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New CA Board Elected

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The Tampa Tribune

Published: December 17, 2008

Paul Wheat, retiring president of the Sun City Center Community Association and a power on and behind the CA scenes for the past 10 years, announced Dec. 3 that he wants to start a task force to explore various options to increase golf play on the North Lakes and the Sandpiper golf courses.

This would be done by examining means and ways to motivate CA members to increase their person/group golf play and investigating options to expand the authorized use of the course for golf play from that presently stated in Article XIX.

Initially Wheat suggested he would chair the task force, but it was pointed out that he would be out of office on January, so he switched to plan B and suggested vice president Ed Barnes (who has two years to go on his term as a director) be named the task force leader.

New Board Members Elected

If that was the morning news, the afternoon news was that the membership voted to approve the new dues structure with its $7 annual increase and also voted in three new members of the board. Neil Rothfeld, Gordon Bassett and Paul Wheat have completed their terms. They will be replaced by Anne Cross, Woody Nelson and Al Alderman. John Bowker points out that the 1,718 members voting represent only 6.5 percent of the 11,000 voters here in SCC. The weather was a wee bit nippy, but not inside where the balloting was, and the hours for voting were plentiful. Either the current board (of which I will for this occasion only accept some responsibility) is doing a marvelous job, or we simply don't give a rat's patootie.

In the past I've quoted those two congressmen walking into the House of Representatives. Let me do so again: "The trouble with this country is ignorance and apathy," Says Claghorn from Texas. "I don't understand what you mean and I don't give a damn," responds Poboy from Florida.

Nelson garnered 1308 votes, Cross, 1179 votes, Alderman, 1101 and Crooks, 835.

The '84 Agreement

The 1984 agreement signed by the then-developer and the SCC Community Association permits only CA members and their guests to play North Lakes and Sandpiper. Oh, yes, and Renaissance dwellers can use North Lakes and Sandpiper. Good deal for them.

That was fine back in 1984. The golf courses were full. People would wait for a tee time. And sometimes there were lotteries.

But the demographics changed here in SCC. People stayed in their homes, but over 25 years they got older and eventually didn't play golf or pay golfing dues. Then WCI started building Renaissance and all the Renaissance folks got Sandpiper and North Lakes for free. The number of golfers here crumbled.

There's the problem: Here's the solution (or at least one solution): Get this Task Force up and running and evaluating the options. The one I like the best is to look at SCC's geographic footprint with I-75 on the west, U.S. 301 on the east, Renaissance anchoring the southern landscape and 19th Street (where the library is) on the north.

You have to mess with it a little bit. I-75 and 301 remains the east-west border except you take in Valencia Lakes. Lots of initiation fee payers, golf dues players at Valencia Lakes. Now include Freedom Plaza - which we should have done years ago and they are very much on the inside of our world. Finally, admit those people who live on the north side of 19th Street in the new developments going up there.

This does not mean we offer up our Fitness Center, our pools, our shuffleboards, our volleyball, our horseshoe, or our other groups and clubs, only the golf courses and then only by specific and well-defined agreements.

But folks, we've got to be talking among ourselves, with WCI, with Valencia Lakes, with the other areas.

We've got to stop thinking how wonderful it would be to put a barbed wire fence up around SCC and keep everyone out. It ain't gonna happen.

We should have been evaluating the opportunities for the golf courses years ago. It is 11:45 p.m. and the great horses pulling the pumpkin carriage are restless. They don't want to be mice again. They know what happens to mice. They get eaten all up by greedy land speculators and the old farm gets brush-hogged once a month.

Bob Black is a member of the board of directors for the Sun City Center Community Association.

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