TAMPOA At The Crossroads
The TAMPOA Board meets this Monday, December 4 at 4:00 p.m. Sure to come up at the meeting will be TAMPOA member concern about the Board's additional assessments to members voted on at the October 23, 2006 Board meeting and the consideration of the 2007 budget by the Board. There is member concern over the budget, given the dramatic rise in assessments due to the legal fees that are being paid to the Andersen Firm for the Southard Street and gate litigation with the City. TAMPOA members see no end in sight to the litigation, see the Andersen Firm's billings as a runaway train, and fear additional assessments will be made by the Board as the legal expenses continue to climb.
No one disagrees that TAMPOA must pay its current legal bills, however much we don't like the fact that they were incurred in the first place. However, that does not mean we need to incur future exorbitant legal bills, nor does it mean we cannot question the current legal bills where they reveal (or there is a suspicion of) such improper billing practices as duplication of effort, "over lawyering" (e.g., having two or more lawyers attending a hearing or deposition or working on a single task when one lawyer will do), unnecessary work, inefficient work, billing for unnecessary conferencing among firm partners, and the failure to exercise "billing judgment" (billing the client for items not commonly billed for in the legal community of which the firm is a part). Ideally, if the attorney bills by the hour, each bill should reflect a reasonably precise description of the work performed, the date each task was performed, the time devoted to the task, the name or initials of the attorney (or paralegal) in the firm who performed the task, the hourly rate for the billed task (or the rate assigned to the lawyer or paralegal who performed the task), and the amount billed for the particular task. The bills should be backed up by contemporaneously kept time records. In major litigation, like the Southard street dispute, bills that simply read, "For Professional Services Rendered" (or words to that effect) and then a total, without a specific detailed task description as described, should be questioned to make sure they are accurate and are free of the defects mentioned above. We assume, but do not know, that the TAMPOA Board, as part of its "fiduciary duty" to the members has been closely monitoring the legal bills it has been receiving in order to guard against the billing practices referred to above. Some TAMPOA members have asked to see copies of the legal bills and, since they are lawyers, will be attuned to looking for evidence of the defects in billing practices mentioned above.
However, what many TAMPOA members are really hot about are (1) we have never been told, even in the November 29 Board letter published here, the precise total of the outstanding legal bills; (2) what is the estimate of the amount of future bills; (3) how the Board, which claims to be fiscally responsible, intends to reign in the runaway Andersen billings; and (4) that the Board has not polled the members about whether they want to set a limit on the litigation costs or even abandon the litigation or parts of it (like the gate).
We know some Board members have the view that the gate was part of the original 2000 agreement with the City and must be enforced as part of that contract; that the City in the failed mediation did not oppose the gate; and that if they don't have a gate, the property values of some higher end homes (on Noah and Admirals Lane) will drop and one or more of those owners will sue the Board for an alleged breach of fiduciary duty to protect those values from injury. We won't go into that now -- it will be the subject of a future post -- but it is enough to note these are the views of some Board members that are driving the litigation.
TAMPOA is now at a crossroads. With the approval of the new assessment, it is unlikely the Board will be able to muster another assessment in the near future without a full scale revolt and a refusal to pay by TAMPOA members. There are already talk of a recall and calls for the resignation of the entire Board. The Board will have to decide what it is going to do to begin to repair relationships with its own residents as well as the wider Key West community.
The Board members who, like the City Commissioners, are political animals, have to live in the Annex and, at some point -- we don't know what point -- are sensitive to how they are perceived by their neighbors and (believe it or not) the rest of the community. These Board members don't want to be viewed as pariahs -- at least they don't want to see themselves that way. Right now they have no idea -- really, it's true -- how they are thought of in the Key West Community. Many on the Board still believe, for example, that the full page ad in The Citizen was good public relations.
We think it's time for the Board (and the City Commissioners) to understand just what the public thinks about the way the Southard Street and gate dispute has been handled and what should now be done. This is a dispute that threatens the future of the Waterfront development. Board members, as well as City Commissioners, have said they are eager for feedback. If they get enough responsible feedback, not just missiles full of name-calling -- that won't help, they may well see that their litigation strategies are not working. Recently, public outrage that was generated over a Colorado homeowners association's ban of a member's holiday wreath that displayed the peace sign lead to a public apology and the resignation of the entire board. (By the way,TAMPOA has a similar policy on holiday decorations as that Colorado association but, wisely, does not enforce it.)
So let the TAMPOA Board and the City Commissioners hear from you. Here are the TAMPOA Board members' email addresses. You can also find them on the TAMPOA website to which we have provided a link.
Here are the Mayor and City Commissioners' email addresses.
Finally, if you would prefer, you can post your views as a comment to this blog post. We will forward your comments to the TAMPOA Board and to the City Commission. We will group the forwarded comments into three batches: one from those who live outside of Truman Annex; a second batch for those who live in Truman Annex; and a third batch for registered voters. If you are a registered voter in Key West (regardless of where you live), and you tell us that and the District (I through VI) in which you are registered, we will forward your comments to your City Commissioner as well as the TAMPOA Board.
If you do post a comment, in order to have your comment forwarded to the TAMPOA Board or the City Commission, you must (1) give your name and (2) you must indicate whether you live in Truman Annex or in the rest of the City of Key West. Anonymous comments will be discarded since they likely will have no impact on the TAMPOA Board or the City Commissioners.
We think your comments will be useful to both the TAMPOA Board and the City Commission in deciding on how to deal with the Southard Street and gate dispute, as well as a helpful reality check on some unwarranted assumptions both sides may hold.
We will forward your comments from now until January 2, 2007. Make your voice heard. Let the TAMPOA Board and the City Commissioners hear from you.
No one disagrees that TAMPOA must pay its current legal bills, however much we don't like the fact that they were incurred in the first place. However, that does not mean we need to incur future exorbitant legal bills, nor does it mean we cannot question the current legal bills where they reveal (or there is a suspicion of) such improper billing practices as duplication of effort, "over lawyering" (e.g., having two or more lawyers attending a hearing or deposition or working on a single task when one lawyer will do), unnecessary work, inefficient work, billing for unnecessary conferencing among firm partners, and the failure to exercise "billing judgment" (billing the client for items not commonly billed for in the legal community of which the firm is a part). Ideally, if the attorney bills by the hour, each bill should reflect a reasonably precise description of the work performed, the date each task was performed, the time devoted to the task, the name or initials of the attorney (or paralegal) in the firm who performed the task, the hourly rate for the billed task (or the rate assigned to the lawyer or paralegal who performed the task), and the amount billed for the particular task. The bills should be backed up by contemporaneously kept time records. In major litigation, like the Southard street dispute, bills that simply read, "For Professional Services Rendered" (or words to that effect) and then a total, without a specific detailed task description as described, should be questioned to make sure they are accurate and are free of the defects mentioned above. We assume, but do not know, that the TAMPOA Board, as part of its "fiduciary duty" to the members has been closely monitoring the legal bills it has been receiving in order to guard against the billing practices referred to above. Some TAMPOA members have asked to see copies of the legal bills and, since they are lawyers, will be attuned to looking for evidence of the defects in billing practices mentioned above.
However, what many TAMPOA members are really hot about are (1) we have never been told, even in the November 29 Board letter published here, the precise total of the outstanding legal bills; (2) what is the estimate of the amount of future bills; (3) how the Board, which claims to be fiscally responsible, intends to reign in the runaway Andersen billings; and (4) that the Board has not polled the members about whether they want to set a limit on the litigation costs or even abandon the litigation or parts of it (like the gate).
We know some Board members have the view that the gate was part of the original 2000 agreement with the City and must be enforced as part of that contract; that the City in the failed mediation did not oppose the gate; and that if they don't have a gate, the property values of some higher end homes (on Noah and Admirals Lane) will drop and one or more of those owners will sue the Board for an alleged breach of fiduciary duty to protect those values from injury. We won't go into that now -- it will be the subject of a future post -- but it is enough to note these are the views of some Board members that are driving the litigation.
TAMPOA is now at a crossroads. With the approval of the new assessment, it is unlikely the Board will be able to muster another assessment in the near future without a full scale revolt and a refusal to pay by TAMPOA members. There are already talk of a recall and calls for the resignation of the entire Board. The Board will have to decide what it is going to do to begin to repair relationships with its own residents as well as the wider Key West community.
The Board members who, like the City Commissioners, are political animals, have to live in the Annex and, at some point -- we don't know what point -- are sensitive to how they are perceived by their neighbors and (believe it or not) the rest of the community. These Board members don't want to be viewed as pariahs -- at least they don't want to see themselves that way. Right now they have no idea -- really, it's true -- how they are thought of in the Key West Community. Many on the Board still believe, for example, that the full page ad in The Citizen was good public relations.
We think it's time for the Board (and the City Commissioners) to understand just what the public thinks about the way the Southard Street and gate dispute has been handled and what should now be done. This is a dispute that threatens the future of the Waterfront development. Board members, as well as City Commissioners, have said they are eager for feedback. If they get enough responsible feedback, not just missiles full of name-calling -- that won't help, they may well see that their litigation strategies are not working. Recently, public outrage that was generated over a Colorado homeowners association's ban of a member's holiday wreath that displayed the peace sign lead to a public apology and the resignation of the entire board. (By the way,TAMPOA has a similar policy on holiday decorations as that Colorado association but, wisely, does not enforce it.)
So let the TAMPOA Board and the City Commissioners hear from you. Here are the TAMPOA Board members' email addresses. You can also find them on the TAMPOA website to which we have provided a link.
Tom Tukey, President
Ttukey1@aol.com
Jim Hall, Vice President
dietcoke53@aol.com
Paula Ryals, Secretary
paryals@comcast.net
Harold Berry, Treasurer
hrb99@aol,com
Frank Serio
frank@theserios.com
Phil Wilson
pewtar@aol.com
Rebecca Baumann
rbaumann@nc.rr.com
Here are the Mayor and City Commissioners' email addresses.
Morgan McPherson, Mayor
Mayor@keywestcity.com
Bill Verge, District I
Bverge@keywestcity.com
Mark Rossi, District II
mrossi@keywestcity.com
Dan Kolhage, District III
dkolhage@keywestcity.com
Harry Bethel, District IV
hbethel@keywestcity.com
Jose Menendez, District V
MenendezKeyWest@aol.com
Clayton Lopez, District VI
clopez@keywestcity.com
Finally, if you would prefer, you can post your views as a comment to this blog post. We will forward your comments to the TAMPOA Board and to the City Commission. We will group the forwarded comments into three batches: one from those who live outside of Truman Annex; a second batch for those who live in Truman Annex; and a third batch for registered voters. If you are a registered voter in Key West (regardless of where you live), and you tell us that and the District (I through VI) in which you are registered, we will forward your comments to your City Commissioner as well as the TAMPOA Board.
If you do post a comment, in order to have your comment forwarded to the TAMPOA Board or the City Commission, you must (1) give your name and (2) you must indicate whether you live in Truman Annex or in the rest of the City of Key West. Anonymous comments will be discarded since they likely will have no impact on the TAMPOA Board or the City Commissioners.
We think your comments will be useful to both the TAMPOA Board and the City Commission in deciding on how to deal with the Southard Street and gate dispute, as well as a helpful reality check on some unwarranted assumptions both sides may hold.
We will forward your comments from now until January 2, 2007. Make your voice heard. Let the TAMPOA Board and the City Commissioners hear from you.
posted by Conchette at 6:38 PM
3 Comments:
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We have deleted two comments because they did not play by the rules of comment for the post titled "TAMPOA at the Crossroads." The rules were that the comments had to be signed so that they could be forwarded to the City Commission and the TAMPOA Board, and that anonymous comments would not be considered and would be disregarded. We also expected that the comments would be relevant to the issues related to the Southard Street and gate litigation.
While one of the comments questioned whether there was a serious level of dissent among TAMPOA members over the Southard Street and gate litigation, agreed that no one liked having to pay the assessments for the litigation, and claimed the City was responsible for the assessments, the comment was otherwise filled with name calling and personal attacks not relevant to the issues in the post. While one could read between the lines to gather that the commenter had strong views in favor of the Southard Street and gate litigation, he or she did not directly address them. The commenter is free to comment on the "TAMPOA at the Crossroads" post as long as he or she plays by the rules of comment: NO ANONYMOUS COMMENTS FOR THIS PIECE AND ADDRESS THE ISSUES.
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