Making A Choice, Part Three

In the first two parts, I tried to present just the facts and events as they unfolded. Now in this part, I’ll have to include some “educated speculation,” some “I was told by others,” and some EDITORIALIZING. YIPPEE!!! (Hey, I don’t call this “Pontificating Randy for nuthin’!”) I will try to differentiate facts from speculation. The editorializing I’m sure you’ll understand without my necessarily pointing it out.

In case you haven’t guessed, the apartment building manager was myself. I worked in property management for 17 years prior to the incident described earlier. I was around some very wealthy (millionaires), egotistical (including downright strutting), manipulative, cunning, deceitful, lying, ruthless @$%&#$@#, ah, I mean people. When these folks sat down at meetings with one another, the “spin” was so great that, well, let’s just say, “Thank God tornadoes don’t spin that fast!” They could have belonged to “The Four Tops,” or “The Spinners.” (Just a little music touch here.)

Just some background facts, in the 17 years I managed property, I was basically involved with residential tenants who were middle or low income. There were some commercial tenants, too, but that really doesn’t enter into this story at all, as there were no commercial tenants involved in the building in question. I was frequently involved with Veterans, something of which I am VERY proud.* In fact, I have a “Certificate Of Appreciation” on my wall issued to me from the Department of Veterans Affairs of the U.S. Government. I DON’T want to sound like one of the “strutting” egotistical @$%&#$@#, I mean people, I referred to earlier. (Oh, by the way, that last was “editorializing.”) I mention this info only to provide some bona fides on my service over the years.

When the building in question was renovated, the development arm of the company I worked for was hired as the developer for the project. The corporate “umbrella” company** had a development section (company), a construction section (company), as well as the property management section (company). The role of developer for the property certainly gave the company the inside track on managing the finished product, and although that is speculation on my part, I am able to connect dots pretty well, and I still use my 3rd Grade “Connect The Dot” books, so I can prove it. Further, the owner of our company was an investor in a specialized part of the property, and hmm, do you think that might have influenced the owners in any way? I have no idea how many other companies submitted bids to manage the building, as I wasn’t privy to that info. At the time all of this was going on, I was overseeing two apartment buildings, including one in a very bad neighborhood, and I was doing the overall company banking each day, which involved many thousands, and even hundreds of thousands of dollars at something like 5 or 6 different banks, stretching from downtown Cleveland to the West Side. (One day, they didn’t tell me what was in this one envelope, as they were afraid that I’d almost panic, but it was a check for something like 3 million dollars!)

Anyhow, the owners of the property gave the management contract to our property management company. As the opening of the building approached, I was told that there was a problem. The Federal government, through The Housing and Urban Development Department, known to most people simply as HUD, had insured the property, and they didn’t like the owner of our company. (It is a fact that I was told this, but whether it was true is another question. I do have personal knowledge of some things, but they really aren’t relevant, so I’ll move on.)

HUD would NOT allow the company to manage the property. This may be very difficult to follow, but the owner of our company set about to still keep some control, but by setting up another company, run by the then president of our property management company. A new name was issued and incorporated, and new officers selected (the existing property management president became vice president), and one of the “existing” company officers became president. I want to make this clear; I was told that HUD approved of this set up, since the owner was not supposed to be directly involved in the management of the building. This all transpired within just a couple of weeks of the building opening to occupancy. Now we’re ready to move on to Part 4..

* See my article: http://pontificating-randy.blogspot.com/2012/05/my-veterans.html

** It is difficult to use the word “company” here, as there was a corporate HQ company with the smaller specialized companies beneath. Usually, when I refer to “company,” I mean the corporate HQ.

Word History:
Send-This verb traces back to Indo European "sent," which had the notion of "travel to, journey, go to(ward)." The Old Germanic offshoot was "santhjan/sandijanan, with the same general meaning, but with the further notion of "causing to go or to journey." In Old English it was "sendan," and it was found in the other Germanic dialects from way back when; for example, Old Saxon had "sendian," Old Norse had "senda," and Gothic had "sandjan." Forms of the word are still common in most of the Germanic languages as Danish and Norwegian both have "sende," Swedish has "sända," Icelandic has "senda," and close relatives of English, Dutch has "zenden," and German has "senden," although in modern German it is used more in the sense "send/transmit by radio;" thus with that continuing notion of "causing something to go to a place." I could not find modern forms of the word in either Low German or West Frisian. Also derived from the same Old Germanic word was "sandaz," a noun, which meant "something that is sent; that is, a message or a messenger," and from that English got "godsend."