Randy Young, TLIA President
A time long ago, the story goes, two Americans left for a hunting trip and got lost in a dense fog. As the fog lifted they come upon a magical village rising out of the Scottish mist. It was called Brigadoon.
They found Brigadoon to be an enchanted place where life was simpler, people were wonderful, and everyone lived a life untouched by the worries of the modern world. Sound familiar? Perhaps, it was a place much like we believed Tower Lakes to be when we found it under a mist years ago; a magical little village around the lakes. A haven in which to escape the worries of a challenging world.
As much as I would love to say that we still live in Brigadoon, we really are a modern day microcosm of all the challenges faced by society. As new families move in, they are not quite as aware of our bucolic history. They are more aware of a community that must be accountable for its actions. A reality that, sadly, some of us refuse to face.
As I said in my remarks to the association at our last annual meeting, we are no longer a kitchen table organization. Today I feel I can expand that to say that we are less and less a kitchen table neighborhood. Sorry folks, but it’s true and it makes it increasingly challenging for your board to face the obligations embedded in our position as your representatives.
Our association, nay our community, requires attention to the details that, at times, some of our membership fails to fully to recognize. It is unfair to every member, for any single member, to make the assumption that the mist of Brigadoon shields us from the details of shared responsibility. We can almost never click our heals or snap our fingers to magically solve a problem. The seriousness of potential risk exposure (parties and events), expensive liability (insurance and risk management), and proper management of our resources (financials, lake, grounds) must be faced.
Your board regularly faces these challenges and takes each one very seriously. Our attention to these details and implementing solutions is never the easy way to resolution, nor at times, is it the popular way. It becomes especially difficult when the potential for any one of these decisions, if made improperly, to cause our association and each of us harm. But I am confident, that the decisions we come upon, even if unpopular, are the right ways to find a common resolution to benefit our association. (Cont. above)
As difficult as it is to get this message across, it is vital to remember that our established processes, procedures must not be cast aside when needed most to attend to our challenges.
At precisely these difficult moments, is when we have a tendency to retreat into the mist of Brigadoon and a lassie faire comfort of years past. Sorry to say it out loud, but that is just not practical. We can not and should not function as we have in the past. We must realize that, when the mist rises, our Tower Lakes is just like the rest of the world and not an always an enchanted Brigadoon.