I have been reading the letters to the editor in the Weekly Vista and thinking back to when the issue of "Should Bella Vista become a city," and I almost have to laugh.
I was on the POA Board of Directors and was the only Board member who opposed becoming a city. Well, as you can see, we got greedy and the sales pitch we were given was sold. We were all advised that if we became a city, we would get all of this money from the state and county to pay for our roads.
Now we are faced with two different run governments. We have a city and now pay for a mayor and city council members, and we have a POA general manager. The Board members must all be well-off financially because they think raising the price for amenities is not a problem for us, owning a cart is too expensive and brings you no benefit. We put in bike trails and pay for them to be kept up and no income is generated. We hooray our volunteers who are our seniors and they will eventually be unable to keep the work up.
We take our clubhouses and turn them into beautiful facilities, redesign the kitchens for new eating facilities, and then it crashes into failure. I don't know how many times Country Club and Lakeshore kitchens have been redesigned, which isn't cheap. As I understand it, Lakeshore is very much in debt.
The reason our golf revenue is down is due to you can golf at other nearby courses cheaper than here.
If you don't want things to keep going up, be more careful when you vote. Especially when Board members tell one of our residents to "shut up."
Board members should be representing you not themselves and a general manager.
Kathy Swanson
Bella Vista
Editorial on 10/10/2018