I have great hopes for the RCSC board to move forward in an effort to show our Sun City community that they are intelligent, thoughtful people that will make an effort to utilize logic and facts, not emotions to provide for the future.
Long range planning is generally a somewhat drawn out affair because you are trying to do the best for a community. There are no instant results with long range planning. The basic idea is to create an atmosphere where people feel comfortable expressing their views in a productive conversational manner where ideas are shared and discussed. This is usually done with a consultant who has no vested interest and can help people to frame their ideas in a productive manner. Taking a careful look at the future and planning appropriately makes for a better product.
Our present method of piecemeal planning is a poor substitute for a comprehensive (all facilities) long range plan because it inhibits great ideas and generally wastes money. The way you can tell is in future years you hear people say ”if only we had done it this way, we could have had a better product.”
Comprehensive (all facilities) planning helps to eliminate those problems because you have thoroughly thought through those things instead of hurrying up to have that now. Taking extra time to do it right instead of instant gratification can eliminate the possible failures.
The question is do you want the best for the total community over time, or instant gratification. Personally, I feel that even if I wanted it today, I would rather see us take two years to get it right, even if I won’t be able to enjoy it, because I’ll know that the community is best served recreationally and financially by that type of planning.
We all have our passions, and these are very important to us. Therefore, when trying to talk about them logically we tend to blur the facts in an effort to at least maintain the status quo, or to try to make a case for more. Changes over time are inevitable, but they do not have to be drastic if people look for solutions. What a certain group may want may not be what is truly needed nor what we can afford. That’s where a non-partisan consultant can help us to find what we truly need, rather than what we think we want.
Once we have that comprehensive plan in place, we can then truly evaluate proposals to see if they fit the long range plan model. If we make the plan a dynamic one, we can amend it using the same parameters as the original, or, if necessary, convene the community to create new ones.
I was involved with a small city comprehensive plan in 2009. Our intent was to have a plan that was flexible and could be updated as necessary. The plan was designed to be used until approximately 2040. However, growth was considerably less than anticipated and thus guided the cities development for approximately 10 years before an update was deemed necessary in 2019. It worked exactly as we had hoped and the city continues to grow, guided by the plan that was and is developed by the people. The original population was approximately 9,000 and was anticipated to grow to as much as 40,000 by 2039. But things happen and change over time, and only 10 years later they amended the original to deal with a new and different infrastructure challenge.
My hope is to see a true comprehensive long range plan for the RCSC so that we can achieve all that we can be. The past leaders came up with the PIF fund, which was an excellent idea. The present board is attempting to deal with the long deferred maintenance that should put us in a much better position over time and hopefully our employees can institute a Preventive Maintenance (PM) system that will eliminate that in the future. If we are successful in developing a comprehensive long range plan for RCSC, I am confident we will be the envy of every 55+ community because we will be leading all other active adult communities in our future planning using recognizable fiscal responsibility.
I would encourage my fellow citizens of Sun City to encourage our RCSC board to take this vital step to develop a long range comprehensive plan. With the plan in place developed by the people, we can continue to prosper as Del Webb anticipated. Continuing to develop our recreation resources piecemeal as we have could result in a potential of monumental financial “white elephants.”
