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By Steve Anderson:
Good evening to all of you present here in the Delaware Room and online. It always makes me happy to see residents involved in knowing what their association is doing and in making your comments known. As I reflected last month the Board will be acting upon and making some major decisions. During this meeting we will be voting on awarding a contract to renovate and make upgrades to the Anthem Bocce Ball Courts and to award a contract for the conversion of the Liberty Center Bocce Ball Courts to 8 new Pickleball Courts. Both clubs have waited far to long for this work and after seemingly years of talking about doing this, we finally act tonight.
Earlier this afternoon the Anthem Community Council met to approve their 2023 budget and we now know that they are only raising their assessment by $17 to $146 per year over the 2022 amount of $129 per year. Earlier this morning the Board met with the Finance Committee to discuss the Association’s 2023 budget and the Board continued to meet after in a workshop to thoroughly examine budget lines and to look for efficiencies. We will continue this discussion in early September and will then have a Community Forum for residents on the budget before the board approves it at the September meeting.
For transparency purposes I want to remind all residents that your main association quarterly dues are set currently for this year at $363 and not the $331 that you have been paying. This took place because more money was paid than spent and the decision was to then give it back to you as a credit in the next year. This will not happen this year so any percentage increase in assessments for 2023 will be figured from your real assessment of $363 per quarter.
We are moving to make some final tweaks to the ARC Guidelines and the SCA Rules and Standards that were presented to you at a Community Forum. We will be voting to approve those new documents next month also.
One of the remaining big decisions for the Board will come after the Board meeting on September 6, where we will open the bids for the proposed water smart landscape renovations to the Villa communities. This meeting will permit us to be able to calculate real costs to the Villa owners based on these bids. As one member of the Board I am open to hearing a realistic alternative plan to get this work done that would be more affordable to owners. I have talked with one Villa owner and invited him to bring other residents and meet with Sandy and Larry to develop an affordable alternative plan. I know from experience that there are always different options to achieve a goal. I am always open to listening to alternatives if they are viable well-developed plans. As a Board we often struggle with making decisions that will best serve the total Association but which we also realize may disadvantage some individual residents.
A less formal manner for residents to talk with Board members will come on September 9 at our scheduled Town Hall meeting that is scheduled in the Arlington, Bristol and Concord rooms starting at 1:30 pm. I am looking forward to being there with two other board members to interact with you.
On another note, I want to report to you something that has been taking place over the past four months or so. For all of the years I have lived in SCA, others and I have struggled with cell reception. A popular topic on Next Door is whether to get AT&T, Verizon or another choice. I am an AT&T customer and whenever I would complain about poor service at the AT&T store, I would be told that the HOA, there will not allow them. Four months ago, when I went into the store and was told the same thing again, I confronted them and said that I was the President of the HOA and our Board was open to at least engaging in discussions with them and what they were saying was not true.
They ended up giving me the personal email address for the AT&T CEO John Stankey. I immediately went home and sent him an email stating that our community was looking at how we could cooperate with cell carriers as solid cell technology was important for our 55+ community as many of our residents were dropping landlines and going only to cell. I doubted that I would ever get a reply but being the advocate, I am I felt that I at least needed to make the effort. Much to my surprise, I received a response from him the following Monday and by the next day had been contacted by the Eastern Store Manager and a Regional V-P based in Atlanta who was responsible for the infrastructure in our region.
This all lead to a virtual meeting between the Vice-President, regional engineers, and local personnel with Sandy and myself. They discussed several sites with us that included the Revere Golf Course Property, Liberty Center, and Anthem Center. This past Tuesday Sandy received an email from the Site Acquisition manager of Bechtel who serves as the third party to get a tower permitted from the city and to choose the best site. The City of Henderson in permitting towers like this most often insist that they be shared with other providers while initiated by AT&T it could also be used by Verizon and others.
The preferred tower design today is that of a eucalyptus tree. Pine trees and palm trees are no longer a favorite of the City. Technology has advanced so much in the last 20 years and increasingly dependable and fast cell phone and data service is more critical to our lives. Having great cell service would enable more of us to give up the cost of our landline phones. This would benefit the community and would be something that we would not have to pay for and would earn some lease agreement dollars.
Quote of the Month
“A good laugh and a long sleep are the best cures in the doctor’s book.” – Irish proverb. (from TotalWellness at https://info.totalwellnesshealth.com/blog/27-inspirational-health-quotes)
Stephen C. Anderson, President
Board of Directors
Sun City Anthem Homeowners Association
Good morning Steve,
I just read your report and once again, thanks your informative comments…especially the cell tower situation.
I. like you, use AT&T, and have my cell service through them.
In addition I have a landline through Cox.
Regarding the AT&T cell service, either traveling down Anthem Pkwy from my home at 2891 Scotts Valley Drive toward Eastern Ave. or even down Eastern Avenue, it is a constant source of dropped calls; so much so, that I avoid making any while traveling that route. I have also experienced this problem when traveling down Eastern Ave and going east just past the series of stop lights once you leave SCA.
Regarding the Cox landline, for some reason, calling from the Canyon Crest area where I reside, in addition to the AT&T cell service, to the other side of SCA (expecially Black Mountain area, and those areas down Sommersworth past Solera to the the Liberty Center), these too are areas that constantly drop calls.
Kudos on confronting the cell carrier to make them aware of this problem that has existed for years.
In these trying economic times for all of us, the SCA BOD has decided to increase our quarterly assessments by $32. That equates to an additional $914,432 for CY 2023. So why does this board need these additional dollars?
There are two reasons. First is the approved $10 to $15M over a ten year period provided to the Anthem Community Council (ACC), by far the most corrupt external organization that SCA deals with. I cannot find or know of any documentation that ACC provides to SCA that explains or justifies the $633,000/year that we provide to ACC. That is in addition to the $10 to $15M listed above. I challenge anyone to attempt to ask ACC for any documentation on any subject. How about a copy of their federal income tax returns? Or where is the documentation on the rationale for the increase in our 2023 assessments?
The second reason is the costs for the new restaurant. Keep in mind that the SCA BOD has admitted that for at least the first four years this restaurant will lose money, and we, the homeowners will be responsible for those losses.
I just finished reading the two signed agreements between SCA and the Western Hospitality Group (WHG). The first agreement is two pages titled “General Restaurant Start-Up Consulting Agreement” dated May 23, 2022. The second agreement is 40 pages titled “Food and Beverage Management Services Agreement”, and it too is dated may 23, 2022. There are three items that caught my attention in this agreement.
The first is on page 11. It states that “SCA will pay WHG $9,000 (Basic Monthly Fee) per month as compensation for WHG’s performance of its obligations pursuant to this agreement”.
The second is on page 12. It states that “If the Restaurant generates an Annual Net Operating Income in excess of $48,000, SCACAI will pay WHO an annual incentive fee equal to fifty percent of the Annual Net Operating Income in excess of $48,000 (Annual Incentive Fee).
The third is on page 14. It states that “SCACAI will be responsible for the funding of Payroll Costs”.
The last item I would like to discuss is the liquor license. It is true that the SCA application for this liquor license is being reviewed by the Henderson City Attorney’s office. This is not the normal process. The normal process is for the application to go to the Business License Department, who forwards it to a group that vets the names of the applicant/s.
This process normally takes 6 to 8 weeks to complete. If the vetting is satisfactory, then it goes to the Planning Commission for approval before the City Council makes the final decision. I suspect that the City Attorney is reviewing the application because there are few, if any, HOAs own their restaurant. I will be interested in seeing who the SCA BOD name/s are on this application.
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