My opinion: If political bashing and personal attacks on individual RCSC employees and board members were eliminated from this site there might be a lot more participants. It seems that a very small handful of my fellow citizens have hijacked this space for their own political rants and personal opinions instead of a positive focus on the issues and opportunities we face here in our little slice of retirement paradise.
Welcome to the site 3Gscaz. Guess that's the beauty of sites like this one; everyone is entitled to their own opinion. TOSC has been around a good number of years now. Been lots of highs and lows. Participation has always been spotty from those who post. The numbers of readers has been growing, at least based on the information now available on the online box. That's a relatively new feature, so no idea how many there used to be. After having started more than 1000 threads, not sure if i agree with your assessment. Some were pretty much milk-toast bland and got limited participation, while others were more pointed and generated several comments. Most often i try and tie a historical point of view to my comments. I seldom engage in personal attacks, but opinions on what people are doing as board members or RCSC employees will sometimes feel like such. What i will agree with you on is Sun City is a slice of paradise. Unfortunately for many, it isn't just retirees. More people are working later in life than in years past. More to the point though is, we are evolving. Changes that have been made in the past twelve years have impacted the community. The tenets we were built under have been rewritten. You may feel strongly it was for the better; i don't. Hopefully you will feel free to explain why and how those changes have made us better. If you can't do that, then the alternative is for us all to sit quietly in the corner and watch it happen. Sorry, not the way i am built. Seriously, i appreciate you have logged in and want to share your opinions. It isn't about being right or wrong, but having the capacity and the forum to express your thoughts. PS. We try and stay away from the political stuff, but it's almost impossible to ignore some days. If you do feel inclined to post threads regarding politics we should all remember to do it in the Non Sun City Related Discussions found here.
I actually agree with 75% or more of the ideas and opinions expressed here. My problem is all the political opinions and personal attacks make it very difficult to sift thru to the actual suggestion, idea or opinion related to Sun City. Add in people’s theories, biases, fake news quotes and negativity and it becomes lost in translation. As a frequent poster here, I look to you to set the tone and trend to clean this up so we can attract more participation. Just because my history in Sun City started on day one I’m not so naïve to believe that the changes over the years have all been good for the community and residents. Some of these changes were definitely driven by the RCSC but SCHOA can also be blamed for many of our current “opportunities”. My family came to Sun City to visit my grandparents in December 1960. At that time all cars needed to be in carports, not in driveways or on the streets. Luckily my grandparents had a lot of snowbird neighbors with empty carports so my relatives had “legal” parking or we would all have been hiking from the King’s Inn! We’ve come a long way but we still have a long way to go to try to achieve what has been lost along the way. I personally support every club and interest in Sun City as long as they have a verifiable membership and their asks are reasonable and not one sided for the benefit of themselves and not the community at large. There is no right or wrong idea or opinion about Sun City. My goal is to bring more voices to the table so we get a wider scope of input for the benefit of all residents. All based on facts of course and not the never-ending theories and personal biases that have been around since the first clubs were organizing and each club claimed to be the “first club” in Sun City.
You have only to look at the Replies vs. Views to see that the participation on this forum is about as good as the participation in the monthly board meetings or worse. The largest number of Views is for "Free static clings". Look at any given topic and you'll see a more than unhealthy in-balance between Replies and Views. I don't know exactly why but maybe it's because people have to create an account to be able to reply and they are afraid to put anything out that may identify them. Bringing voices to the table is a great idea, but they have been trying to do that ever since this new forum was created. Even getting people to attend the board meetings is a major undertaking which has produced no results. Verifiable membership to clubs could be attained very easy if they used technology. Verifiable counts of those attending the board meetings could be attained by using technology. Whatever is suggested on this forum I'm sure is being noted by both the board and GM.
Lots of 3rd Generation Sun City residents now and soon there will be the 4th Generation buying in. Some 4th Gen already live here as caregivers and some are residents with a person over 55 in the household. Housing costs are reasonable with many opportunities for employment nearby. We will inch toward more advanced tech but will always be behind without a good plan in place.
Technology shouldn't be an after-thought. We've made it abundantly clear from the long range planning committee, it need move to the top of the pile, not the ass-end. Here's where it all breaks down: The board for the past 12 years has had no problem throwing money at golf, a game struggling to survive. A game with virtually no future with regards to the next generation of home buyers. Yes we have to maintain our amenity package. Sadly there's been no strategic or comprehensive plan in place to prepare for the future. We've simply bought into all golf/all the time. Now as we look forward, we can't even get our heads out of our ass other than to celebrate moving our wifi to 100 megs sometime in 2020. Utterly illogical.
You broke TOSC Bill! Hope it comes alive soon. We're just trying to keep our cool in these miserable monsoony temps. Avoiding TV unless it's Netflix or DVDs helps. Any word yet on who the vendor is for the ticket software?
I have a tendency to do that aggie. Not sure why folks that have logged in don't have anything to say. I've been doing some digging because i was baffled by how it would all work. I found a club that actually hired the "Arts People" to sell tickets for an event they are running this year. Seems they are the same folks who sell the tickets for Sun City West events. Apparently we couldn't use them because our sales are all limited to being sold to members, while their system sells to anyone and everyone. At least that is what i am told. The bigger challenge for now is to sort out the details for the RV Club and where they will be housed. Not sure how anything proceeds with the board on hiatus for several months. Hopefully in the next go-around (September) the board will be able to post ticket prices, seating charts and how that will all play out. I just hope management isn't looking at these higher ticket prices as a way to make money to pay for other things. It wouldn't be the first time we have seen that happen. The GM is a master at monetizing things.
All things IT related should be handled by an extremely qualified, knowledgeable, independent company that is proficient in serving as the IT arm of the RCSC. As evidenced by years of neglect in IT and all things technology by in house staff it would not be smart to allow them to tackle something like ticketing or anything remotely technical for that matter. Technology changes daily and if you don't keep up with the changes, you get left behind like the RCSC. IT personnel must attend classes yearly just to stay abreast of new technology, hardware, and software. Our board cannot see the forest for the trees. To top it all off, they take 2 months off while outstanding agenda items remain open.
SCR, I wholeheartedly agree on outsourcing IT implementation (and probably most of the maintenance). The bigger issue is who's going to define what is to be implemented? That has to be the RCSC, I think, since how would a contractor know what we want/need on an ongoing basis. These RCSC decision makers somehow need to become aware of modern IT and understand it is much much more that just better WiFi, electronic badge readers/scanners, and online ticketing. The back office functions within the RCSC have made more strides in IT than the facilities, clubs, and member interfaces. There needs to be resources acquired/developed within the RCSC whose charter is to to better keep all parts of the RCSC up with technology needs, and the BOD and Management must support that endeavor with both budget and manpower on a continuing basis. Technology will only increase its relevance in recreation and facility management in the future. Technology is changing more rapidly than the RCSC is used to moving, and we're already behind ... eg, Keycard systems were developed in the 1950's, so they have actually been around longer than the RCSC has existed. Over the years they've undergone and evolution from punched holes, then magnetic stripes, barcodes, and now to smartcards. Currently we have barcoded badges but virtually no barcode readers. Closed circuit video has been a component of security since before SC, but there is limited use throughout our facilities. Online voting, bill payment, ticket purchasing, reservation systems, etc, etc have existed for at least 15-years in the world outside the walls of SC. Inside the walls there has been limited efforts to embrace technology in these areas until recently. Clubs suffer with chalk boards when smartboards have been commonplace for over 10-years. There are a few ceiling mounted video projectors, but shouldn't every room that's used for classes or presentations have them or large screen monitors? We signin at medical provider's offices at an electronic kiosk and are often handed an iPad on which we enter information into their system. Theaters and shows scan admission tickets as we enter. Most RCSC clubs are still signing in people with pen and paper. I checked into the resort I vacationed at recently and was given a smartcard that I waved past sensors to access most everything at the resort -- my room, the elevators, vending machines, pool towels, the pool, parking, etc., yet much of the RCSC still uses key locks, has people scanning barcodes, etc. Drivers wave smartcards at toll booths and parking garages in many parts of the country, and by gasoline using speedpass. Smartphone apps are emerging to replace smartcards cards altogether!
Every time i think about this my blood boils it was such a simple first step. It was either 2012 or 13 and i was the chair of the communications committee (before the name change). We held a meeting in the room adjacent to Human Resources. As normal we invited guests and be of the guys from the Wood shop next door stopped in. Most of you know, all committee’s can do is make recommendations. If you recall that was right around the time BP12 was rewritten and one of the changes was clubs had to submit rosters every three months. It was a horrible process because clubs records weren’t compatible with the RCSC’s data base. Everything was hand generated and hand checked. Several clubs were frustrated by the amount of needless work it created. As we talked, our guest from the wood club asked for the floor. He said he spent his entire work career in IT and suggested how we were functioning was antiquated at best. Virtually all of us in the room agreed. Collectively we drafted a proposal for a BETA test soliciting 5 clubs to participate. We agreed there should be a mix of large, small and medium size clubs to see the impact. The proposal to the board was for the RCSC to develop an internal crossover of data/information so record keeping would be seamless. It was a very simple proposal with limited access but huge upside for the long term. I felt confident the board would see it as a win/win. Foolish me. Management came to the meeting fully prepared to shoot the idea down. Way too many “security risks” to even think about trying it. The board, as always, quickly bought into the argument and this potential first step forward went into the ash can of good ideas thrown away with barely a thought. I am fairly well convinced we have languished in Luddite-land because management has never gotten comfortable with technology. That’s why an external company analyzing potential changes makes sense. Even if we put together a tech committee, their suggestions would be only as good as the board’s willingness to act on them. If they invest in an outside strategic plan, they have some skin in the game and would be more likely to act on their recommendations.
That's actually laughable. It's not like a)there's real security now, and b) there's much that needs to be secure. Certainly any information that could allow monetary theft to occur should be held secure by the RCSC. Other than credit card/banking information I can't think of anything pertinent. I guess non-monetary fraud of a sort could be conducted if someone obtained and used my member number to vote or sign in to a club or Rec Center, or whatever. But given that member numbers are not secure now (since they are freely visible on signin sheets, spoken out loud in RCSC meetings, etc., etc.), and there is no cases of significant misuse, it seems to be a non-problem. Most everything else is already public information, can easily be purchased, or is of a who cares nature. Eg, The fact that I own a property, that I live at a property, my phone number, etc are all readily available as public record or will be disclosed for a fee from phone companies, mailing list purveyors, etc. And of course, like many I have inadvertently released info on the Internet and it's readily available via Google. It's also hard to imagine much of a security issue for anyone to know I signed into a club Wednesday at 1pm or that I visited the gym at 2pm. -- after all there are likely plenty of witnesses. "Security" is a dog whistle of sorts for an unjustified "I don't want to".
