Spent about 4 plus hours at the board meeting and work sessions that followed it today. If you weren't there you should have been. When it is released, you should watch it. More importantly, be sure to catch the two work sessions that followed. Before i get there, i had a conversation with a guy as he was leaving who hollered at me, "you hate golf." Nope, what i hate is when someone tells me dumb stuff like that. I've written more times than i can count, Sun City was built as a golfing community and will always be a golfing community. What i expect is golfers to pay for the cost of the round of golf, as it says in the agreement made when the RCSC took control of the golf courses. What is especially troubling is the board knows the courses aren't being self-sufficient and has simply let them skate. Several board members admitted to knowing what the agreement said. Don't ask me why they haven't acted on enforcing it. Ask them. That's not really the point of this thread. Today's work session were really good. For the first time in a long time, they dumped the realities facing Sun City right smack dab in the middle of the table. Fabulous, at least in my opinion. It truly is time to start letting the community know the challenges we face. The long range planning committee has been talking about two issues for at least a couple of years (actually longer). They are technology/being able to track utilization of the amenities and safety at our facilities and golf courses. Today we got to witness the cost to deal with both. Roughly 1.2 million dollars, and in my opinion a price worth investing in. The second issue is even more expensive. It's too bad the guy who hollered at me didn't stay for. Viewpoint lake needs to be repaired to the tune of 6 million dollars and emptied and fixed taking a years time. We always know the day would come and now it has. If that was all, it wouldn't be bad. The much larger piece of the puzzle is related to the turf management costs we will face in 2025 from the state. Dealing with our reduced water allocations will cost us roughly 20 million dollars; hell, 8 million dollars on the South golf course alone. There's hope the state will allow us time (5 to 10) years to get it all done, i'm not holding my breath. The good news is both of these issues can be funded out of PIF and not be passed on to the golfers and the obligation they remain self-funded. The bad news is, during the past 15 years, the board hasn't been very diligent in making golfers pay the true costs for a round of golf. The other good news is, the board is scheduling a general membership meeting for December and i will have secured the documentation i need to be able to speak to the issue. If you watch the video, you will see board members tell me members should have access to all relative information and by then i will have gathered it. I've always argued there should be no secrets. Pretty simple when you consider all of us living here should know what is going on. All of which makes me smile when you consider we have people living here who don't even know there is a lake (2 actually), let alone we need to drain it, reseal it and spend 6 million dollars doing it. All in all, an interesting morning. And no, i don't hate golf, not even a little.
Bill - based on what you have stated in this thread would you agree that Mountain View should be put on the back burner till all water issues (golf courses and Viewpoint Lake) are immediately faced and planned for?
I have never been to Mountain View other than to vote, but my humbled question would be, and no disrespect intended, but is Mountain View that bad or in such a state of disrepair that it needs to be demolished and reconstructed? Why can't they simply build a stand alone theater for now and push Mountain View further down the road? They didn't seem to have a problem pushing the leaking lake aside for 10 years? Which brings up an interesting question! First...we know that Viewpoint Lake loses twice its capacity of water per year. We know that Dawn Lake isn't the responsibility of the RCSC but is the responsibility of the individual homeowners who live on the lake. I think it would be safe to assume that if Viewpoint Lake is leaking so must be Dawn Lake? Is anybody in the Dawn Lake community addressing that? Next: YES, our Annual Membership Meeting will be held on December 13th at 9:00 A.M. in the Sun Dial Auditorium. We will need 1,250 Members to attend in person or with proxy's to satisfy the quorum requirement.
I’ve started a new topic “Most pressing issues in Sun City”. Please state what you think are the most pressing issues. Thank you.
Tough question FYI. I liked moving the building for the theater to the new site on MV. The problem is it creates numerous other problems. If i can be blunt, when i saw Plan 2 for the Mountainview theater, i was stunned. It looked really fancy/expensive...almost to the point of looking out of place in Sun City. I never liked the idea of the theater at Mountainview, but the Players have pretty well shut down any other discourse. We need a theater but how much should it cost? How much is too much? Where should it be located? We had season tickets to the Ordway Theater in downtown St. Paul, and to be honest, the package we saw (Mountainview Plan2) rivaled it...but it was payed for by Mrs. Ordway and hence money was not an issue. I think it should be here in Sun City. My point is simple, until we know how much we are talking about, it's not really worth talking about. Get some numbers and see how it fits together with the other challenges we are facing. I've never understood the scatter-gun style of our long range plan. I used to argue everything we do/plan for should fit together so there is both a strategic and cohesive plan in place. Those arguments fell of deaf ears.
