Saying uncertain financial needs lie ahead, RWC Board approves 2027 budget

The Rossmoor Walnut Creek (RWC) Board on Thursday approved a $362.98 RWC monthly coupon for 2027, up $11.47 (3.26%) from this year’s coupon. The 2027 coupon is based on a 2027 RWC operating budget of $29,078,760, also approved Thursday, which is up 3.83% from 2026.

The 2027 Rossmoor Property Management (RPM) budget of $13,467,044, a 10% jump from 2026, was also approved by the Board on Thursday.

Both budgets had been recommended two days earlier by the RWC Finance Committee, and the Board approved them as presented.

The RWC budget was approved Thursday without adopting suggested increases in residents’ golf fees, and without applying any of an estimated $700,000 in savings (gained from lowered insurance premium costs) toward reducing the 2027 RWC coupon. The Board accepted the Finance Committee’s recommendation to spend $100,000 on a one-time “internal control audit” of the relatively new NetSuite cloud-based enterprise resource planning system Rossmoor now uses.

At the annual joint RWC Board-Finance Committee budget hearing workshops on Sept. 8 and 9, the Board of Directors kicked the draft budgets back to the Finance Committee for more discussion.

The Finance Committee on Sept. 22 recommended, on a 4-2 vote, to take $100,000 from the insurance surplus to pay for the internal control audit, and to leave the rest as surplus to deal with unforeseen emergency expenses. The Board on Thursday approved issuing a request for proposals to firms that would potentially want to conduct that audit.

Finance Committee member Adrian Byram said on Sept. 22 that, regardless of whatever emergency expenses that may arise in 2027 ‒ El Niño-related weather damages, for instance ‒ expectations will be high for the RWC Board to fund at least a significant portion of what transit consultants Fehr and Peers call for as part of the update of Rossmoor’s Short-Range Transit Plan, now underway. Only some software costs have been budgeted, Rossmoor General Manager Jeff Matheson said; no prospective service enhancements have been budgeted.

Any inability of the RWC Board to make good on at least a significant piece of whatever transit improvements Fehr and Peers recommend would be seen as “a big failure by the Board,” Byram said.

“It’s very, very, very important that we make the transit system work next year,” he said.

Committee member Cheryl Hines said taking more than the $100,000 for the internal control audit would be “really risky,” given the likely need for a robust reserve.

“I think that would put us in a very precarious financial management position,” she said.

Without a chunk of that insurance savings money helping to reduce the coupon, the Finance Committee on Sept. 22 also declined to recommend charging the new golf-related fees for some golf play, and for some Fitness Center classes. A $160 increase in the annual 18-hole card (to $2,560) and an $80 hike for the nine-hole card (to $1,280), along with a $2 per round increase for playing the 36-hole course, were all proposed. A handful of resident commenters told the Finance Committee they didn’t support such a fee increase.

“I feel as if there’s no (fee) associated with, say, pickleball, or table tennis, or lawn bowling,” said Denise Schmidt, co-captain of the Rossmoor Nine-Hole Golf Club. She said it seems that golfers are always first to be asked to pay more money when budgets are short.

Other residents, including Susan Bennett, made similar pleas to the Finance Committee concerning deep-water aerobics, for which a $3-per-session fee had been proposed. The justification for that, several Board members said, was that instructors of deep-water aerobics and other “specialty classes” charge more because additional class-specific training, equipment and licensing are often required. That, Bennett said, doesn’t mean all residents can afford it.

“There are people who say they may not be able to continue the class with that ($3 per session) fee,” Bennett said.

Finance Committee Chair Dan Ring had earlier said he, as a golfer, would gladly pay a higher fee if it meant a slightly cheaper coupon for residents who don’t play golf. But after the committee’s 4-2 vote on Sept. 22 to not use insurance savings to reduce the coupon, Ring abruptly changed his position on fees.

“I don’t want to … increase the golf fees by $84,000 when we had a chance to decrease the coupon by the same $84,000 and we just said no,” Ring said.

Thursday’s Board discussion was devoted largely to proposed new golf fees and whether fees should be charged for certain “specialty” Fitness Center classes, defined as those for which instructors need additional class-specific training, equipment and licensing to teach them.

The Board on Thursday took the Finance Committee’s recommendation on the golf fees issue but went against the recommendation to exempt deep-water aerobics from the $3 fee. Board member Janet Seldon said she feared exempting one class could set a bad precedent and possibly encourage students in other “specialty” fitness classes to demand an exemption, too.

A series of previously proposed fee increases, which the Board had already signaled they supported, had been woven into various draft departmental budgets.

Finalizing the RWC and RPM budgets allows the Mutuals to start crafting their own 2027 budgets, Matheson said. Work is already underway.

Event Center chairs

to be replaced For those who enjoy sitting down at Event Center concerts, soirees and the like, a little bit of good news. The RWC Board voted Thursday to spend up to $126,484 to replace the 500 chairs used at the Event Center ‒ more than the $100,000 approved in the 2026 Machinery and Equipment budget for replacing the Event Center’s “chair inventory.”

The Rhode Island-based firm Office Chair USA can provide chairs with the needed stability, relatively light weight and a “sled-base stacking design,” which allows the chairs to be stored efficiently.

The original $100,000 cost estimate in the 2026 Machinery and Equipment budget, Rossmoor Director of Community Services Ann Mottola said, was based on a chair design that has since been discontinued.

The current Event Center chair inventory, with its stained and frayed chairs, is considered the “best” remaining specimens of that discontinued model collected from all RWC clubhouses, according to Machinery and Equipment budget documents. Of their replacement, Seldon said, “They need it.”

Non-resident co-presidents

Also on Thursday, the RWC Board voted to allow the Italian American Club to appoint two non-residents of Rossmoor to continue to serve as the club’s co-presidents for 2027.

Sam and Marty Lamonica required an exemption from Policy 302.0 to be allowed to continue to serve as Italian American Club co-presidents. Among other things, Policy 302.0 states that Rossmoor clubs must have at least two officers to lead the organization, and that the president must be a Rossmoor resident.

This was the second year the Italian American Club sought, and received, an exemption to allow the Lamonicas to serve as the club’s co-presidents.

An impassioned plea Addressing criticism the Board has received in recent weeks (including Thursday) about various issues ‒ the in-process transit study, the $3 deep-water aerobics fee, the Gateway/Dollar/Rockview capital improvement project and the job performance of GM Matheson, among others ‒ Byram told the Board meeting’s audience Thursday he and his fellow Board members are working as hard as they can to address those and myriad other concerns for Rossmoor’s public good.

“There are no simple answers,” he said, and changing Board members, or a GM, or even a federal government, he said, may or may not improve things. “We’re trying to take a very narrow, very difficult path, and it’s not easy. We can’t always make the right decisions, and I take responsibility for that.”