Laguna Woods Residents Joining Age-Old Battles

An uprising is brewing at Leisure World Laguna Woods: Residents are picketing, meetings are attracting hundreds and petitions signed by more than 4,000 people are demanding better fiscal management.

“This too shall pass” is the mantra of frustrated retirement community officials, who have pledged to keep smiling. “It is a very vocal group,” said Harry Curtis, president of the community’s governing board. “I’m not sure that it’s a long-term deal.”

But those swept up in the wave of militancy say their tenacity is greatly underestimated. For many, their diverse experiences have prepared them for moments like this, and to fight back. There’s a retired tennis coach who rallied her high school players, an erstwhile teachers union organizer who fought for better wages, a woman who fled the Nazis when she was 12 and a former registrar of voters.

“I don’t think I’ve ever been this passionate about anything,” said Pamela Grundke, 63, the former tennis coach, who recently helped found Residents Voice. “People have had enough.”

Behind the gates of the 18,000-resident community -- a place that achieved cityhood and successfully crusaded against an airport at the closed El Toro Marine base -- the situation is ripe for dissent.

Monthly association fees have steadily increased, causing residents to scrutinize how their money is spent. And the governing board has discussed selling vacant land.

Those factors, along with rising land values and the $649.5 million that a developer recently paid for the nearby Marine base, have stoked fears that the management company’s unspoken master plan is to sell land to the highest bidder.

Residents are demanding a vote on transactions of more than $2 million -- a demand that would require changes to the community’s bylaws. Most are opposed to any sale of land.

About a month ago, Residents Voice was a group of a couple of dozen skeptical residents in a small meeting room. Since then, their meetings have bulged to a few hundred in a large clubhouse. They publish regular newsletters and send e-mail blasts. They have distributed more than 12,000 fliers and knocked on hundreds of doors asking people to join.

At a board meeting last week, Residents Voice members wore bright red T-shirts and carried picket signs. As the board paused for the routine moment of silence at the start of the meeting, protesters outside the building could be heard chanting: “Hear our voice! Hear our voice!”

“Kind of interesting, isn’t it?” said Lucy Falk, 76, with a chuckle. “You wouldn’t think old folks would fight back like this.”

Then again, fighting is in their blood.

When Falk was a 12-year-old in occupied France, her Jewish father packed the family into a Peugeot and drove through the mountains, fleeing the Nazis. The family proved they had money and financial support in New York and emigrated to the United States.

“We haven’t suffered the way other people have, but it was scary,” Falk said.

“My father was a fighter. I must have inherited some of that.... Now I’m fighting back for all I’m worth.”

Not everyone is impressed with the group’s boisterous complaints.

Board members and management staff said the residents were misinformed. For example, they said that land that might be sold originally had been bought as investment property, with the intention of ultimately selling it.

At one recent meeting of the Golden Rain Foundation board, which oversees management, maintenance and services in the community, Treasurer Maurice Kravitz told the group: “If you don’t like it, leave.”

And resident Pat Whitson said, “I resent all these people being in my face everywhere I go and disturbing the peace and beauty of Leisure World.”

Comments like those have not deterred group members, who have seen their share of challenges.

Always the coach, Grundke motivates Residents Voice members as if they were heading into the biggest match of their lives.

At a planning meeting that seemed more tent revival than strategy session, residents punctuated her speech with “amens.”

Besides her coaching background, Grundke farmed for more 20 years in the Imperial Valley, until the operation went bust and her husband disappeared from her life. “The IRS came, and I lost everything,” Grundke said.

“I saw it through to the bitter end. I learned that I’m a survivor. I’m not a quitter.... I’m not willing to lose another home.”

In this group, there are no titles. Every member plays a role, even if that is handing out fliers to neighbors.

For Paul Hutchins, 61, a former officer for his teachers union in Portland, Maine, his job is keeping people informed via e-mail.

“The Internet can defeat them,” Hutchins said, citing the successful fight against an international airport at El Toro, in which e-mails helped shift public opinion on the plan.

Barbara Copley, 76, a former legal secretary and registrar of voters, is the group’s researcher. She has compiled mounds of paperwork, much of which has been culled from county public records.

Unlike most Leisure World residents, she has read the community’s bylaws as well as the state law that governs private communities and condominiums. She can cite portions of the California Civil Code by section number.

Grundke said their efforts were already paying off.

A business planning committee recently voted to approve a 2006 budget that includes profits from a $10-million land sale -- an action that immediately alarmed residents. But last week, Curtis, the board president, said he did not expect the larger board to approve it.

“We have to keep up the pressure, keep picketing,” Grundke said.

“We’re going to do this, one brick at a time. They have never seen anything like this.”