Is Sun City Back?

RCSC's building projects are no different than those built by other entities - country clubs, municipal projects, school buildings, etc. Everyone has their opinion about what should be included. For example, if a city park is being developed, some people want a lake in which to fish, others want a biking path, playground equipment, a recreation center, ball parks, tennis courts, water pad, swimming pools and on and on. However, the site will only hold so much and the money is capped at a certain level so choices have to be made. It's great that RCSC has allowed Member input, but the Board of Directors are the ones whom we elected to make the decision about what to include at MV and how much money will be spent. I don't think anyone can say that the Board hasn't listened to its Members if their favorite amenity is not included. It's the way it works in organizations like this. I am confident in this Board to make the best decisions.

 

Pickleball is a very popular new sport trend also. However, with pickleball, current tennis courts could be altered to serve both games. You have hundreds more interested in the actual physical fitness of pickleball. My only concern with pickleball however, is what I have been seeing which in outsiders coming in to play on our courts. I have still not received an answer from RCSC on how non residents can come in an play on our courts. I have been asking for more definition on how folks get into our facilities to play, and personally, I feel we need to charge the non-resident a much higher fee to come in and use our private facilities. Spending a few hours at Marinette would make you all start asking these questions. If we put at least a $10 fee per game on non residents tagging on to one resident, we could be incurring more revenue for our community here. I am sorry but we hear many folks complaining every month at member meetings on how the bathrooms, courts and buildings are getting worn out by heavy usage. Okay, we hear you, but who is incurring the heavy usage? especially this time of year. I just feel in terms of pickleball, we are just letting too many outsiders in here to use our amenities. Not talking family relatives visiting here, I am talking folks who live in metro phoenix area, coming in to use our courts. Still asking for more definition on this.

 

I don't play pickleball or tennis so I am not aware of how the check in process works. Do you know? Are the courts open to anyone? I know golf has a process, and when I used to go to the pool at Bell and Sundial we had to check in with our rec card number. Doesn't it work that way with tennis and pickleball?

 

I guess the question is, are we a private resident club, or the YMCA? I am feeling more like this place is turning into the YMCA.
I would like for folks to weigh in. Thanks so much.

 

My husband and I have just been talking about this issue this morning. My husband stated of having to wait in a long line in the past week at Marinette just to get in to use fitness center and it was raining outside and folks are in a line getting wet to come in the door. My husband mentioned the idea of having a seperate attendant to check in pickleball crowd only, because the crowd was asking all kinds of questions on how it worked, and the rules and such, ( like never have been there before), meanwhile, regular members are just trying to check in to do fitness and such.

 

Another thought on this, even the YMCA charges a basic $25 guest fee if you go, so if RCSC wants to not tell us right now that they haven't figured out non resident pickleball usage, they should at least have a standard fee for non residents plowing in here to use our facilities. We keep talking about how to increase our revenues in SC, well, start there and let's see how much we can make. I don't think RCSC has figured this out yet, or is hiding something. Again, not talking about the grandkiddies coming to visit and play, I am talking about the crowds using pickleball facilities here. I grew up going to YMCA, that's how I know. Have a good day!

 

Maybe they are new homeowners? Probably should have more than one person checking people in if it's that busy all the time. That would mean having to get volunteers to man the entry during hours of operation tho. I guess an interested person could just go and watch the entry process for a half a day or so to see how it works. Or just ask the monitor (if they still are called that).

Yes, monthly fee of $25. I was amazed at what you get for that fee. Have never been to a YMCA. They even have clinical people to teach health services classes.

 

This has been a long standing argument and the one way it was dealt with was via a bylaw or board policy (not sure which one?) that said a Sun City resident will never be displaced by a non-resident. That was true in almost everything except golf and 10 pin bowling that relied on non-member participation. Even that got twisted when we saw really cheap full play non-resident golf passes where non-members were playing for a fraction of what members were paying and bumping them by joining small groups and getting preferential tee times. 10 pin bowling too had issues with league play but the RCSC has tried to get their head around that.

The simply reality is, outside play has been argued as a way to keep member costs down. There's some truth to it and some fiction as well. The benefit always has to be balanced to the point where members aren't displaced (the community and its related tax advantages were based on membership utilization). That's difficult, especially in golf where we have a fairly screwy lottery tee time/small group battle over prime tee times. I don't know the answers and clearly the golf advisory committee is struggling with it as well.

The smaller question (not to minimize your point Eileen) is those sports where visitors come and use our amenities and pay a small fee. There's really two issues at play here. A lot of Sun City residents/members have family and friends visit and using the facilities for a reasonable price has been a long standing tradition. So much so, the RCSC embraced a concept that used to be a day pass, to one where the guest could buy consecutive 7 day passes and be treated as if they were a member. That would save the member from having to go to the center other than the first time to sign them in under their rec card number.

The other issue is more tricky with some sports; pickleball, tennis, ping pong and lawn bowling having visitors show up for a day and play and just pay the $2.50 fee. It's also been problematic in other clubs like line dancing, card clubs and dance clubs who allow outsiders and charge both the $2.50 the RCSC gets and an admission fee the club keeps. Outsiders can't join and be members, they can pay to be admitted.

The RCSC tried to deal with this over the years by calling one a guest and the other a visitor. Then they got more elaborate with specifying the number of times a guest could come per month or per year (no idea how anyone kept track or cared). To this day, to my knowledge i suspect it's still done a number of different ways. I doubt consistency in application is a factor.

Sun City West handled it differently (better?). Their golf rules specifically stated no outsider could play for less than a member, nor could an outsider ever get a tee time ahead of a member (based on members selecting days before non-members). The other issue regarding guests/visitors was kind of resolved by first increasing their daily fee for non-members from our $2.50, then to $3.50 and i think the last i saw was $5.00 per visit.

Think of it this way for those confused. The lot assessment is $650 per year which equals $1.78 per day for access to our amenities. For a couple that equals .89 cents each per day. For a single person it is the full $1.78. The question becomes, is $2.50 a reasonable number for either a visitor or a guest to enjoy our amenities? Don't get me started on the fairness of lot assessment versus per person.

We know a lot of those who have come to Sun City and enjoyed our amenities end up buying in the community. The real question, i guess, is how important is it from a marketing perspective and how much do you want members to pay when family and friends visit?

 

Eileen,

In a data driven decision making process one of the first questions one must ask is who else has one of those? If the answer is nobody, then the follow up question is why are we so different? I like dogs but... Regardless of what you feel about the 700 plus member car club, that facility is less than half the size of what the BFDC wants. And even though members from 55 to 93 are working in the shop it is not air conditioned. The BFDC needs AC. Let's be real. And, this Board has approved $1.5M to build this thing and will not allow the LRP to examine its justification. There is strong evidence to suggest this building was a pet project of a former Board President. If this board has integrity, it will allow the LRP to kick the tires.

 

Hi John, Yes, I totally agree with your conclusions here in all areas.

 

I remember when the dog club wanted that canopy. I thought that made the happy, but I guess not.

Misters would be cheaper and would probably be good until about noon on summer days.

 

This post is about no-shows for golfing tee times in Sun City. This seemed like the best place to write this.

At the Golf Advisory Committee meetings, the Director of Golf has repeatedly stated that there is a large problem with Members adding fake names to tee times to prevent the pro shop from adding other golfers to their group. This is a practice that costs RCSC a significant revenue loss which is passed onto other golfers and all RCSC Members and Cardholders. For the nongolfers here, five golfers can be assigned to the same tee time.

This past week, one of my golfing buddies and I were signed up for a tee time knowing full well that we might be set up with one, two or three other golfers. My friend had made our desired tee time five days ahead, which is the soonest it could be made. When we paid our fees, we were told that we would be playing in a five some because the course was very busy that morning. No problem for us.

However it was a problem for the other three women in our group. They explained that they were playing in a competition and asked us to tee off ahead of them and golf as a two some. Again no problem except that determination should be made by the starters at the pro shop because a group usually tees off every seven or eight minutes. After we teed off on #1, one of the ladies said she just should have put in two fake names as guests when she made the tee time and then would tell the starters that those two couldn't play. Thus they could play in the threesome as they desired. She seemed like a nice lady and probably didn't see anything wrong with doing that. Otherwise why would she tell that to two people she didn't know?

As we played, I told my golfing partner how much that little white lie was hurting our golf budget. We both had paid the $35 prime time green fee for 18 holes on an executive course for a total of $70. Those two false no shows would have cost the golf course $70 for that tee time. Say that occurs ten times during the day, that would be a $700 loss in revenue just on that course. Multiply that by our other seven courses for a total of $4,900.00 for that day alone. If that happens 100 days out of the year, that's nearly a half million dollars in revenue.

This is a problem that the Golf Advisory Committee has discussed. There has been talk of fining people who do this. However with our age group, many times people may get up in the morning and don't feel well enough to golf. At other times people decide it is either too cold, hot, rainy or windy to play. So it is a problem that doesn't have an easy answer to resolve. If you know someone who does this deceptive practice, please let them know they are costing all of us money.

Now someone might say we could have played at a different time or course. True, but we didn't know about the fivesome until we showed up at the golf course. The loss of revenue is real. The deficit in the 2024 RCSC budget was largely due to fewer rounds of golf that were paid for than had been budgeted. Notice, I said "paid for" not "played". Many people buy a full pass which costs the same regardless if they play 10 rounds a year or 100. RCSC Members who are not golfers frequently mention that much of their annual lot assessment pays for golf courses they don't use. True, so we need to educate the golfers how this has a detrimental effect on our fees as well as not having the funds to keep the golf courses up to the standard people would like.

Any other ideas out there?

 

At other places, including 55+ communities, people have to pay for missed tee times. They have old people there too.

Credit cards should be charged when people make a tee time. No refunds but a credit for heavy rain.

We have to quit thinking differently from how other places do business. If people had to pay for missed tee times, I'm sure many would miraculously feel better, and the wind wouldn't bother them quite so much.

 

It is and has been a challenging issue, booking tee times and then not showing up. Janet is right, lost revenue. It was identified several years back and the percentage was staggering (30 %, or at the very least, 25%). The problem was kicked back to the golf advisory committee. While everyone lamented the problem, little was done to fix it.

Now we are caught in the trap of rising golf rates, rounds of play dropping and the courses being in bad shape (some, not all). Just the other day i read a letter to the editor where those unfilled rounds, due to fake bookings or maybe legitimate reasons, are still in the 20% range. The result was still members not getting their preferred tee times and the lost revenue.

That’s simply unacceptable. Worse yet, many of those unfilled spots were identical to the comments Janet heard. Filling your five-some when you know only 3 or 4 of the players will show up. It’s compounded by the fact many of these unfilled spots are from small group bookings who sign up months in advance and get the best tee times.

We’ve long labored under the false premise that cheap golf was our salvation. That cheap golf has to ultimately be paid for by someone. Members paying the full walk-on daily rates and guests/visitors aren’t the problem. The challenge lies in the idea a golf pass gives them the right to abuse the system.

Not my problem and i have no interest in making it my problem. For those on the golf advisory committee, they’ve got their work cut out for themselves. As long as we keep losing revenue from no-shows and small group (30 or more) keep filling prime time tee times with players who won’t/don’t show up, little will change.

And to add to the drama, the long time director of golf has tendered his resignation. Perhaps the next director of golf will come in with fresh ideas and a better perspective than cheap golf.

We’ll see eh?

 

I let my fingers do some strolling over to SCW, just seeking a review of what their direction is as a community. I came across these tenets for the purpose and scope of the community. I am impressed with the simple, straightforward approach and thought I would share it.
Organizational Values

Community-Centered
The Association will adopt sustainable economic policies that ensure both short-term and long-term financial health, supporting the needs and enhancing the lifestyle of current and future members.


Integrity
The Association’s amenities, operations and infrastructure will be maintained to modern and attractive standards, consistent with the community’s original intent. Resources will be allocated to ensure we remain efficient, attractive and competitive with newer developments.


Excellence
We strive for the highest standards in service, maintenance, and management.


Innovation
We embrace new ideas and continuous improvement to enhance member experiences.


Stewardship
We responsibly manage community resources for current and future generations.

What I see written here are the main tenets we should be operating with. Instead we seem to be mired in the notion of what this community should be. The RCSC seems to have lost its focus. Perhaps this can serve as a guideline for today and the future. I appreciated the clarity of the message that was conveyed in this document.

 

SC and SCW cannot be compared. You can see the difference just driving through. The condo properties are pristine. They have nice walking paths and dog parks. There are several pubs, a lot of restaurants, car washes. You can fill up your gas golf court without having to take a gas can in your car or take your life in your hands driving your cart across Grand or Bell. They sold their PAC to ASU who in turn sold it due to lack of use. HELLO? There is a Troon Golf Course with an upscale restaurant. Their Fry's grocery has a wine and cheese bar. The assessment fee is per person. Ank look at all the shopping in Surprise. People don't speak like people do on this site, there are no Daves.

Yes there are wealthy people here. Probably most live in the lakeside homes. How many of those folks have ever been on the board.

There is so much more. If I had an extra 6k for the PIF I would be there in a heartbeat. Wow, you all hate me so much how about a go fund me in my name so I can move?

 

Despite the static posted previously, I see a positive message in the posted values. I also took note that it’s written within the values, that resources will be allocated for the community to stay useful and relevant. Knowing that this is a goal and direction, it makes sense now, to me, why it’s stayed useful to the community and to the area as a whole. Not trying to be the cheapest, striving to be the best.

 

I am not sure any of the golf courses in SCW are operated by Troon but the ones in Sun City Festival are. Also much more expensive and hard to get a tee time. My neighbor had built a house there but moved to SC because he was driving here to play golf anyway.

 

May be a tad late. We have no available land. Sun City West for some reason had the foresight to use their land in the best way possible. SC marketed itself as inexpensive retirement, which is why the lower income folks moved here. West and Grand never did that. Until Phase 1 is renovated I don't see this as a West or Grand.

 

Briarwood Country Club Engages With Troon | Press Release | Troon