Setting up a new blog for the co-op

 

 

Years ago, I decided to set up a blog for my co-op.  I maintained it for a while, and then let it go fallow.  Covid had gotten in the way of things, and then we had no one interested in showing up for our annual meetings.  Realizing that no one cared that much about communications with our shareholders, so I dropped work on the bog.

Recently, my co-op got into a financial bind due to no fault of our own (I can't go into details here), and we've had a minor shareholder revolt caused by a maintenance increase and an assessment to pay for some bank imposed costs.  One shareholder (the apartment below me) is demanding to see all of our co-op's records to determine whether some fraud is occurring (it is not).  Another shareholder sent a letter to all residents - but did not pay postage, as s/he either paid off the postman to insert these letters into our mailboxes, or had an illegal copy of the postbox key.  But I digress....

One of the good things that has come of this is a recognition from our co-op president that we need better communications with our shareholders.  So, I dusted off the blog I let go fallow and brought it up to date.  I'll admit that I back filled some entries, but I made no effort to do a detailed back fill which would take a lot of effort.  I figured that I might need to delete most of the prior posts, so it wasn't worth it so say much other than to mention that shareholder meetings were held, quorums were not achieved, and the prior board remained in power, because not enough people were interested in participating in the election.

To safeguard things, I have decided to make the co-op blog an invite-only blog, so that only shareholders have access to it.  When the board gives its OK, I will begin the process of getting a domain name fr the co-op, and attaching the blog to it.  Eventually, I will flesh things out a little more and have something which will be useful to our co-op's shareholders.  Until then, I will work on convincing the board that we need to communicate better, and that this blog will be one of the tools we will use to do so.

A surprise contact.

 

I've gained and lost friends over the years.  Sometimes, it's because we no longer serve each other's needs anymore.  Other times, one (or both) people screw up and say/do things which create an unbridgeable chasm between those people. So I was surprised when someone, no longer a friend, emailed me the other day. I will not mention what this person said, or anything more about the contact, save that it was a surprise. Is it an opening to bridge a chasm?  I doubt it.  So I'm going to avoid responding to this person unless I get another contact, just to avoid another awkward exchange of emails.  But it got me thinking about how people screw things up and sever relationships that should be strong.

Tonight, I had a conversation with a friend who has a family problem similar to what I was dealing with before my wife died.  In my case, my wife's death was the event that gave my brother and I the ability to bridge our chasm.  Sadly, with this friend, I don't see the friend's chasm being bridged because of accusations made of a spouse and a family's reactions to those accusations.  Given that I know everyone involved in this family disaster, I feel that it is something that could have been avoided had some of the people involved had acted rationally instead of enabling someone's behaviors.  (I side with my friend on this issue, as I think that the other person has serious issues that are not being addressed.)

With my friend, a family has been torn apart because of a false accusation.  Not even a death in the family has given the parties involved enough of an opportunity to start healing their wounds. And until the accusation is properly addressed by all parties, the key players in this saga will not be able to be in the same room at the same time.  Given the health of one of the family members, I expect that the next death in the family will make it impossible for these people to address the elephants still in their rooms.

So sad.  So very sad....