2023 Annual Report, The Board and management continue to communicate openly with our residents through Plantation Living, our website, and Coffees with Peter. Hey, there’s that reassuring “continue to….” modifier again. But exactly where would we find the Board members we elect in this “continuing” open communication? Take your time — we’ll wait.
HHP is a city-sized development with around 10,000 residents — more populous than Hardeeville, Ridgeland, Walterboro, Sedona Arizona, Aspen Colorado, Rockport Massachusetts, Sanibel Island Florida, Bar Harbor Maine, Gatlinburg Tennessee, Cooperstown New York, Vidalia Georgia, Santa Claus Indiana and thousands of other small towns and cities. And if the citizens of a small, merry little town in southern Indiana can demand from St. Nick himself that his town have open meetings and direct email addresses to Board members why are we settling for less?
