PHCA: Three Years. What Results?
Updated: Sep 30
By Bernard Markowicz - Friends of Princeville
Over the past three years, has PHCA delivered the leadership its members deserve? My assessment is that it has significantly fallen short. This post examines the decisions supported by Patti Thiele and Dale Sands, and the results in four areas: communicate, plan, maintain, and protect. Money spent and meetings held are not enough to evaluate the performance of the Board and its management. Did members, including resorts, condos, and timeshares, receive value for the dues they paid? I think NOT. Did the Board and Management devise sound priorities, share dependable information, and address the community’s most important needs. I think NOT.
The scoreboard above summarizes a detailed series of assessments by year, using PHCA documents such as meeting packets, and minutes. A link to an 11-page report below, prepared for this post, provides supporting evidence for the ratings in the scoreboard. There are no green circles: none of the rated areas met the assessment’s standard for acceptable performance in the years reviewed. Yellow means shortcomings; red means serious failures. Unrated means insufficient evidence. These ratings do not mean that nothing useful happened. They mean the reviewed record did not demonstrate adequate performance against the stated tests.
Our assessments follow three principles:
Judge the quality and priority of work, not simply whether money was spent or a project was completed.
Trace committee recommendations through Board decisions to results.
Present findings through year-by-year traffic-light scoreboards, with bar charts only where the changes tell us something meaningful.
This post underscores Friends of Princeville recommendations, communicated to each Association member by mail, to recall PHCA Board Chair Patti Thiele and Vice President Dale Sands. The following sections explain selected ratings. The review draws on Board minutes and packets, committee reports, budgets, financial statements, audits, and member communications available through September 28, 2026. Because many are member-only documents, this public post summarizes findings without reproducing those records.
Independent judgment—and responsibility for decisions
By law, every director should examine each issue independently and thus be willing to question the Chair. Agreement can reflect sound judgment, but a persistent pattern of voting with the Chair deserves scrutiny when results disappoint. In comparable recorded votes, VP Dale Sands agreed with Chair Thiele on all 43 votes in 2024, 71 of 73 in 2025, and 66 in 2026. The 2026 total includes three abstentions. Other directors showed substantially more disagreement that year. These figures raise a fair question about Sands' independence and his allegiance to the Chair.
Click below to read or download a 3-page analysis of Board voting patters in the last 3 years.
Communicate: members need answers they can use
Communication should help members understand problems, choices, costs, and progress. A steady stream of notices does not accomplish that by itself. The record shows gaps in dependable financial reporting and project follow-through. Ending the member forum in January 2026 also removed one opportunity for open discussion. Other opportunities to comment remained, but the reviewed record did not demonstrate an effective replacement for that forum. Good communication would tell members what was promised, what changed, why it changed, and when they can expect a result. That standard was not met.
Plan: identify priorities and follow them through
A useful plan explains which problems need to be addressed first, who is responsible, what the work will cost, and when it should finish. The January 2026 goals document included completing the management transition, improving reserve and maintenance planning, and replacing KH-7 drainage infrastructure by June. By September, little of that got accomplished. Important accounting work remained unfinished and KH-7 construction had not started.
Drainage reports had identified five high-priority and sixteen medium-priority items in July 2025. Yet the reviewed record did not establish a clear, accessible sequence connecting those needs to funded work and completion dates. Members need that connection, not simply another statement that planning is underway...
Maintain: completed work still needs a clear justification
Road work deserves recognition. By September 2026, the Kekaulike/Rooke paving was reported complete, with markings remaining. But completion alone does not establish that a project was the best use of members’ money. The reviewed documents did not demonstrate a ranking of road conditions, a clear assessment of alternatives, or the expected costs over the road’s useful life.
Meanwhile, KH-7 missed its June replacement goal. Components had arrived by September, but a firm construction date was not established in the reviewed record. Weather, permits, and materials can cause legitimate delays. Leadership remains responsible for explaining those delays and managing their consequences. As the Chair of the Infrastructure Committee of the Board, Dale Sands bears direct responsibility for these failings.
Protect: show what the effort achieved
Environmental protection should be assessed through measurable results. Repeated lists of initiatives do not tell members what improved. The conservation record described numerous activities, but often lacked starting measurements, costs, deadlines, or documented outcomes. Water testing involved an outside partnership; the reviewed material did not establish how much testing PHCA itself funded or delivered, or what changed because of it.
Likewise, promotion of a privately paid recycling service is useful communication, but PHCA was not involved in the design or procurement of that service. Staff, volunteers, and partners deserve credit for their contributions, including the CERT emergency group. However, the Board and PHCA management did not once reach out to the CERT group before or after Hurricane Lowell. The Board should demonstrate that preparedness and conservation programs are organized, maintained, and effective.
Financial governance needs its own examination
Financial concerns are concrete. The audit for the financial year ending June 30, 2024, was completed on June 23, 2025—nearly 12 months later, as compared with 131 days for fiscal 2023.
Legal spending also exceeded its annual budget: approximately $110,849 against $100,000 in fiscal 2025, and $191,412 through May of fiscal 2026 against another $100,000 annual budget. This significant overrun was caused by legal spending on the 2026 Committee, ordered by Chair Patti Thiele who never allowed its findings to be released to the Membership and not even to the rest of the Board.
Those figures demonstrate legal-budget overrun, and unresolved accounting differences which significantly limit confidence in the financial picture. Members need and deserve timely, reconciled accounts and clear explanations of significant budget departures.
Click below to read or download an 11-page report with more details on the analysis.
PHCA needs leadership that welcomes scrutiny, makes priorities clear, and follows commitments through to results. That is the standard members should use when judging this Board—and deciding who should lead next. IT IS TIME FOR A LEADERSHIP CHANGE. |
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