POA budget meeting

The Village POA board held the first in a series of open meetings Monday afternoon concerning the 2014 budget and the five year plan. This meeting addressed 2014 budget items for recreation, public works and administration. The audience and the board was reminded the process is fluid and items are still being added and eliminated from the written budget. One of administration’s sub-categories getting a lot of attention was the public relations budget of $500,000 for 2014.

There were audience complaints of spending so much for the same old same old in public relations and marketing. But, General Manager David Twiggs and PR and Marketing director Danette Botkin said there will be big changes in the department this year with a big emphasis on marketing unsold POA lots. Sales will become a big part of the marketing effort to bring new residents to the Village.

Twiggs also wants to introduce more allocations, drawing money from sources outside a line item and sometimes outside a department’s budget to finance certain projects. Dredging lakes from the public works budget was one of those items. Twiggs believes that the lakes operational budget is suffering from the overrun cost of dredging the lakes. Dredging would become an allocation with funding pulled from other sources, some within the public works department and some from outside. He said is was far more important to do a thorough job dredging with a team of workers instead of the one man show it had become. This winter Lake Coronado and Lake Isabella are scheduled for dredging. Twiggs would like to include Magellan Pond in the dredging this winter due to the connectivity of Lake Isabella and Magellan Pond.

The Village Lawn Bowling Club was present en masse to protest the re-surfacing of the lawn bowling green’s continuous elimination from the recreation budget. The re-surfacing was originally scheduled year’s ago at a cost of $100,000. The current estimated cost by club members is $70,000. Even with a drop in the cost the re-surfacing is not in the budget. Twiggs has promised a meeting with club officers to discuss this matter.