By now every POA member should know that the planned Community Center will cost about $14 million. One plan is to raise assessments and take out a 20-year note to pay for it and encumber any increased assessment revenue. This plan came out at the 5-year Financial Planning Task Force meeting on Aug. 7.
We still do not know exactly what it will cost for members to maintain it, but we can guess about another $500,000 annually by comparing current operations at our other recreation facilities.
That new load of expense (about $1.7 million annually) will obviously require an assessment increase, but it will probably also need to be partially offset by inviting the public to use our private amenities.
The trouble with that plan is the public from Rogers and Bentonville who might be interested in our facility already have their own facilities. But not to worry, there may be more to the plan!
The Task Force is proposing to the board that our POA go into the vacation rental business. We should become a destination resort, a rental village for visitors. That presumably is actually the idea behind the first unsteady step called the event center at Lakepoint, which is open for members and their guests, five spots out of 21 eating times in a week. And no member card playing allowed.
These potential visitors, of course, will want prime time tee times. So members will probably be blocked out more and more. They will need child care; we got that too in the Center.
Members, if you also disagree with that plan's radical direction for Bella Vista, just vote no to the assessment increase. And while you think about our future, may I suggest sending an email, calling our board, or attending the next meeting to either support it or to tell them to quit wasting our money on what we are not and refocus on what it actually means to "be a member." This is common sense.
Steve McKee
Bella Vista
Editorial on 08/15/2018