When I moved to Bella Vista in 1998, there was a POA board of directors whose members were elected from members of the community, with one of the board members being president.
There was also an operations manager that was hired to be responsible for the daily operation and maintenance of the amenities. This position reported to the board of directors. It had no input into proposing capital projects or the capital budget. The only exception was to inform the board of maintenance requirements that might exceed expense dollar limits.
Over the years, we have evolved to where the position of the operations manager is now the POA chief operating officer. And the board now reports to it.
The board will say this is not true, and the COO only makes suggestions but the board has the final approval. However, in reality, it appears that no matter what the COO wants, the board approves.
Our current COO has led us into spending millions of membership dollars to create an events center for the public. Since opening, we have lost half a million of membership dollars and we now need the public to use our amenity so we no longer have to use membership money to keep it running.
He has been quoted as saying that Bella Vista has too many golf courses, and he has successfully closed the Berksdale course with the potential of closing others.
He has led us into creating a major fiasco out of the Scotsdale golf course after it was a perfectly good amenity.
Members are even going to have pay to use the new beach instead of being able to use it free while charging the public.
He has been quoted as saying that we need to remodel Riordan Hall and make it into an all-inclusive center, no doubt with high usage fees to pay for it.
He has convinced the board to eliminate all of our long-term reserves and spend these funds for major capital projects. We are no longer subsidizing our amenities to make them more attractive to members. Instead, we are creating amenities for public use and charging high usage fees to pay for them.
Over the years, duties and responsibilities of the general manager have been changed to be that of the COO. We need to go back to the general manager reporting to the board of directors. We need leaders who have a different kind of "skin in the game," who are property owners and members of the community, leaders who are here for the long-term and who will be here after their tenure in office is over, who are working for the members and not their own paycheck, who want a nonprofit organization with private amenities for members and guests only.
We need to get back to subsidizing our amenities so our members can use and enjoy what we have in our community.
It worked before and it can work again.
Larry Blech
Bella Vista
Editorial on 05/23/2018