It's Not Even About Golf Anymore?

If you remember, I had asked twice to have those available somewhere for the members. I may send an email and ask again. They should be available! Jean Totten

 

“Do you know the history of the mini-Berlin wall?”
Signs of the past: A ‘Berlin Wall’ in Sun City? By Ed Allen, a Sun City historian. Posted Friday, July 8, 2022 2:00 pm Fascinating look at the development of Sun City recreation centers. Why was Grand Ave. called a Berlin Wall? Which recreation center was called “Meeker’s Revenge,” and why? Read much more:

For subscribers:
https://www.yourvalley.net/stories/signs-of-the-past-a-berlin-wall-in-sun-city,315248

Message me if you want me to copy and email full article to you.

 

I did too! Sent an email, with no response at all!

 

It would be the only way i run FYI; to create an atmosphere within the debates that would change the worthless banter where we hear we need more transparency and better communication. Most of which ever happens, or if it moves the needle at all, they push back in another area. The good news is we have recorded meetings, that's a plus. Kudos to Hoffer for pushing for them. The downside is, we are still going in the wrong direction.

My sense is the last person they would want in the room and on the stage answering questions would be me. That of unto itself would make running be of interest to me.

 

One resident and FIVE nonresident golfers frustrated…OH, MY!
Opinion✍️
Rogers: What is golf cart policy on Sun City courses?
I am a 20-year resident of Sun City and an avid golfer. Over the years I have golfed the Sun City courses with a group of five other friends, none of whom are residents of Sun City and I have usually booked tee times for three of the five on a rotating basis.
I own my own golf cart and in years past have reserved one golf cart for the other golfing friends. Up until recently there has been no problem with my calling the course and reserving a tee time and cart. Due to advancing age walking the courses is now out of the question. I book these friends as my guests and they pay the guest fees and spend well at the 19th hole, which is more money for the recreation centers.

Recently, I have had issues with reserving the additional golf cart. I’ve been told the carts are on a first-come, first-served basis. The last four times I booked a tee time and my friends arrived from around the Valley, no carts were available, even though I was told there would be no problem. Has something changed? If I book online, would that make a difference? I prefer not to book online.

Recently, we booked a time at Willowbrook and was assured there would be no problem with the cart issue, even though they could not guarantee it. We ended up being rerouted to the South course as no other courses had carts available.

Can you enlighten me as to what the actual cart renting policy is and has this policy changed of late? I can’t seem to get a straight answer from the courses and would appreciate any input from others. Thanks much.

Joel Rogers
Sun City

Sun City Independent
Posted Monday, July 11, 2022 11:00 am

 

I mentioned this letter at the start of this thread. My best guess is those golf cars are being taken by the 100 non-resident full play pass members who spent the $2500. There's no way they would tell them there's no golf car available. Worse yet, how about the 30 or 40 non-residents who bought the $2000 pass; are they riding along with their friends? If that's the case, that means the cost of a golf car for the 100 plus rounds they are playing is $5 a round (which they could well be splitting with the non-member full play pass buyers, which should be $12. Bargains abound in Sun City for those living outside the walls.

How the flock did we get so far astray from our roots?

 

“I mentioned this letter at the start of this thread.”
Interesting, the letter was just posted today…
Sun City Independent Opinions
Posted Monday, July 11, 2022 11:00 am

 

Electronic version? Mine was in the paper copy last week.

 

Thanks…Well, sure enough, it WAS! That’s a reversal of what they usually do. Post online snd publish in the following print edition.

 

Hey eyesopen, was Mick McKenzie's letter in this issue? If so, please post, it was absolutely brilliant. He said it far better than i could have. As a former starter at the courses he's seen it all and lays it out perfectly. It seems to me the only ones supporting outside play is a handful of the large groups bringing their buddies in from the outside to fill out their groups. I still have not had anyone explain it and it says nothing on the RCSC's golf website but apparently there is a way to insure tee times by paying a couple of dollars more.

 

Here you go, Bill:

OPINIONS ✍️
McKenzie: RCSC officials lack insight on courses in Sun City

After reading a front page article regarding Recreation Centers of Sun City officials considering new golf changes (“Changes in mix for golf,” Sun City Independent, June 22, 2022), it was apparent that the information given was presented without full insight.

I thought I was reading some political talking points that focus only on getting the desired result even if the figures are only partially accurate.

First, there was no mention whether or not these outside passes generated additional income — only gave a multiplication of the number of passes time revenue produced by these passes.

Having worked as a head starter for six years, I can attest that a good portion of these outside passes were purchased because these players were playing with their friends who lived in Sun City and it was cheaper to buy the pass than to pay nonresident fees since they were playing multiple times during the week.

So the relevant questions should be did these passes generate additional income or just displace some nonresident fees that were already being collected.

It is also a fact that some residents are buying the pass with cart instead of the full pass because it is less expensive to pay $950 additional ($2,500-$1,550=$950) than it is to purchase a cart and maintain that cart.

Sun City nonresident fees are the cheapest in the West Valley in the winter and our twilight times are also earliest in the West Valley, both in the summer and winter.

It makes the most sense to raise the nonresident to a rate resembling our competition and to make the twilight times later for nonresidents and a rate for guests of members to have a break in the nonresident rate if they are playing with a resident.

In addition, the comment that outside play in 2021 was $1.4 million and eliminating that would increase the fees to residents for the full amount is ludicrous.

We should have, and have always had, some outside play. We would not be eliminating all outside play as the article is suggesting. We would be getting a higher rate and more times for a higher rate since the twilight times would be changed. The pass should be raised to at least $2,500 and no cart included. A reduced cart fee for pass players would be sufficient.

Sun City rates for residents have not been raised proportionally with the cost of living increase for the past 10 years and that is a good thing. But at some point, bringing in outside players to offset our fees will be a detriment to resident golfers.

We can already see that with the purchase of 50 additional carts, which were bought for outside play. At the rate of $12.46 winter/summer rates for cart seats it will take several years to recoup the cost of those carts, not to mention the cost of building cart barns to accommodate outside play.

By the way, where is the accounting of just the golf course revenue versus expenses, including the driving range income?

Mick McKenzie
Sun City
https://www.yourvalley.net/stories/...ls-lack-insight-on-courses-in-sun-city,311561

 

2000 reads; staggering.
If i were a member of the RCSC management or a board member following this thread (and we know some do), i would be very nervous. Last year, when they fired Karen, this site heated up; nothing like it is with this thread. It's clearly a topic that has caught the RCSC member's eye. Well it should have.

There have been countless people who have told me i hated golf. As much as i have tried to rebut it, the argument was always i was just anti-golf. Before i went on the board, while serving on the RCSC board and during the 8 years i have been off it, golf has always just been the analogy to amplify what has gone wrong with Sun City. It was never about golf per se. It was about what the general manager was doing with absolutely no push back from the board. It was always about a move away from the tenets and values the community was built around.

Let me give you one example and then highlight a bunch of others. At the June board meeting, one of the board members asked the GM if they passed Director Collin's motion regarding outside play, would that be setting a precedent? You don't have to take my word for it, you can watch back his answer, but clearly it was "yes." I wanted to scream from the audience, you arrogant asshole, you know absolutely nothing about our history and what has been both the practice and precedence over the past 50 years. NOTHING.

For goodness sake, when the courses were taken over in 1977, there was a board of directors for golf. They were the same as the RCSC board, but they held separate board meetings and they made every decision relative to the golf courses. After a couple of years, they consolidated the two organizations, but the RCSC board still made the decisions regarding golf. Along the way, they created the golf advisory committee and they too had a hand in setting rates. Both were always judicious about outside play. Neither the board or the committee were ever interested in giving our golf courses away to non-members.

That all changed in 2006. By 2009 the gm became involved in rewriting our bylaws. Her eye was always on a paradigm shift away from membership control; to first the board having enhanced authority, to a point where the board gave management the ability to make decisions that used to be made by the community. The historical "precedence" has always been with the board, committees and the community.

That's why, for all those years, outside golf play was limited to "open tee times." There was never a point where outsiders could come in get preferential treatment and take prime time tee times from the members. There was never a time when outsiders could step on our golf courses and pay less than the members who owned the courses. There was never a point where outsiders could rent a golf car cheaper than than members could and even more bizarre, a time when they were guaranteed a golf car and a member couldn't rent one because there were none available. Never!

In my next post, i will take the opportunity to share with our new readers how we got here and why it matters. Let me be clear, it wasn't an accident. It was an orchestrated effort and no one should be surprised we are where we are today. It was done on purpose and now they (the board and management) have dug an ugly hole for all of us.

I want to close with this one thought. I'm not good about secrets or big on strategies. I'm pretty much straight forward in what i do and say. My goals are simple, i want Sun City to return to the day when the community mattered. To a day when the members voices were not only heard but listened to. That's the only "precedence" that matters to me. I told the board president after the last meeting i was going to write a scathing letter to the editor in the Independent. I was that angry. Now, i am going to bide my time. I will in fact write one but it will be sent in Sept. Why? Because timing is everything in life and it will be timed to coincide with the next member/board exchange.

By then, readers/followers of this thread will have a much clearer understanding of why all of this matters for the future of this community.

 

Since 2006, the drift from a community where the members mattered to one where they didn't has been a slow steady drip. It didn't happen over night. It was a process of elimination culminating at a point where the deciding factors were centralized in the hands of the management. So you understand, Sun City has always been "managed." During the first 18 years, those responsibilities were shared between the community and the board members they elected and the Del E Webb Development Corporation (DEVCO). It was joint venture building a community that one day would have to stand on its own.

If you know our history at all, you know it wasn't always an easy go. Just yesterday, i read a 3 part series put together by my good friend and fellow historian, Ben Roloff. It was a story from the newspapers of the day regarding the 20 plus year fight over Sun City's struggle for it's own fire dept/district. It all started over installing a fire hydrant in the mid 60's. It was fascinating and a microcosm of everything Sun City. Nothing was easy, but it always worked, eventually.

By 1980, DEVCO had left to build Sun City West and the community needed to stand on its own. Those first 5 years through 1985 were filled with bitter infighting over direction. RCSC board elections were hotly contested with those running on platforms of moving forward or staying the course. Every step of the way, the membership was involved and engaged. Their voices worked in conjunction with the board members they elected, and when there was opposition they battled. Nothing was easy, but they always worked it out.

General managers came and went, none ever stayed too long. They were tasked with running the day to day operations. Board members could ask for their input, but they never were the decision makers regarding the community's direction. The bylaws called for committees from the membership to make recommendations to the board. Quarterly membership meetings were held where bylaws could be introduced by the board or from the floor. Voting was the norm on bylaws; no one was afraid of the membership. Everyone understood the owners of the RCSC were the membership.

Those documents, the Articles of Incorporation and the Bylaws, had survived the test of time. They insured the members voices be heard and the stake holders worked in conjunction with board members to solve whatever problems arose. In 1998/1999, the board saw fit to make the single most significant change in Sun City's history, and that's saying a lot. They passed with the support of the membership what would ultimately be called the Preservation and Improvement Fee (PIF).

By then, the amenities that DEVCO gave us were aging. There was only one way to address it given our documents and that was on expenditures of more than $750,000 to go to the membership and let them vote on passing a special assessment. They understood, if they needed 5 or 6 million dollars for a project, they would be hard pressed to pass it. The committee recommended an motion to "tax" homes sold going forward. It was a progressive move, that some argued against, but ultimately passed.

PIF started being paid in the spring of 1999. It began at $750 and some 23 years later it is $4000 per household. It literally saved Sun City. Since its inception, well over 100 million dollars has been reinvested in our amenities. With yearly sales of 2000 plus homes, the RCSC takes in more than 8 million dollars a year. Over the next 10 years, that's another 80=100 million dollars. It took guts to bring it forward and pass it, but it was our defining moment.

By 2005 the money was rolling in, projects were identified and improvements made. Because the RCSC had cash in hand and they weren't incurring indebtedness, there was no need to take the improvements forward to be voted on. However, the committees and quarterly membership meetings with quorum's of 100 easily kept actions taken by boards from just doing as they pleased. I've called our documents the guard rails that kept everything in Sun City in balance.

In 2006, a decision was made. Next post, we'll explore that. By the end, you will understand perfectly why when members of the golfing community that began speaking out about what was going on in April of this year were all but ignored. The pieces that got us to this point will be abundantly clear. Stay tuned.

 

The decision to hire a more active general manager was made. Boomers were the next wave of retirees and there was some concern they would not be as involved as the "greatest generation." The first year or two she was kept on a short leash, but with the turnover of board members, everything changed. With each passing year after that, she acquired more power. In 2009, with some legal threats looming, the board and management claimed they needed to rewrite the bylaws.

Initially the bylaws were changed from a quorum of 100 to 10% which in those days was somewhere around 3500 members. Some argued it was way too high and so an ad hoc committee settled on 1250. Either way, the changes resulted in the RCSC not having a quorum met until Dec of 2021 (12 long years). The first stripping of the checks and balances were in place and after that, everything else became easy. Quarterly membership meetings went away in hopes of an annual meeting being the solution. That too failed.

Then committees were dismissed. First the legal affairs committee that existed for more than 30 years was flushed. Next up, the entertainment committee was gone. The long range planning committee was kicked to the curb because their work was done (really?). Finally, the communication committee was replaced a couple of times with new names and watered down versions of their former self.

It was an evolution of removal and concentrating all authority in the board and management. And as time passed and more rewriting of the bylaws by the gm, the board agreed to give management more and more of the decision making authority. The more they dished off, the less the board's work load. It was a Faustian bargain that worked well. Along with that, the management team kept growing in numbers.

The bylaws became a wordy, near unreadable document; going from 16 pages to more than double that. Virtually any rights the members once had were gone. Management was able to do almost whatever they wanted and the board acted as a rubber stamp. The committees that remained in place, when recommendations were made, fell on deaf ears. Added to the bylaws was a statement telling board members of the importance of loyalty to the corporation. Unfortunately some read that as loyalty to the general manager.

In 2020, with virtually no one attending board meetings, the board and management did whatever they wanted with little or no push back. In November, they fired board member Barbara Brehm because she had the audacity to question the financials. It appeared no one noticed or cared. Then came 2021 as we were coming out of the pandemic and there was an effort to move forward on the long awaited Mountain View project.

A theater renovation had long been in the works there. The much loved pool was going to be redone while adding a theater. Then a strange thing happened; in June, the board showed the members a wholly new design. One that would take away the pickleball courts, lawn bowling, tennis and mini-golf. No one bothered to talk to the affected clubs, they just shoved the artists renderings in peoples faces. It resulted in a proverbial shitshow.

The angst by the pickleball community was real and emotionally charged. One board member, Karen McAdam, was an outspoken critic of the plan. Her argument was basic; Sun City with the current 27 courts was under served. By taking away the 7 courts at Mountain View, it would be even more so. The board, now accustomed to doing as they pleased, were none to happy with Karen. On top of that, they did a rough down and dirty and came up with a 40 million dollar price tag. Back then they needed 3 readings of the motion to proceed, but they waived the third reading. To add to their foolishness, they fired Karen as they were going on summer break.

Their hope everything would die down come September was folly. They had in fact unleashed the beast. After 10 years of meeting in empty rooms, 200 plus members showed up. It hadn't been a secret and management responded by hiring three off duty police officers, armed and ready (really?). When i walked in the room, they approached me and asked if i was in charge? Nope, just a member. They told me signs were not permitted to be raised. Curious in that i didn't have one.

That word got passed around about signs and apparently every body got the message but one person. She raised hers, i didn't see it but i heard it was up. The meeting opened, a board replacement for Karen was sworn in and the president stormed off the stage announcing the meeting was over. Then it got loud and ugly. Members were pissed and the new general manager told us we would have to leave or be arrested. I dealt with problems like this for a living and tried to intervene. The GM relented and let us stay in the room we all owned.

In November, Karen McAdam ran again for the board she had been kicked off of. She got the most votes of any candidate in recent memory. The state laws call for the RCSC to hold a yearly membership meeting. They had one scheduled but they wanted to try and get out of it. They couldn't so reluctantly they went ahead with it early in December.

Members started collecting proxies from those who couldn't/wouldn't attend. I saw little hope in reaching 1250; i was never so happy to be so wrong. The general manager locked the doors to the Sun Dial Auditorium promptly at 9 am (really?). Shortly after 9 am, they announced a crowd, between proxies and butts in the chairs, of 1400 plus. The crowd went wild. The meeting went on for 3 hours. The membership had made timely motions in advance and then read them from the floor, as called for in the Articles of Incorporation. The president told us we didn't have the right to vote on them, as called for in the Articles (really?). They drug out the RCSC attorney to tell us the bylaws had higher standing than the Articles (really?).

Little was resolved as the RCSC was dead set on doing what they wanted, not what the membership wanted. It was the new normal after 15 years of doing just that. We eagerly awaited the release of the video from the meeting. We got notice several days later of a technical glitch in the recording equipment (really?). They shuffled off our motions, passed by a straw vote, to an ad hoc committee still working on them. I'm not holding my breath anything we proposed will be there...we'll see.

After all of these missteps, one RCSC member has requested his right for a recall petition on board member(s), as stated in the bylaws. Each time he was told no by the RCSC, kind of. Seems, rather than answering him directly, they let their attorney send him dear John letters (really?). Clearly, the memberships rights have been subverted at every turn.

I will break here and finish my thoughts on why golf and outside play has taken center stage, stay tuned.

 

2022...A Kumbaya moment?
You be the judge...

With Karen back on the board and at least 4 of the board members interested in member's rights, 2022 appeared promising. In fact, the new board president wrote articles telling us a new day had dawned. We were excited by the prospects of working together. One of the solutions was to restore/replace one of the board meetings with a member/board exchange meeting. They had been used in the past and clearly there was value in them.

The problem was, the board president demanded for them to be reinstated, the board had to agree that at the remaining board meeting, the only discussions that would be had from the members was regarding motions on the table. The trade off would be one meeting with more time to speak, and the other meeting leaving less time. The threat to the non-majority board was if they didn't agree, the president would simply rule only motions could be discussed at both board meetings. So much for Kumbaya.

The other change was to bring in a parliamentarian. It worked well until it didn't. Her role now appears to be to support whatever the president says. So much for Kumbaya.

But i digress. The RCSC held it's first in a long time member/board exchange meeting in April. It was long and lively. A lot of really good questions and concerns from members and apparent interest from the board. The hottest topic that came to light was from the golfing community. Three women, all long time members of the RCSC, stood and questioned why it was so hard for RCSC members to get on golf courses they have always had access to.

One of the women mentioned being bumped repeatedly due to outside tournament play, the other two were concerned with non-resident play. One in fact talked about non-residents buying full play passes and then scheduling tee times via our web portal. The board appeared clueless but promised to get to the bottom of it. All of which caused me to start digging into the financials. The more i dug, the worse it got. The sale of full play outside passes doubled from 2020 to 2021 and in 2022 was on the rise again.

Then to compound it, a month or two later we got the report that outside full play pass purchasers could indeed bump members participating in the draw on an equal basis as members and we saw data showing they could rent golf cars for less money than members could. The general manager claimed this was a non-issue because the outside play was only 10,000 to 12,000 rounds a year. They also told us the average rate paid by non-members was a little over $20 a round but that too was okay because the cost for a member buying a full play pass was a little over $12 a round.

His arguments didn't sit well with many in the golfing community. Nor did his solution; in 2023 to make a slight adjustment. Then to add insult to injury, he argued if they stopped outside play it would result in massive increases to Sun City golfers. As Mick McKenzie point out in his letter to the editor, his argument was pure crap. The vast majority of outside play was from those paying the full rate plus for a round of golf. No one was proposing they stop outside play, what they were saying was full play passes should never displace the members nor should they get prices cheaper than those of us who live here, have paid the PIF and subsidize golf from our yearly lot assessment.

Director Collins made the motion at the June meeting to raise the rate for a full pay pass to a flat $2500 and no golf car; let them rent one for the full $12 per round. I would argue it wasn't enough but the saving grace behind it was, they couldn't access our web portal as early as Sun City golfers. That alone made it viable. But alas, the motion was defeated when the general manager and the director of golf told the board; "golf made money in 2021."

The question, beyond the Kumbaya moment, is simply this: Did golf make money in 2021 as the management team told the board and all of us? Or, was it a lie to insure those living outside the community keep having better access than those of us owning the courses? The September member/board exchange promises to be very, very interesting.

 

I've been chastised often and loudly about hating golf. As a historian of Sun City, i have told people that is absolutely not the case. Sun City was built as a golfing community and will always be a golfing community. My go-to bible on all things Sun City has been Jubilee, Sun City's 25th Anniversary book. It was primarily written by Jane Freeman and Glenn Sanberg; with a lot of help from members of the community. It is available for purchase at the Del Webb Sun Cities Museum.

This thread has been intriguing to me; especially with all of the interest. So much so, i dug out Jubilee and reread the 6 pages on golf in it. You all know the first course, North, was started before anything else in Sun City. They began excavating and grading in July of 1959. They wanted the front 9 ready for opening day. It played a huge part in the excitement they got on January 1, 1960. It was so successful, they immediately started on the back 9.

That same year, 1960 the first golf organization was formed. Fielding Abbot was the professional hired by Webb to oversee the course and led the efforts to create the Sun City Golf Club. By the end of the year, the name was changed to the Sun City Golf Association. One of their concerns, even back then, was outside play. Webb owned the course and it was clearly a marketing strategy. Members of the organization were complaining about getting tee times because of the outsiders. Webb told them, he would stop outside play if they would cover any losses on the course (projected to be 100K). No one liked that idea.

By Dec of 1962, the second course, South, opened. That took some of the pressure off. There was a push to create 4 separate organizations for the two courses; a men and women's group for North and the same for the South course. That never happened either. I did find it of note, early on they named Weds as "competitive" play day. The women got the early morning tee time while the men got the afternoon till dark slots.

In 1964 Webb agreed to build the first private country club, Sun City CC. That caused quite the stir. Golfers saw this as a problem, but the solution was resolved once the decision was made to move north of Grand Ave. Before we head north, it was in 1964 when the women broke off from the men and formed their own organization, the "Women's Golf Association of Sun City."

Once the decision was made to build phase 2, everything else fell into place. Lakes West opened in 1969 and Lakes East followed suit in September of 1970. By 1973, the Riverview course and the two courses in phase 3, Willowbrook and Willowcreek had opened. Along with them were two more private country clubs, Palmbrook and Union Hills. All three of the country clubs were member owned courses. The last course developed was Quail Run (1978), the site of the DEVCO storage and construction yards.

Golf has a storied history. The Museum has an amazing collection of photographs, with one of my favorites being Webb walking down the fairway at the South course with his good buddy, Bob Hope. Del Webb, for those who don't know, didn't start golfing till he quit his baseball career. He was in his early 30's, but he was quite the athlete and once he took up golf, it was his passion. Even in his later years, he was a scratch golfer. He belonged to 13 (or was it 17) country clubs around the United States. Someone wrote once he owned 52 pair of golf shoes...go figure.

My second go-to source regarding golf history is the golf files we have at the museum. There are countless newspaper clippings from the first 40 years. If i get a chance, i will grab some of them. They are filled with stories of the membership resenting and trying to limit outside play. It should be of little surprise given the long standing struggle over prime tee times.

 

Okay Bill I have stayed so quiet for probably the last 4 months watching what has happened to this board. You say you have so many people reading it's not as many as you think given that every time you click on something it's counted as another person or another read but that's beside the point you and I have had discussions about golf in the past. The keywords in your last rant is prime tee times. You have a handful of people that don't play golf every single day of the week that want to sit out there drink beer have a good old party but they want that 8:00 9:00 or 10:00 tea time sorry I'm not going to correct the t e a. Well Mrs Jones or Mr Jones or Uncle Jones or brother Jones can't call the golf course on the day that they want to get the tee time and get it it's impossible if they do the lottery that's exactly what it is the lottery how many times have you won the lottery it has nothing to do with outside golfers I am not an outside golfer I've been a resident forever but on this board there's probably a dozen maybe more whining and crying about things that aren't true. Now the pickleballers. We need to take half the tennis courts out of Sun City and make pickleball courts out of them we need to take all the lawn bowling courts out of Sun City except for maybe one which would be Bell and make pickleball courts out of them. It's been so much money watering mowing and lighting these lawn bowl courts. For what? A bunch of Canadians to come play a dying sport. Sq. Footage wise we have alot that can be used for necessities that being a priority and get rid of lawn bowling. Hundreds of thousands of dollars a year is spent on lawn bowling maintenance. Good clubs have been done with because of numbers. This lawn bowling needs to be a top priority to be disbanded ASAP. We are USA citizens not Canadian.

 

Wow! I like a spirited discussion as much as the next guy SW, but just wow. So you are telling me/us, Canadians who buy homes here pay their PIF, pay their lot assessment and are only here at max 6 months (usually less), shouldn't be entitled to what? Do what they enjoy. By the way, many of them do more than lawn bowl, so should we shut those other clubs down as well? Are you one of those who hates our seasonal residents as well? Just curious regarding the vitriol regarding Canadians?

To some of your other points, for those who don't know, i am and have been a lawn bowlers for the past 18 years. I don't bowl much anymore, but it in a topic i know a lot about. Sun City has a fascinating history; the first lawn bowling green (1960) in Arizona was at Community Center, we know it as (Oakmont). With each successive rec center that opened, they put in a lawn bowling green. The only one that didn't have at least one green was Marinette.

It was so popular that in 1974, there were 1400 lawn bowlers in Sun City. It's true that it is a sport on the wane. The pandemic took its toll and my best guess is we are climbing back up around 400 members. It is a sport that is labor intensive and does take water. Sadly they put more on it than it needs. The other problem is the heaviest play is obviously in the winter months. The challenge with grass greens is when they get too much play, they take a beating. That's why they alternate days between the clubs.

Back to you point, lawn bowling enjoyed protected status for a long time. There was a resident who donated three quarters of a million dollars to lawn bowling and the RCSC didn't want to anger her. She died and now there are some looking at greens drooling. It will be interesting to see what plays out. You know the argument has been data, data, data. For years, as bowlers we were told don't keep records, all we need to know is the number of members. It was foolish, but it was the position the general manager took.

Since the uproar last year, the lawn bowling clubs started keeping daily counts. My argument is much simpler and it has been my position for the last ten years. Every club, every activity should have card readers and then we'll have accurate data. Of course we all know the problem there. The RCSC is 15 years behind in their technology and has no capacity for something as simple as a scanner for club use.

I keep laughing over folks claiming no one is reading the site. I tracked from yesterday when i posted till this morning before i posted (24 hours), more than 100 reads. Same people opening it ten times? BTW, it doesn't work that way, but whatever. In the end, it doesn't really matter, the discussion regarding outside golf play is alive and well in the community. I find it odd you are telling those living here they should not be able to use what they paid for, but apparently, you don't see a problem with outside full play golf passes?

The question mark was intentional because i have no idea what you were trying to say in your rant regarding golf and the Jones family? I honestly don't, it made no sense. And your comments regarding the lottery, i've been asking folks to explain it, no one has stepped up. Perhaps you can. I know golfers can put their names in well in advance and then they draw for the prime time tee times from the lottery. I think there's the ability to override that by paying $2 more, but i don't know that for sure. That's why i have been asking for an explanation.

By the way, lawn bowling is just as much an American sport as it is a Canadian sport. I suspect disbanding the game in Sun City may just be met with a fair amount of anger, but feel free to step up to the mic at September member/board exchange and suggest it. Of course there, you won't be able to hide behind a screen name. Just saying eh (for my Canadian friends).

 

Hopefully SW will stop back and help fill us in on what he/she was trying to say about golf. The comments made are the perfect example why running and serving on the RCSC board is such an interesting and challenging task. Many of us have opinions on what we think matters or is of most importance in Sun City. The beauty of of it is people often state things as if they are the absolute truths. Are they?

If you read back through this thread, i have asked people who know more than me to speak out. I spent three years on the RCSC board and much of it was a "learning experience." There's so much we don't know. It is one of the reasons we have asked for transparency. Many of the figures posted on this thread we found online. The 990's showed us for the first time both the revenue and the expense side of the equation regarding golf. The RCSC has never shared the expense side with the membership.

The question becomes, are they even sharing it with the board members? Are they sharing it with the golf advisory committee? Both of those parties are the ones in positions to make recommendations. That becomes a physical impossibility if they don't have the data the board president is so big on.

SW says just do away with tennis courts, do away with lawn bowling; does the data dictate that? Does the data dictate building a gymnasium for basketball and volleyball at Mountain View. Did the data dictate an indoor archery range at the Grand Center? Did the data dictate a massive amount of space for the camera club at the Grand Center? I honestly don't know the answers to these questions because they share virtually nothing with the membership.

I can tell you i know at least one member that requested the supporting information (data) from the board president and has gotten nothing in response. Hardly the way to instill confidence or trust in the people we elect. Solutions should be data driven. Without them, they are simply the whim of the board, or worse yet, the management.

 

Another amazing letter to the editor in the Independent today regarding golf in Sun City. Once again, this isn't crazy Bill Pearson, hater of all things golf (said with a smirk), this is a member of the Sun City golfing community, sounds like a member of the golf advisory committee and extremely articulate in her positions. Kudos to Karen Smolinski for being willing to tell the management team and more so the board just how wrong-headed they are.

Time to wake up gang, you've let this outside full play/outside tournament crap go on too long. These courses belong to the members, this community belongs to the members. How freaking hard is that to understand?