MAD Help Wanted

Greater Golden Hill’s Maintenance Assessment District is looking for someone to fill the program-manager position. Yep, program manager Alia Kanani is moving on. The MAD committee isn’t seeing this as a bad thing because this time they will have more input in finding the right applicant than they did when Kanani was hired...which was, essentially, none.

At their September 15 meeting, the committee voted — 13 in favor, with 1 abstention — for a motion to post the available position on Craigslist, placing an emphasis on a more hands-on, maintenance management approach for their candidate.

For this go-around, each member of the committee will be allowed to send in questions to be asked of the applicant.

The motion, and the subsequent vote represents a change in business-as-usual for the committee, meaning residents of Greater Golden Hill will start seeing some productivity from their elected advisory committee — that is, if the members are able to quell the bickering and infighting amongst themselves.

Minutes before the motion to post the opening on Craigslist, a resident of Greater Golden Hill spoke to the committee during the public comment portion of the meeting.

“I want to know where the money is going and how is this helping me,” said the concerned resident in a quavering and angry voice. “I didn’t know about this thing until my taxes came around, and it was double than everyone else’s. And how do I find out why mine is so much higher?”

MAD chairman David Skillman began to answer the resident, but before he was able to put a few words together, fellow committee member Ben Nicholls reminded Skillman of the new rules adopted by the committee to ensure the meetings proceed with some level of productivity. “I don’t mean to be Parliamentarian here, but we need to operate in an orderly fashion and having this free-roaming dialogue doesn’t accomplish that.”

After the two exchanged some bitter words, the resident was asked to stay after the meeting for some answers.

The rest of the meeting wasn’t without sarcastic comments about adhering to the new, more rigid, set of procedures. Though, the committee did approve the motion to post the program-manager position on Craigslist and passed a proposal from committee member Barbara Houlton to accept a tentative plan for distributing MAD’s monies.

The meeting marked one of the few times the Greater Golden Hill MAD resolved more than one agenda item in a meeting’s time. Attend their meeting on October 20th to see if they can keep the madly productive streak alive!