Candidate Ray Myers

Notes on Waterford Board Candidate
Ray Myers

My most important observation is that Ray Myers is a person who needs enemies. He has a record of creating internal enemies at least within the Waterford HOA and the Lake Forest Master Association. He has also recruited a group of "allies" at least twice in recent years to fight "enemies".

I make this observation not as one with expertise in psychology, but as one whose career proficiency in system analysis. I have diagnosed at least hundreds of bugs in computer software from far more subtle evidence than the public interactions of Ray Myers.

Ray Myers' history with respect to HOA affairs derives from these contexts:

Waterford HOA: Consideration of authorization to use dimensional composition roofing
Waterford HOA: Coordination of Architectural Review Committee
Waterford HOA: Consideration of litigation, Initiation of board recall
Master Association: Criticism and repudiation of prior boards
Master Association: Business as president of current board

The "Master Association" is the Lake Forest Owners Association, most frequently referred to as "LFMA"

Consider these top-level points:

Ray Myers initiated the current recall election by gathering a group of supporters to join in the hostile action. With respect to recruiting friends to join the fight, four of the five candidates on the slate of opposition candidates to be elected if the board is recalled live within 400 feet of Ray Myers' home; this is not likely to be by coincidence. My personal efforts to recruit candidates to join the Waterford board have found only reasonable people who are unwilling to volunteer in the face of expectations that they would be subjected to unreasonable argument and hostility from this faction. Ray Myers has in fact slandered me personally as well as other members of the Waterford board through false and defamatory statements in open session meetings.
Ray Myers was the first to criticize the prior board of the Lake Forest Master Association (LFMA) several years ago. There is good evidence that he then recruited several people from the HOA leadership of The Summit and one person from Marina Woods to join in opposing the prior board. After a series of generally rancorous interactions in LFMA board meetings, in 2009 prior board members chose not to run for re-election. The apparent reason was that most no longer wanted to serve in the presence of unreasonable argument and hostility from Ray Myers and this group.

One of many consequences is that a major Francisco Drive landscape renovation and replacement in the Waterford area had been planned by the prior board for completion in 2010, but its detailed design has not yet been started. It is likely that Waterford will need to assume responsibility for at least the Sheffield Drive entrance relandscaping, probably at a cost of about $50,000.
Ray Myers and two other members of the Waterford Architectural Review Committee resigned simultaneously several years ago. There are good reasons to infer that Mr. Myers led the triple resignation as an action of disagreement with the board, but none of them ever expressed that to the board.

The following notes on Ray Myers' stewardship as president of the Master Association (LFMA) should be considered as a likely indicator of how he would approach service on the Waterford HOA board.

In his role as President of the Master Association, Ray Myers' stewardship of that association has demonstrated abuse of California law and reasonable principles of conducting business for a Common Interest Development. In the interest of full disclosure, please note that at the time of this writing I have a request for Internal Dispute Resolution open with LFMA regarding this.

Some of the larger details:

The current LFMA board has conducted almost all of its most important business secretly, in executive session. This is in violation of Civic Code Section 1363.05, the Common Interest Development Open Meetings Act.
Business conducted in executive session has terminated or modified every contract that had been in place previously, without public identification of even requirements for doing so. New contractors have been selected with no evidence of reasonable business practices, such as: Open consideration of requirements; issuance of RFP or RFQ (Request For Proposals or Request For Quotes) documents to initiate competitive bidding; no evidence of consideration of multiple bids; and no evidence of reason for any of the contract termination, modification, and formation actions. These contracts account for most of LFMA's annual budget,which is $256,936 in 2011.
LFMA's prior board had planned major landscape renovation at Waterford's main entrance and on its frontage along Francisco Drive, with this work expected to be completed in 2010. Nothing has yet been initiated. The first step should be LFMA consultation with the Waterford Board to come to agreement on detailed plans.
LFMA attempted to amend its CC&Rs in 2010 to remove individual membership for homeowners who are represented by a homeowners association. Individuals homeowners would have lost the rights and privileges granted by the Civic Code for actions ranging from inspection of association documents to ability to initiate any of Internal Dispute Resolution, Alternative Dispute Resolution, or litigation.
Prior LFMA board members chose not to run for reelection in 2009 partly for the same reasons I cited in being unable to recruit reasonable candidates for the Waterford board: Unwillingness to continue business in the face of unreasonable hostility.
In recruiting friends, as in the military sense of "friend or foe", Ray Myers turned to The Summit. The scope of outreach to other neighborhoods is conspicuously sparse, as shown in the table below. Many but not all of those in this table participated in actions opposing the prior board.
And there's more, but these are the most important points.

Also see the Property values, Homeowners' Opinions, and What Else? pages. These describe false assertions maintained especially by Ray Myers and Rob George over a period of up to 3 years. This is despite having had ample opportunity to listen and understand factual information and to research these points personally. They demonstrate maintenance of personally held beliefs without a factual basis in reality. Additional false beliefs are addressed in the Propert

Person	Position in LFMA	Position in The Summit HOA as reported on The Summit web site, December 2010
Gene Harris	Vice President	Elected Representative of The Summit to LFMA
Will Overholtzer	Chairman of Landscaping Committee	Secretary The Summit Board Representative to LFMA
Helen Austin	Chairman of Finance Committee Inspector of Elections (2010)	Chief Financial Officer
Tom Austin	Author of CC&R and Bylaws Amendments (2010) Inspector of Elections (2010)	Chair, Architectural Control Committee
John Poimiroo	Webmaster of www.lakeforestmaster.org, registered owner of LFMA Internet domain name	President, ACC member, Chair of Landscaping Committee, Member of Website Committee (Webmaster)
Wally Richardson*	No formal position; previously active in advocacy for LFMA business and replacement of the prior LFMA Board	Chair of Social Committee [not noted on Summit web site: Also a past President]
	All LFMA Directors and committee members from CIDs other than The Summit (as documented in meeting minutes)
Ray Myers* (Waterford)	President
Art Greenwood* (Marina Woods)	Secretary

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