Saturday, April 6, 2013

Soho Central 2012 Annual General Membership Meeting: Board vs. Unit Owners

Audio Revealing the Unprofessional Unelected Board


This is the original web post of comments and links to the recording of the 2012 Annual Meeting.  Many people since that time have listened and a couple dozen told me they were disgusted at the actions of the Board.  I encourage everyone to post a comment on youtube and to download the audio from the other site. This needs posting everywhere to expose the serious situation we face every day.

(original web post 09/30/12 by skyscrapercity.com user ID "sohocentral"):  "The Soho Central AGM Meeting that took place on the 28th of September. I thought it would be a good idea to record the meeting so that I could revisit any details I missed at a later date.

It is a little difficult to understand what was said in the beginning as there was a lot of background noise and the speaker, Benjamin L. Angel, was mumbling. From what I could make out there was a total of 14,846 sqm of delinquent units and 12,233 sqm of units in good standing present while 17,768 sqm was needed for a quorum. Or 229 unit owners present (down from 299 last year) and 383 where needed for quorum and so the meeting could not go ahead.

At this point in time a resident asked the Board and Steering Committee Members for the Minutes from all of the meetings that had been held, a simple request. At first I did not understand why he was so upset, I later found out that in fact several residences have made written requested, all of which have fallen on deaf ears. The Board passed around the microphone from one another in an attempt to explain why all written requests had been ignored and essentially came to the conclusion that all the residence had contacted the wrong people in the wrong way. When the residence wouldn't take no for an answer and tried to explain that they have been given the run around and contacted everyone possible in an attempt to get the minutes, members of the Board turned to personal attacks.

One resident was told:

"We are all Filipinos here, he is an American.... and he wants to feel superior over us? How dare him! Go back to America!" ~ Consolacion J. Tiotuico (6:35)

Even though it's clear he simply became more and more frustrated by the lack of accountability while he never expressed any kind of 'superiority' with his requests being completely reasonable.

When a Filipina spoke out (7:00) and said that it was unfair to attack foreigners and that as a local she has encountered the same problems, Ms. Tiotuico told her that she was in no position to complain as she has caused problems "with your boyfriends security guards because you do business in here' (7:14). At which point the woman became pretty upset, only to have another member of the Board, Zenaida Garcia, mock her by saying "Why are you so offended if its not true" (9:40). This is the same Board member that was offended at the mention of the 5 million PhP Management Fee, protesting defamation and threatening to sue.

I wish I was making this up, but I am still shocked by how quickly members of the Board turned on anyone making requests.

This is disgraceful! It was appalling to witness Ms. Tiotuico and Ms. Garcia speak to residence the way they did. Also, it is equally appalling that the rest of the Board members did not step in. In my opinion these Board and Steering Committee Members are not fit to represent the residence or to be associated with Soho Central.

The full audio can be found here:http://youtu.be/UCPGudoU2MY or here http://soundcloud.com/sohocentral/soho-central-agm-2012 "

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