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SOLERA DIAMOND VALLEY | JUNE 2022 3 Board Message By Dana Kilpatrick, Board Member Hello Friends and Neighbors, I hope you are all enjoying the spring season. As the COVID pandemic settles down a bit, it has been great to see some faces at The Lodge that I have not seen in a year or two. Board meeting attendance is growing slowly, and it is nice to look out from the dais and see the chairs filling up again, as well as those who attend on ZOOM. Some residents are still unable to attend, however, so I want to share something that came up at the last board meeting. While giving the board an update from the Recreation Activities Committee, Raul Villa, Chair of the RAC shared an incident that occurred at a recent Lifestyle Event. His message was so important that I want to share it again here in The View for those people who were not there to hear it. Raul shared that during the St. Patrick's Day Tailgate Party, some circumstances occurred that caused a new resident couple to be treated poorly. Part of the problem was due to the odd way groups of people set up in the parking lot. Instead of one large group of neighbors tailgating together, there were three to four distinctly separate groups gathered in opposite locations across the parking lot. Those separate groupings made it difficult for individuals to know where to go in order to join in. The couple I mentioned above brought a dish to share and went to the first group they came upon. They set their dish on a table, intending to join the people there but they were told that this group was a "private group" and that they needed to find a different group. The couple picked up their dish and went to another group. They set their dish down and saw people eating sandwiches and asked if they could get a sandwich. They were told that the sandwiches were pre-ordered and paid for amongst the people invited ahead of time to be in that group, so, no, they could not have a sandwich. Feeling awkward, the couple moved along (again) to join another group, but ultimately, they set their dish down and left the event, not planning to attend another Lifestyle activity again. I have lived here at SDV for 10 years and I know that what we have here is something unique and special. This community has become like family to me. It is sometimes a dysfunctional family but, ultimately, we take care of each other. I am confident that no one living here wants something like what happened to this couple to occur again. Private parties have their place in our lives but, going forward, I hope we use our great Lifestyle Events to mix it up a bit; to meet and welcome new people, and especially that we continue the legacy of "inclusion" that the first residents of SDV set in motion as a tradition for all residents to come.

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