letter to parliamentarian
As one of the world renown Parliamentarian experts you state on your web site noted above - you assist organizations, improving effectiveness and building strong teams. Unfortunately, what I witnessed at Saturdays special meeting of the Marriott Aruba Ocean club was far from that. I would appreciate if you could inform the owners (who I understand you were hired as a neutral party) on how we can appeal a decision of the Board and or the Parliamentarians ruling if we see an error.
At yesterday's meeting several of the points noted by the Board/MVCI and or their legal representatives were just not factual. How can an owner dispute this and find out the truth? W#e should have an opportunity to prove this. Do we have to wait for the annual meeting or can something be done now?
In the future, as the ruling authority - everyone in the room should be informed about the process. As you note on your card - there is an appeal process. What is that and should owners have been informed about this at the meeting.
Also, at the May annual meeting questionable procedures occurred. Below is the election letter and questions that I mentioned to you at the meeting. As parliamentarian, I question whether some procedural errors have been made as noted by this election judge.
FROM THE MAY MEETING
As an election judge at the Annual Meeting held on May 15, 2009, I noticed that your draft minutes and the letter from Dirk to Owners regarding Marriott’s justification for voting and the exact vote count for the election for Board members seem to be misleading and request further clarification and correction.
… Other examples of MVCI exercising its voting rights at Aruba Ocean Club include the 2003 Annual Meeting. While MVCI has not always exercised its voting rights at Aruba Ocean Club or its other timeshare resorts, it reserves the right to do so in its discretion. ..”
This statement is misleading because Marriott has never used their votes for an Owners Board candidate since the Board became an Owners Board. To clarify, the 2003 election noted by Dirk, was an election by a developers controlled Board.
This was the only time Marriott votes were cast for an Owner candidate and was again when developer candidates controlled the Board. These two situations differ significantly. You and other MVCI executives have openly expressed your approval of having a hands off approach related to Board Owner elections. I am not questioning Marriott’s right to vote their shares; I am questioning what I feel is an attempt to mislead the Owners regarding your history and tactics.
I would greatly appreciate you providing Owners and myself with a better understanding of the Board election results as reported in your correspondence and on the web site by addressing the following questions:
1. If you are correct that fewer than 7000 votes were cast prior to the meeting, why were not the Owner election judges aware of this during the meeting? Assuming that the election judges (including myself) counted the votes and certified them why were these numbers not shared or reported during the meeting?
You can check with your Parliamentarian that according to Robert’s rules the election results were announced as certified at the meeting by Inspector of Election, Scott Derrickson, who gave the Tellers Report. These figures as noted below are different than those you are stating now. Allowing additional votes and proxies after the meeting announcement raises the question of an invalid election.
2. Since each Owner had up to 2 votes per week to cast for up to 2 A members – is it possible that you doubled counted some of the votes? These ballot numbers were not reported to or certified by the Owner election judges at the meeting and only reported after the meeting by the Marriott team.
3. Mr. Cohen had Limited proxies for 980 shares in the A-Member election and 1,070 shares in the B-Member election at the meeting. Under what column were these tallied?
Votes Votes
by During
Limited Meeting
Proxy Received Received
It seems almost statistically impossible that Frank Knox received the exact same amount under both columns? Any rational person would think this is suspect. Is the number 2,112 correct for both? Are the election ballots available for audit and review by Owners? If this is not possible because the ballots have been destroyed, please inform us.
5. Please inform us as to who hired Morrow & Company, the Parliamentarian and if they were paid for by the Association, if so how much did they cost the Owners? Since the Parliamentarian was not used at the Surf club annual meeting just weeks after the AOC’s, or any other of your 50+ Vacation Clubs do you have plans to retain them for next year’s AOC annual meeting.
6. Would you please explain each of these numbers and how they are obtained?
“The majority of the voting interest present, which is the number needed to take action at this meeting, is 3,724, The total voting interests for this meeting are 23,954 and the majority of the total voting interests are 11,978. If you take the total units times 51 wks times 2 plus 1500 this = 23,736 not 23954”
7. You state that Mr. Knox had the majority support of Owners prior to the Meeting and imply that your votes only supported the Owners, if this is the case why did you not support Mr. Andrew Bury who according to your report had the second highest vote from Owners going into the Annual Meeting? Remember all nominated candidates were chosen by Marriott and the Board.
8. Did anyone other than Marriott verify that at the time of the election MVCI had title and paid Owners in full for the Ownership of 115 units?
I am requesting a formal written response to these questions and look forward to hearing from you. I think a clear understanding will be helpful for all Owners in the future. Thank you,
