I had to meet a reporter at the museum, which turns out to be a plus in that I was able to get information I wasn't sure of. I originally would have guessed the long range planning committee was formed after the PIF was passed. Hell, they had no money so what could they plan for? Turns out I would have assumed wrong, the LRPC had been in place well prior to the PIF. That shouldn't surprise me, committee's have been a mainstay in the community from the very beginning. And in fact, the whole of the self-governance construct has been one of resident involvement. My friend Ben Roloff has been reading the state archives of newspaper's from Sun City since it's inception. It's staggering what went on, suffice to say back in those first three years, people who lived here were involved. One of the early elections for board membership saw two slates with a total of 18 candidates, and a huge turnout of voters. But back to the LRPC: Historically it was a standing committee (permanent) and a year or two ago all of the members were released and made an adhoc (called when needed) committee. As I have said, I voted against it, fought it and was outvoted. At the time, the tragedy of the existing LRPC was they were only allowed to address 25% of the funds the PIF would bring in. Golf was off the table and they identified Marinette as their #1 objective. Several committee members have expressed their frustrations to me regarding that decision of excluding golf, but that was the way it was and there was nothing I could do or say to change it. Logic tells me a long range plan should truly be long range (10 years at the least, 20 at the most), and should include everything. It also tells me we should be factoring the changing demographics, with a fairly significant amount of time to education and research. But then when does logic ever enjoy a seat at the table. During all of this I wrote a two page dissertation to the board on my thoughts regarding committees and moving forward. I probably still have it, but let me summarize my suggestions: * Committee's are challenging but without them we fail to have community input. * Boomer's may well better adapt to a different approach, but it need be in place before replacing committees. * Town Hall type gatherings would be an excellent alternative but they would need be timely and topics of substance. And the input would be things we (the board) would be willing to embrace (at least conceptually). There was more, but you get the picture. I wasn't married to committees, but any changes were incumbent on having a clearly defined mechanism to replace them up and running. As Big Red noted, the Dog Park "town hall" meeting was a bit contentious but there was an some awesome outcome from it. Some board members were uncomfortable with it, at least two of us saw it as very positive. The crappy part for me is we have left this become a fish flopping about out of water. Committee's still exist, though several are gone or been revamped. The most important one is in limbo. This whole thing exploded on the board when they proposed the increase. One board member argued we don't need a long range planning committee because they have their budget through 2020, yet others are talking about dramatic and costly expenditures that are directly in front of us. Let me be clear: Any actions to increase the PIF should be in conjunction with a LRPC. If the board is serious about an increase, then long before they vote on that they should reinstate the LRPC and work in conjunction with them to figure out what we need and how much if any increase there should be. Life is so simple if you just let logic rule the day.
Interesting article Emily. I'm a mid boomer. Online comments (not here) like to yell at baby boomers for sucking up all the remaining social security money because we are a large group and didn't save. But in truth many of us were raised with social security is what you do unless you're rich or had a pension. 401k did not even come in soon enough, as accepted idea, until it was getting too late to make a meaningful start for boomers. And then when many of us finally got into it we lost a lot of money in the recession because we never thought it would happen to a 401k. At least the Gen-xers have time and grew up hearing they should start saving young. They also learned something about how you could lose it if you weren't careful. And speaking of large group, the Millennials aka echo-boomers, are almost as large as the baby boomer group.
