E-mail readers, click on "The Importance of Your Vote" title for the full story. 
The national media may have us all looking ahead to November already, but when it comes to elections, one in June may have even more impact on our day-to-day lives at Seabridge.
The Seabridge Annual Meeting and Election of Directors takes place on June 17th. You may think this is akin to a high school student council election, but you'd be wrong. The Seabridge Board of Directors manages an annual operating budget in excess of half a million dollars, as well as a reserve fund with several hundred thousand dollars. They also make important decisions affecting how you and your neighbors can use your property and our common areas. And with nine candidates vying for five positions, there is no reason each and every one of us should not cast our votes for those who will represent our interests.
Unlike in national contests, the candidates in our Seabridge race are not covered by the media 24/7. Although they are your neighbors, you may not even recognize their names and faces, let alone what positions they hold. So I'm hosting a Meet the Candidates forum and encourage you all to participate before casting your votes. The e-mail below was sent to all candidates on the ballot and describes more specifics of the forum.
If you wish to even view the discussion, you will need to register for the site. Seabridge Homeowners can do so by e-mailing me your name and the address of the unit(s) you own. I hope that you will find this to be a helpful forum and that you will exercise your right and privilege to vote.
E-mail to declared candidates:
First, I’d like to thank you for submitting an application as a candidate for the Seabridge Board of Directors. Relatively few residents take an active interest in this community, let alone take the additional step of running for the board, so it is very exciting to see a large field of candidates for the office of director.
Many of you know that I blog from time to time on matters that I think are of interest to Seabridge residents. Last month I asked my readers whether they thought it would be helpful to use “The Bridge” as a forum to learn more about our candidates for office. You can read more about it by clicking here. I was glad that the response was favorable.
So now that we know who the declared candidates are, I am inviting you to participate in this “online candidates’ forum.” Your participation is obviously optional, but I would hope that you would take advantage of the opportunity so that homeowners have a better understanding of the candidates beyond what they glean from the form that we received in the mail.
Here’s the way I envision this working:
· If you elect to participate, please submit the following additional information to me electronically (e-mail) by Thursday, May 22rd:
o Any additional candidate statement you wish to make. It will be printed as-is, though I reserve the right to format it to be consistent with other statements and the website.
o A photograph of yourself. It may be cropped and scaled to be consistent with the other photos I receive.
o Your answers to the following questions that were submitting by blog readers:
1. What do you see as successes of the board in the past year? Is there anything you believe the board should have done differently?
2. What is your understanding of the “fiduciary duty” of a director, and how does that/will that guide your actions on the board?
3. Can you give a specific example of a decision you’ve had to make when you didn’t feel you were fully knowledgeable on the topic? For current or past board members, an example related to the HOA board is preferred.
· On Friday, I will have an uninvolved party draw names from a hat, and each candidate will be featured on the blog daily, in the order they are drawn. Homeowners will have an opportunity to pose additional questions to you using the “comments” feature, and you will be able to respond in kind. I will not allow homeowners to post anonymously, and I will ensure as moderator that each question is posed respectfully before it gets posted. Aside from that, I do not plan to moderate the questions or the answers.
· Viewing of these posts will be restricted to registered homeowners, who must log in with a username/password to view that section of the blog and participate.
In this “electronic age”, I hope this will be a useful and even fun way for candidates to interact with homeowners on the topics that are important to voting homeowners. I think it’s especially relevant since no other forum, real or virtual, has been scheduled to provide this dialogue. I hope that you’ll join in it.
Thanks –
Todd
