CUDDLE A PRESIDENT TODAY

Commentary

Dave Bull / 2010-03-07 10:49:58

Or just appreciate them at least… Having spoken to several Community Presidents this week following a glut of letters to The Leader, the majority of which were less than complimentary to their particular President, I thought I’d use this week’s comment article to try and calm the rage of some very unhappy residents – and there are a lot of them.

We laugh about the Presidents of the Urbanisations at times. ‘Little Hitlers’ is often the rather unsavoury name given them by residents and guests staying on their patch. And while there are some out there who do behave, shall we say, officiously - there are an awful lot that do the job very well indeed.

Believe me, if you don’t live on an urbanisation, and therefore don’t have a community association then you will escape the job because everyone at some time or another (if they actually live in the same place long enough) will have to have a go. And what a job it is. Getting hauled out of bed to help the police because an alarm is going off in a property that’s currently empty. Or having residents calling around while you’re having lunch with the family during the afternoon to demand that you remove the ‘non-residents’ from the pool.

It’s a role that is thankless but many out there make a damn good fist of it and get things done for the benefit of all residents, but with very little fuss. Yes, there are others (too many) whom will try and run their Urb’ in military fashion, where silence is golden and kids are a noisy interruption to what should be a quiet time…around the pool.

But think about it, it is always the same - the bad ones give the ones who really give it their best effort a terrible reputation, before some people have even met them. There are plenty out there carrying out the presidents role seven days a week – and there’s not many who actually want to step up to the plate, but will quite happily moan about someone else who is giving it a go, at least.