Over the last couple of weeks, there has been much speculation among unit owners regarding the departure of Gilbert Martinez as manager. While there are some details that for now must remain confidential, I can share the following:
I met and spoke with several board members several days before Gilbert’s April 12 departure, and we agreed that he should go for various reasons including his dishonesty. I did not include two board members in those discussions because I had reason to suspect they would warn Gilbert, or "Gil" for short, about our decision. One of the two board members not included in the discussions was new board member Zahir Karmali, who goes by Zack. The other was Duv Wolff. I believe my decision to NOT include them was correct, because on his last day at work Gil shredded a large number of documents and apparently deleted numerous emails, probably suspecting he would be fired. If Gil had received a definitive warning, I believe he would have destroyed far more documents than he did. But because we asked him to leave immediately on April 12, without the two weeks’ notice he requested of us that day, a lot of sabotage was likely prevented.
As you may recall, Zack Karmali was automatically elected to the board this January because he was one of only four candidates running for the four available seats. All Zack did to earn the seat was to sign the Notice of Intent to be a Candidate. But it was unit owner Doug Meyers who turned in Zack’s notice of candidacy to the association office, as can be confirmed by our office staff. Zack was apparently too uninterested to submit the paperwork himself, which could have been emailed, faxed, mailed or hand-delivered. But apparently Doug Meyers had an interest in making sure Zack got on the Board.
Zack texted me this past Friday asking for a meeting. I agreed to meet him in the small card room on Saturday morning since by this time I was convinced he was acting only on behalf of Doug Meyers and I wanted to ask him to resign. When I arrived, he said he wanted to bring a couple of points to my attention “to help me to do a better job as president” or words to that effect. He then pulled out his iPad and proceeded to read from it. His first point was that I was not “involving other board members enough” in decisions. He specifically cited the “so-called resignation” of Gilbert Martinez, with obvious disapproval of Gil’s dismissal as manager. As I mentioned before, Zack was one of only two board members I did not involve in that decision ahead of time, for reasons I felt were fully justified.
Zack’s second complaint was that as president I was too quick to “cut people off” during board discussions. For the record, our last regular board meeting lasted two hours despite containing only two items of new business. Most of the discussion was about the suspension of privileges for owners who were more than 90 days delinquent, including one owner who was on the list for failing to have his cabana unit individually metered for electricity as required by a 2010 amendment to our condo documents. Doug Meyers, who wasn’t even on the delinquent list, spoke far beyond his three-minute time limit on this topic until I finally cut him off due to the late hour. He was the only person I cut off that entire night. For the record, I have never cut Zack off at a board meeting because he hardly ever says anything, and in fact he has only shown up in person to one meeting since he’s been on the board. So it was obvious to me that this complaint wasn’t coming from Zack, but from Doug.
Once Zack was done reading from his iPad, I informed him that I recently received an anonymous message on my blog stating that Zack is a “front man” for Doug Meyers and that Doug Meyers was actually the one who put up the money for Zack’s two units. I had no way of knowing if this accusation was true, but I was alarmed enough to investigate and ask questions. I found out that Zack had been living in International Village as a renter before purchasing two International Village units in just the last several months: S2W and S1D. In both cases, the realtor was Doug Meyers’ wife. Several months before the S2W sale, a quit-claim deed was recorded on that property. One of the two witnesses on that deed was Doug Meyers.
Toward the end of our meeting, I asked Zack to resign in order to spare himself, Doug Meyers and the association further embarrassment. This visibly angered him. He denied being a Doug Meyers puppet, insisted he would never resign, got up and walked out the door after briefly blocking my exit. A few minutes after our meeting, I received a text message from Zack stating: “They feel your accusations are ludicrous and could have serious consequences for you.” A few minutes later, he clarified who he meant by “they” by texting: “John – just talked to Doug Meyers about your accusation along side with his dad. Obviously, you are not making sense or in the right state of mind.” About an hour later, I happened to run into Zack while walking near the clubhouse and asked him what he meant by “serious consequences.” He responded: “You’ll have to ask them.”
I have nothing personal against Doug Meyers. As an owner of a number of units which he rents out, he is entitled to fair and equal treatment, and I have appointed members to the Sales and Lease committee who I believe generally share my view that a certain degree flexibility and discretion on lease approvals is sometimes appropriate. But that apparently wasn’t good enough, because I recently learned that shortly before his departure, Gilbert began going over the committee’s head to approve a number of Doug’s leases that had not been reviewed by the committee. So this week I instructed our assistant manager to investigate and ensure that all leases that were not previously reviewed be forwarded to the committee.
Given the above, it’s understandable that Doug Meyers was upset about Gil leaving, but I take strong exception to his interfering in the board’s personnel decisions. Doug actually called me Monday night, and I picked up because I wanted to hear what he had to say. He admitted that he approached Gil after his resignation to discuss having Gilbert return as manager, which obviously required lobbying a majority of the Board to vote to make that happen. Zack Karmali was one of only two “reliable votes” on the board for Gil, but the “Bring Gil back” movement went nowhere because they weren’t able to convince any other board members to go along. I told Doug I found this kind of interference totally unacceptable and also told him not to bother calling me again when he has a complaint about how one of his lease applications is being handled, because I will not pick up the phone. Then I ended our conversation.
Finally, I want to apologize to all the owners for not taking action sooner to remove Gil Martinez as manager. I was bothered by the many complaints about Gilbert’s performance and rudeness toward owners who requested to meet with him, but I have always believed in giving employees a chance to improve. Unfortunately, things only got worse with Gil, and when we discovered that he was also dishonest and engaging in inappropriate behavior behind the Board’s back, I knew it was time for him to go.
This has been a difficult last few weeks, but I believe the association will emerge better and stronger than ever before as long as we keep working together and not avoiding problems but addressing them head-on when they arise.
Thank you, and God bless International Village.
John Labriola
International Village President
