GLA Drama Queen, Satire, Criminal Charges and Xmas Wishes

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GLA Drama Queen, Satire, Criminal Charges and Xmas Wishes Dec 24, 2018 17:11:57 GMT -7

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Post by Admin on Dec 24, 2018 17:11:57 GMT -7

GLA Drama Queen, Satire, Criminal Charges and Christmas Wishes

High drama has dominated a GLA Board Election Committee email chain for the last two days. The chain was started by newly elected director and Election Committee co-chair, Andrea Sedlak at 9:07 on the morning of December 22nd. The email was sent to all attendees of the December 17th Election Committee meeting and concerned three main issues:

The release of ALL membership election records and associated materials per a landowner complaint and request.
Revisions and clarifications to an incomplete timeline of events that led up to the November 2018 Election problems.
Revisions and additions to a list of questions that would be sent to one of the GLA attorneys for answers, Board guidance and public release.

Election Committee co-chair Andrea Sedlak's 9:07 AM email follows:

Hi, all (Board, Charlene, Landowners present at the December 17 Election Committee Meeting),

Attached are revised documents noted in the subject line for your review and comment. With considerable effort, we have incorporated suggested insertions into the historical overview memo so it is more accurate and complete, and have taken all the numerous comments and notes submitted at the December 17 EC meeting into account in the revised questions to the GLA lawyer.

The questions to the lawyer do not include a suggestion to ask about the availability of the completed sign-in sheets because the BOD can respond to that issue without incurring legal fees. We're asking that it be added to the agenda for the next BOD meeting, when the BOD will respond to Donna Lash-Anderson's document request. The sign-in sheet forms list all landowners. That information is available to any member upon request, so they are attached here as well.

Thank you for all your input. It's all been a great help in thinking through and clarifying the many issues this past election has raised. Any further comments you have will help the Board and Legal Committee finalize the questions to the GLA lawyer so we can use his time wisely.

Andrea

The documents attached to Sedlak's email are:

The revised Election Morass timeline.
Draft questions for the GLA lawyer.
A blank Membership Record voter sign-in sheet for North Glastonbury.
A blank Membership Record voter sign-in sheet for South Glastonbury.

Download any of the above documents by clicking on the blue highlighted link.

There were a few replies but the final paragraph of one written later that afternoon at 1:18 by Director and Election co-chair Kevin Newby seemed to deeply annoy Election co-chair Andrea Sedlak.

Director Newby wrote:

Hi everyone,

Hope you all have a Merry Christmas.

What is the point of sending out blank sign in sheets for view?

I do not agree with not asking our attorney about the availability of the completed sign-in sheets. It seems clear to me that you, Andrea do not want any landowner to see these. I wonder why. It seems to me you have a conflict of interest because you brought in a proxy that replaced a landowners received absentee ballot. The very point of the complaint at issue.

Kevin

Newby presents his thoughts regarding the election membership records sign-in sheets and goes on to state a fact; Sedlak collected many proxy appointments and thus received multiple write-in ballots for the November 2018 election. One of those proxy appointments was allowed to cancel a landowner's absentee ballot. That was never done in the past and may violate state law. Sedlak's vote was considered more important than the actual landowner's vote and presumably she benefited. That is a clear conflict of interest and she should recuse herself from this matter.

More comments followed including one by former Director Leo Keeler. Keeler attended the December 17th meeting with his hands elevated and fingers swollen to twice their normal size. He had just undergone surgery for Carpel Tunnel Syndrome and was clearly in pain. On Saturday December 22nd Keeler spent 8 hours poring over past Board emails, researching Montana State law and writing an extensive email with valuable information to the Election Committee attendees and GLA Board.

On Sunday morning at 6:01 Director Sedlak sent out another email. She thanked Leo for his work and then chastised him for not reading her mind and following her unstated directions. Sedlak wrote:

Thanks for your extensive work and thoughts on these documents, Leo. Much of what you contribute offers good points.

We did not intend for LOs to edit the documents we sent, which was the reason we sent them in pdf format. Sorry if we weren't clear that we want your input and comments in an independent document. Could you please provide that? We will submit to the BOD/legal committee our revised draft of the documents we sent out yesterday together with a a second document, "Landowners' comments and suggested changes" that compiles everyone's input.

Thanks for your consideration of what we need to do to handle the myriad responses and give the BOD/legal committee these materials in a useful format.

Andrea

The Forum read Sedlak's Sunday morning email and was appalled at what we perceived to be Sedlak's insensitivity and arrogance. Hostile treatment of landowners is legendary with some directors on the GLA. For a newly elected director to badly treat a seasoned and dedicated former director who has contributed greatly to our community was just too much for us to bear. So in the spirit of Sophocles who routinely castigated pompous elected officials in Athens almost 5,000 years ago we wrote the following satirical and self deprecating email freely imitating Sedlak's style and numerous abbreviations:

Leo Dear,

Thank-you sooo much for working 8 hours on Saturday analyzing Board emails and adding to the PDF sheets we sent out. Boy your fingers must really hurt after all that typing and your recent carpel tunnel syndrome surgery. Could you please retype all the information you provided? Double spaced on separate sheets, Times or Courier Fonts, 11 point please. We value LO comments and Q's. We have a special round file to hold them all.

I heard the whining voices of some of the GLFPC losers at the EC meeting on December 17th. I hope you have not been hanging around with them. I especially hope you are not associating with or giving any information to Timmy Brockett. He is the worst of the bunch and prints nothing but lies about us. He is sooo mean and ungrateful. LO's like me much more than him. I collected more Proxies than he did and my dear friend Charlene made it so my proxy cancelled LO's first choice on their absentee ballot. Now I am on the Board and co-chair of the election committee. I will oversee all elections and make sure that none of the GLFPC folks ever gets elected to the GLA Board. LOL!

When it snows Timmy complains if we do not plow his road. The audacity of some LO's. They just do not appreciate how hard this board works and how judiciously we spend their money.

Your comments, like all LO Q's are sooo important and we really appreciate them.

I hope you have a wonderful holiday of your choosing. I will be celebrating the birthday of a distant relative; Maria Antoinette. She had it soo right; "let them eat cake".

Hugs,

AJ

PS Please try to match the color of your font as close as possible to the color of the paper you are using. White on white is best as it makes it easier for us to chew on and digest your words.

We almost added "Now if only I can find a way to get rid of my co-chair Newby so I will have full authority over the Election Committee. Maybe my new best girl friends can help me. They are sooo good about back stabbing people without getting blood on their hands. LOL!" to the end of the second paragraph. But to keep things civil we did not. Maybe we should have...

The email was clearly marked as from Tim Brockett and we checked with Leo Keeler to see if he understood it was satire. He did and so did several other readers. In the interest of full disclosure Tim Brockett and the Forum often receive proxy assignments from landowners who place their trust in us and ask us to vote for best candidates available in North and South Glastonbury.

At 8:26 AM Sedlak sent the following canned response:

I'm not available to respond today. I'll do so as needed when I return.
Have a good holiday, everyone.
Andrea

But a little later in the early afternoon, Sedlak had the daggers out and was busy attacking her Election Committee co-chair and seasoned director Kevin Newby. Sedlak removed all of the landowners from the email chain and sent her message only to the GLA Board. She wrote:

To all,

I am deeply disturbed by Newby's allegation claiming that I am against releasing the completed sign-in sheets because I'm trying to hide the fact that I submitted a proxy appointment form that cancelled a landowner's absentee ballot. It was not hidden. If Newby had paid attention to the materials provided for inspection at the 12/17 meeting, he would know that they clearly showed this. They included ALL the proxy appointment forms and ALL the envelopes for absentee ballots that were disqualified for any reason.

I explained my reasons for not supporting the release of the completed sign-in sheets and the Board voted its agreement with my motion that those sheets not be provided at the 12/17 meeting. The Bylaws give the Board discretion over what materials they will release beyond those required of the GLA under Montana law. Asking the lawyer's opinion on this matter would have simply wasted GLA legal funds, so the draft questions to the lawyer did not include that question. It is entirely up to the Board to determine how to respond to Donna Lash-Andersen's document request for "all" the election materials.

I regard Newby's accusations of me to be abusive and defamatory. I refuse to tolerate his treatment. I cannot work with him as co-chair on the Election Committee. I ask the Board to choose which of us should continue and which should leave our post. I also ask that the Board formally censure him at the next Board meeting for his unprofessional behavior.

Andrea Sedlak

Sedlak speaks of forms that were NOT hidden. "They included ALL the proxy appointment forms and ALL the envelopes for absentee ballots that were disqualified for any reason." Actually only a single photocopy of some of the Election Committee membership record forms were provided at the December 17th meeting. They were not meant to be distributed to all landowners and were available for inspection ONLY. Quick thinking by the Forum allowed us to photograph the forms. After Christmas we will post them.

"abusive and defamatory" Sedlak stated. Then she goes on to reveal her true intentions; asking the GLA Board to remove Newby as co-chair which would grant her full power of the Election Committee and future Annual Elections. Notably she does not ask for a new co-chair but rather "which of us should continue and which should leave our post". Just in case any director was not sure who to remove, Sedlak then asks that the GLA Board to "formally censure him [Newby] at the next Board meeting for his unprofessional behavior".

Newby, along with other Board members received Sedlak's dagger filled email and quickly noticed that all the original landowner recipients had been removed. He restored them and sent the email along.

Director Sedlak replied the next day, December 24th, and wrote:

To all,

To this point, I had kept my requests to the BOD (revision of EC-chair appointments and censure of Kevin for his abusive and defamatory accusation) within the BOD communications. I did that in the interests of sparing Kevin the embarrassment in case he wanted to deal with these issues privately before the next BOD meeting. He's chosen to broadcast my communication more widely, to a select group of LOs, many of whom are his supporters--clearly biased dissemination. I will be sending copies of these email exchanges (his accusation, my requests to the BOD) to my own supporters, to ensure that they hear about them not simply through the grapevine from Kevin and his email recipients. This is out-of-line of what I would normally do, since I believe that personal offenses should be resolved among those involved. However, Kevin has elected bring the matters into public view, but in a biased way. So I will now defend myself in a similar venue.

Thank you for your consideration.
My wish that you, and all of us, have a peaceful Christmas, and a happier New Year.

Andrea

We are pleased that we can spare Director Sedlak the trouble of writing, printing and mailing her email exchanges. They are posted here so all landowners may judge her behavior, ability to get along with others, respect for seasoned directors and ability to represent ALL landowners equally.

The high drama continued on the GLA Board as two more directors responded to the Election Committee thread. Humorless director Gerald Dubiel who rarely does more than sit and watch how other directors vote, before casting his own, seems to have found his voice. About 30 minutes after Sedlak's rant Dubiel wrote:

I have an issue with Timothy using the email instrument as a means to impersonate a board member. I believe that GLA emails should
not be used for any other purpose but GLA business. I also believe that his email may be criminal.

Criminal charges for satire...if Sophocles were Socrates history would be repeating itself.

The Forum will keep you posted on the criminal charges request. We may have to ask loyal readers to bail us out of Park County jail before the lethal cup of hemlock tea is forced upon us.

Finally, for now, a newly seated but perhaps not legally elected director from North Glastonbury chimed in on the email thread. Ron Price wrote:

Hi All
I want to send loving thought forms, loving feeling forms and loving mental pictures to all Glastonbury Board Members and Committee Friends. That Love being God in Action beating our heart and through us will know what each one of us needs in all areas. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all . Ronald

That's the way it is in our little community of Glastonbury on the day before Christmas 2018.
We will keep you posted on the 2018 Election mess and further developments.
Please feel free to post your thoughts below.
Best wishes for a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

The Administrator, Tim Brockett, is also a Director on the Glastonbury Landowners Association Board. The opinions expressed on the Forum are his own and may or may not coincide with the views of the GLA Board.

Admin
Administrator

Posts: 1,654

GLA Drama Queen, Satire, Criminal Charges and Xmas Wishes Dec 26, 2018 10:45:32 GMT -7

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Post by Admin on Dec 26, 2018 10:45:32 GMT -7

The GLA Election Email Drama Continues....

Christmas provided some peace and quiet from the GLA Election Committee drama. Director Sedlak broke the silence today with a petty and petulant response at 6:21 on December 26th. She wrote in response to Director Newby's comments which are included:

Not so. Only Charlene was on this particular email thread--and she is officially on the Election Committee.

On Tue, Dec 25, 2018 at 1:18 PM K Newby wrote:

AJ,
You also sent your email to a land owner who is not on the board, but was on the email thread. I simply let everyone who was on the email thread see your reply.
Kevin

For the record Newby is correct. Sedlak sent her daggers email to the GLA Board after removing attendees to the December 17th from the thread. The email header shows that Sedlak's GLA Board email also went to Charlene Murphy who is no longer a director. So if one landowner can get her email response why cannot all Election Committee attendees receive it?

A new voice joined the conversation at 9:46. Newly elected director Jerry Ladewig acting like a schoolmarm, sternly admonished her fellow directors and some landowners by writing:

There is a lot of juvenile activity going on here. This email is only for BOD/Gla business. Donna should not be using the board email but instead use info@....
Re election fraud? Please-----There is no election fraud. Need for improved guidelines? Perhaps, hence the need for legal counsel. Will there ever be a time when the BOD is not accused of wrongdoing, in the face of no evidence? And, lets leave our religious opinions out of our work business. The degree of distrust makes me wonder what is really at the heart of all this? Thank you for reading. Jerry

For the record:

The GLA Board is supposed to serve all landowners and thus everyone has a right to email the Board. It is not just a means for directors to converse amongst themselves. The thread was a conversation that included landowners until Sedlak erased their names from the header. Conversations can and should include landowners.
No Election Fraud? - The evidence that the GLA Board changed the rules to permit Proxy assignments to nullify handwritten absentee ballots is overwhelming and was on public display at the December 17th Election Committee meeting. The GLA also allowed certain landowners to cast write in ballots via Proxy by simply submitting a copy of an email supposedly received from another landowner. The GLA Board led by Director Sedlak has also clamped down hard on NOT permitting landowners to see critical election materials and membership records.
Lets leave our religious opinions out of our work business? - Every GLA meeting begins with a prayer. Glastonbury was founded as an EXCLUSIVE Church Universal and Triumphant (CUT) religious community. The land is considered sacred and many people see a spiritual dome over North and South Glastonbury. Greater understanding of CUT religious beliefs can lead to harmony between believers and newcomers. Ignoring them is to disregard history and disrespect many landowners and their religious beliefs.

The Forum will be posting documents presented at the December 17th Election Committee meeting soon. We will leave it to you to decide if they are evidence of fraud.

Admin
Administrator

Posts: 1,654

GLA Drama Queen, Satire, Criminal Charges and Xmas Wishes Jan 2, 2019 17:15:35 GMT -7

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Post by Admin on Jan 2, 2019 17:15:35 GMT -7

The Drama Continues...

On December 26th at 10:59 AM retired director Leo Keeler rejoined the Election Committee thread. His name was mysteriously removed from the thread earlier.
Leo Keeler wrote:

I am not sure what thread this is about and who got what email.

I am concerned that as the Co-Monitor with Charlene to resolve problems during the election that issues concerning decisions made during the election are being discussed in a closed board meeting and I am not being made aware of them or any future consequences those decisions may have on me.

Can anyone paint an entire picture here?

Leo

Debbie Newby provided an articulate and detailed response at 12:14 PM on December 26th.
She wrote:

GLA Board,

Andrea’s email, at the bottom of this email string, which she placed under her new subject line written On Dec 22, 2018 3:59 PM, "aj Sedlak" < sedlakgla@gmail.com> wrote, was clearly in response to an email sent by Kevin on Sat 12/22 at 1:18 pm (screenshot below) under original Subject Line: “Re: Revised Historical Overview Memo and Qs to Lawyer” that included the cc: line shown below (Charlene, Donna, Tim, Claudette, Leo, myself and Linda), which Kevin restored in this email thread with her “new” subject line. She was responding to Kevin’s question about why send out blank sign in sheets? - but she did not answer that question.

Instead she has falsely accused Kevin of alleging she was “hide the fact that I submitted a proxy appointment form that cancelled a landowner's absentee ballot.” That is untrue. There is no mention of hiding anything in Kevin’s email screenshot shown below, here. Rather, Kevin is asking why Andrea doesn’t want landowners to see the actual Sign In sheets used in the Nov 10th election? Let’s be clear: it was Andrea who made an email motion to the GLA Board to not allow landowners to view the actual, completed Sign In sheets. My understanding is this motion passed with a board email vote. Kevin is wondering why Andrea put forth that motion to the GLA BoD and what the motivation for that lack of transparency is? It is still unclear and goes unanswered.

Regarding the Conflict of Interest Andrea has in my Formal Complaint re: Proxies overriding Absentee Votes - let’s walk thru that:

* Andrea Sedlak was an SG Candidate running for office on the GLA Board of Directors in the Nov 10, 2018 election.
* Andrea presented a proxy for a SG landowner, that then caused that same SG landowner’s Absentee vote to be retracted and Not Counted and subsequently shredded. The Absentee Vote already logged into the SG Sign In sheet was crossed out and replaced with a check mark indicating the vote was re-cast by Andrea’s Proxy.
* Andrea then re-cast the SG landowner’s vote with a Proxy Ballot. I think allowing landowners to recast their ballots in this way is wrong and this is the exact subject of my Formal Complaint. Andrea’s vote of that proxy ballot was an instance of the behavior I am calling into question.
* Andrea went on to vote that Proxy ballot in any way she wished, including voting for herself to be on the GLA Board of Directors. In other words, she stood to directly benefit from this re-cast of a landowner’s Absentee ballot by herself by voting for herself.
* Andrea had in total, to the best of my estimation, a block of proxy votes for 11 SG parcels to vote for herself as a GLA board director in the Nov 10, 2018 election. This is in addition to the 3 SG parcels she and Mark own. A total of 15 votes altogether.
* Andrea won her seat on the GLA BoD with a margin of 3 votes over the next highest candidate and a margin of 9 votes over the 4th place candidate, indicating her 11 proxy ballot votes most likely swayed the election in her favor to gain her seat on the GLA Board of Directors, and without those 11 proxies, she likely would not have been elected.
* One of those votes overrode the landowner’s own Absentee ballot and is the crux of my complaint – Proxies overriding Absentee votes. Andrea stood to directly and personally gain from this new practice that was just introduced into the Nov 2018 election without Board vote, without landowner 30-day review – and for which she continues to strongly argue for and push now.
* This is a Conflict of Interest: “A situation in which a person is in a position to derive personal benefit from actions or decisions made in their official capacity”. Andrea should not be allowed to participate nor vote in the resolution of my Formal Complaint on this matter. And, based on Mark’s reasoning making a motion and vote for Kevin to be recused from this matter because he is my spouse and I submitted the complaint (for which I have NO personal benefit to gain – I just think it is WRONG!), Mark should be recused as well – he is Andrea’s husband – the same type of relationship the Board has voted to disallow Kevin for voting on.

Debbie Newby, SG 39-D

At 2:20 in the afternoon the President of the GLA, Dennis Riley, responded by taking sides.
His simple one line analysis states:

I agree with Jerry.

Newly elected South Glastonbury Director Jerry Ladewig called some Board members "juvenile", claimed without evidence that there was "no election fraud" and asked that people keep their religious views to themselves.

So much for bringing folks together by finding common ground...

At 3:24 PM an angry and intellectually defeated Director Sedlak wrote:

It looks like Debbie Newby wants to deprive the LOs go gave e their proxy appointments of their franchise rights? That would violate Montana law.

My "new subject line" email was intentionally a DIFFERENT email thread directed only to the Board and to Charlene, EC member, NOT "in response to" Kevin's question, but as a complaint about Kevin's accusations of me and a request to the board. It is NOT part of the original email in which he made those accusations. It is not a "secret meeting"--it is my request to the board.

Andrea

At 8:46 PM the former director and former Election Chair, Charlene Murphy, tried to sweep the entire matter under the rug by stating:

The board voted to allow candidates to accept proxy appointments. Only incumbent board members are prohibited from accepting proxies as per the settlement agreement with the O’s. Andrea did nothing wrong in accepting proxy appointments. There is disagreement with the election procedures used on Nov. 10. As we focus on the work at hand, to offer edits to the Memo and Questions to the attorney, we’ll move forward.

Charlene

The evidence points to Charlene Murphy who authorized the involuntary cancellation of at least one landowner's ballot so Andre Sedlak could cast a Proxy. Murphy was also involved in accepting bogus proxy requests that were traded for write-in ballots for North Glastonbury candidates. Sedlak has a clear "conflict of interest" because she benefited from Murphy allowing a landowners ballot to be involuntarily cancelled. What Murphy did appears to violate Montana state laws and may be criminal.

Last Edit: Jan 2, 2019 17:20:14 GMT -7 by Admin