Our Community Manager, Menka Sethi, has tackled historical accounting and financial issues and improved workforce morale. Her actions during challenges showcased leadership, transparency, and empathy. Her zero-based budgeting approach coupled with judicious engagement of lawyers and out-sourcing stabilized fees and reduced ongoing costs. Menka’s recognition of our interdependence with surrounding communities and her knowledge of low-income housing is invaluable. With Menka Sethi’s financial and management skills and her ecological commitment, good direction from our Board, and Member support, the Association can move forward with renewed energy and a greater sense of community.

I have a deep devotion to the preservation of TSR’s lands. TSR holds fifty percent of our lands in common. We need Directors who will protect our Commons and preserve our coastal landscape. Ignoring ecological factors in the beginning of discussions of initiatives on Commons leads to faulty outcomes. We need to be even more diligent in our preservation efforts given the speed by which climate change is altering our landscape and its inhabitants.

Each Director has a statutory fiduciary duty to protect the Association’s financial health. I support a careful, thorough evaluation of TSRA’s budget process and its budgets. TSR needs a long-term strategic plan that prioritizes our values in order to make coherent and cohesive choices during budget deliberations about revenues and expenses and, consequently, our fees.

The Commons is one of the most important aspects of TSR. In many ways, the Commons define TSR as areas for the enjoyment of all Members equally, while providing safe habitats for animals. The person who accepts the position of Director of Environmental Planning must work with Community Manager to best preserve our Commons while controlling our expenditures.

Sea Ranch deserves Directors who are independent, informed, and collegial. Members must be able to trust the diligence and impartial judgment of our Directors. The Board’s role is to consider both TSR’s short-term and long-term objectives, to understand what the possible rewards and risks are, to articulate clearly to members and staff the alternatives, to always listen to others and address their concerns, and to insist on collaboration among constituencies and, whenever appropriate, to compromise, in order to act. A Director’s fiduciary duty is to set policy, exercise oversight of TSR affairs, but not to interfere in the Community Manager’s execution of those policies.

I have lived full-time at TSR for four years and now have the time to devote long hours to the Board and to your concerns. You will not hear me complain about the difficulties of service or the number of meetings or hours of work. I will be here during stormy days and stormy meetings.

Our Community Manager, Menka Sethi, has tackled historical accounting and financial issues and improved workforce morale. Her actions during challenges showcased leadership, transparency, and empathy. Her zero-based budgeting approach coupled with judicious engagement of lawyers and out-sourcing stabilized fees and reduced ongoing costs. Menka’s recognition of our interdependence with surrounding communities and her knowledge of low-income housing is invaluable. With Menka Sethi’s financial and management skills and her ecological commitment, good direction from our Board, and Member support, the Association can move forward with renewed energy and a greater sense of community.

As a lawyer, I am very familiar with the original governance documents, The Restrictions and by-laws. I’m also aware of the Bane controversies and settlement documents. I oppose turning over control of TSR affairs to either Sonoma County or the Coastal Commission, however, TSR must honor federal and state laws protecting native flora and fauna, including the Marine Mammal Protection Act and The California Coastal Act.

Throughout its history, TSR should have been vigorously soliciting both public and private grants. Our financial resources cannot come solely from increasing dues. We must seek other available sources, such as grants and philanthropy. We need to adopt a more systematic and more intense approach to seeking and successfully obtaining grants for our environmental preservation and social outreach. Good grant writing pays for itself.

TSRA must reform our approach to proposing, evaluating, and executing new projects. All initiatives need to be formulated and all results articulated in documentation available to the entire membership before, during, and after the initiative. Factors to be evaluated include: consistency with TSR values; environmental considerations and restrictions; regulatory compliance; financial projections; funding source; reputational risk; and resource requirements, including staff time. Only then can we engage in an appropriate financial modeling of costs and benefits. The objective is to evaluate all elements to achieve the ‘least imperfect’ result.

The Board must adopt a long-term fiscal strategy to achieve financial stability. I agree with our Community Manager that developing our annual budget should be an ongoing process throughout the fiscal year, not simply an annual evaluation of operational costs. The Community Manager, Finance Committee and the Board can construct a cohesive, rational budget that prioritizes long-term objectives and minimizes short-term expenses.

Restraining increases in TSRA annual fees while providing the expected services is without question difficult in an inflationary period. We must review our services at least quarterly to determine whether they are "must-haves" and "nice-to-haves". The budget process ought to be continuous over the fiscal year so that expenditures can be tracked and contained.

I support TSRA’s egalitarian history. I believe economic diversity promotes social diversity and social diversity enriches our daily lives. During this pandemic, real estate prices increased significantly, not only in TSR, but throughout the coastal region. TSR’s membership has dramatically changed. Has the members’ income diversity decreased? How do we preserve economic diversity without creating different “classes” of members?

Many members who have expressed difficulty with rising annual fees also have the highest relative level of equity in their homes. At no cost to TSRA, using third party institutions, I suggest that we consider financial programs that enable members to access this equity at below market rates.

I have created similar structures in comparable situations. Such a program could generate both member tax advantages and lower out-of-pocket costs.

The Sea Ranch’s hardworking staff deserve appropriate compensation and appropriate offices. We need to provide competitive wages for a small staff to facilitate hiring, improve retention, and should demand the rapid introduction of technology to increase productivity. We need to use innovative approaches concerning hiring to locate new staff and to make sure that their work sites, either distant or local, fit their jobs’ requirements.

TSR — past, present and future — is a story of volunteers. We should celebrate the active participation of our volunteers. Your Directors, after all, are among our many hardworking volunteers. Certainly, we need the continuity and the control of professional staff members for certain positions and projects. However, TSR’s rich history of volunteers providing ideas and implementing decisions must continue and thrive.

We must care about TSR Security and our Security Officers. With so many new residents and rental visitors, our security requirements constantly evolve. I have had strangers camp on my property. A good thoughtful discussion about the benefits and detriments of 24-hour or 18-hour security deserves your comments.

We must acknowledge that the Sea Ranch staff has to struggle to find affordable housing. Housing stock in our local area is exceptionally low. Our Board needs financial expertise to look at this critical issue intelligently. We need to explore opportunities both on the Ranch and in surrounding areas.

I am currently involved in a private investment enterprise to create multi-generation below-market rate housing, including at three Mendocino County sites. I have constructed financial and demographic models to assess the need and viability of housing in selected areas and have found funding sources for the acquisition of appropriate property, the development of housing units, and the engagement of third-party managers.

TSR must be about great architecture. We need suitable but compact public buildings. We should honor our founders’ aesthetic values while adapting to current regulations and consider new materials. Any Verdant View structure should live lightly not only on the land but also on our wallets.

My emotional attachment to vacation rentals comes from my parents’ early rentals here. I couldn’t have developed my relationship with the Sea Ranch if we couldn’t have rented homes here as we couldn’t afford to buy one. However, the arrival of national rental companies and their dynamic pricing has drastically changed the rental landscape. So I do think we should have a properly regulated vacation rental region.

TSRA definitely is not in control, the Coastal Commission and Sonoma County are. On April 11th, the Coastal Commission approved the Sonoma Vacation Rental proposal as well as Marin’s proposal which included caps on the number of vacation rentals in various locales at 2018 levels.

We should acknowledge that the Restrictions prohibit businesses at TSR and allow rentals only “from time to time.” I support Sonoma County’s future consideration of a prohibition on ownership of multiple properties as full time rental investments.

We should affirm our long history of short-term rentals, but not allow any house, rental or otherwise, to become a nuisance to neighbors or any future cluster of rentals to become a threat to our residential character.

I definitely disagree with the Hosting Coalition on two points. We are a residential community which allows vacation rentals. The Subdivided Land Act governs the DSA which in turn governs HOAs. The SLA specifically excludes commercial subdivisions from its jurisdiction. And as a candidate I would never sign a pledge of allegiance to any interest group of any stripe and, thus, compromise my undivided allegiance to all Sea Ranch members.

Our winter’s storms present TSRA with an opportunity to completely rethink our vegetation management strategies. The violent storms, and their disastrous effect on TSR, signal the increasing warming of our planet. There is no denying the devastating impact that decades of logging have had on our climate, our forests, and our rivers and streams. We need our workforce and our money to be focused on addressing the aging pine plantations in the more populated areas of TSR. The Association should be removing dangerous trees and planting healthy trees. Whether for fire, or trees that threaten to fall, vegetation reduction should happen near property and infrastructure.

With respect to solar, I truly believe that as a community we should be more energy independent. We have done well with our water and internet independence and adding to that creating additional efficient heating sources is an important endeavor. We want to consider solar energy to supersede fossil fuels. In the case of solar, there are two approaches:

i) solar power at the association level with the necessary equipment put on commons or

ii) solar power at the individual homeowner level with a specified program that creates efficiencies of scale and increases the participant pool size. I have worked on this approach in a number of cases.

We chose the first approach. And as now know, our actions in executing that approach have been flawed and led to the breakdown of the project with significant losses incurred by the Association. The solar project was poorly researched, poorly managed and poorly modeled as to predictive financial results. Moreover, it was never correctly presented by the management to the Board and certainly not by the Board to the membership.

The solar disarray project has shown us that we must consider all of the variables in order to make valid decisions. In this case, 2 were not on, or if you saw my podcast, at the table.

First: the Board did not properly consider the environmental issues. They ignored the highly intelligent questions of a member who had researched their maps. As a result, we never understood what was the true financial cost of adhering to environmental regulations. This also could have been avoided with a better legal understanding of the environmental issues.

Second: The cost of permitting was not on any spreadsheet nor was the short term risk of obsolescence modeled.

The Sea Ranch founders’ original intent for the airstrip was to create an airstrip to bring potential purchasers to the Sea Ranch, avoiding Highway 1, and to provide ultimately a recreational member amenity for pilots of small planes.

I think we can confirm this by the airstrip’s small size and relatively short runway, by the absence of significant regulations, and by the sheer number of homes built in proximity to it as close as 150 ft.

Now we have seen increased usage of our small airstrip by larger planes and helicopters that clearly has required appropriate regulation to ensure all members health and safety and enjoyment of both the facility and nearby homes.

The Board’s most recent 7.2 Rule provides some but not enough regulation. I would have supported stricter weight limitations, tighter noise regulations, and greater penalties for violations similar to that imposed at other recreational facilities. I also think primarily based on Rule 3.02, and its prohibition against commercial activities at recreational facilities that all commercial flights should use Ocean Ridge, not the Sea Ranch.

You of course should know the current Board’s Airport Rule grandfathers a few members whose planes outweigh the 8500 weight limit fully loaded.

Generally, a grandfather clause has a time limitation and is designed to give individuals time to comply with a regulation that modifies or eliminates an existing one. An exception to a regulation, on the other hand, occurs when there has not previously been a regulation and one is being enacted and certain categories that would otherwise have had to comply are excepted out. So allowing certain members to continue to use aircraft that would otherwise violate the new Rules where there was not a prior rule is more accurately an exception.

The airstrip grandfather exception runs afoul of Article 2 of the Restrictions. The Restrictions are the most formal indication of the founders’ intentions. The preamble of Section 3.05 states that: ‘the exclusive use of common area[s] shall be reserved equally to all Owners and to Guests. Recreational facilities are included in the Commons.

I think the grandfather exception violates Sea Ranch’s essential tenet of egalitarian treatment of all members.