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OPINION

Lewek: Sun City West still best place to live

Posted

Thank you for your articles updating our board’s actions.

Although I am grateful that there are people willing to serve on our board, it is unfortunate that they appear to be similar thinkers to elected officials everywhere. Elected officials want bigger budgets and yet waste funds continuously and dilute what could be good bills by requiring additional items to be tied to them.

Our board apparently thought they could justify increases based on what other properties are doing (i.e. Sun City, which is substantially larger and recently built an eighth rec center on Grand Avenue whereas we have only four). Instead, it would be nice if they would look at how to cut expenses (i.e. taking out a portion of the palm trees that require maintenance and water, quit planting more trees in parking areas and instead build covered parking with solar panels to subsidize utility bills). When I moved here I was able to find an entity that not only took out my palm trees, but paid me for them (unfortunately, they don’t buy queen palms, which most of our palm trees are).

Sun City West is still the best community for me, but so much less than it was when I purchased my home in 2011. I’ve watched the fees go up every year while the services remain similar (or worse, as with the mergers of the fire departments and water districts).

I wrote to both the board and the general manager on Feb. 24 (erroneously dated my letter Feb. 24, 2021) requesting information as to who is responsible for monitoring the CCRs, rules and regulations pertaining to insuring at least one person living in a Sun City West home is 55 and no short-term rentals and have received no response as yet. We know these restrictions are not being enforced due to Airbnb and Vrbo rental ads allowing for weekend and short terms and ball players renting units during spring training.

It would be great if you could research these issues and let residents know your results.