We applaud Amenity Authority Committee members Carl Bell and Don Deakin, along with a slew of Villagers who all have come to the same conclusion – the Recreation News belongs online and searchable, not as an archaic print piece that’s better suited to line Fido’s cage.
Bell, who is known for his love of technology and his uncanny ability to stick to his guns when he believes in something, cited environmental concerns when he declared July 10 that the weekly supplement in The Villages Daily Sun is adding to thousands of “tons of waste.”
In his presentation, Bell cited a somewhat sobering June meeting on solid waste where a representative of Jacobs, the trash hauling company in The Villages, talked about the disappearing market for recycled products and made the prediction that newspapers will no longer be recycled in many communities.
Bell rightly pointed out that it’s high time to bring the Recreation News out of the Stone Age by putting it online. He also suggested touch screens for Villagers to use at recreation centers that would have information readily available.
Two days later, Deakin, speaking during his Community Development District 4 meeting, echoed Bell’s desire to bring Recreation News into modern times and leave the pulp product behind. Deakin said he had seen touch screens in use like those Bell proposed and they work well.
As is often the case with anything involving The Villages brass, the whole scenario surrounding the Recreation News is a tangled mess. It’s printed by the Daily Sun – a Villages-owned business – and more than $800,000 in residents’ amenity fees will be used to foot the bill next year.
So when talk of saving money comes up, let’s not kid ourselves – the Villages Developer has no interest in cutting more than $800,000 from the coffers of one of his businesses. After all, the fourth generation – the first group of Morse family members who haven’t had to work for it – is busy taking over different aspects of the community and that means there are a whole lot more pockets that need to be lined with cash.
If you don’t believe that scenario is true, then consider this – one year ago Bell asked Recreation Director John Rohan about the progress being made in putting Recreation News into an easily accessible online format. Rohan, who is largely beholden to the Developer, suggested it was a “Herculean task” and pretty much swept it under the rug. We’re guessing the hope was that Bell would find something else to be irritated about and just move on from his quest to see the Recreation News online.
Note to John Rohan: Do you know Carl Bell? Has he ever forgotten something he’s passionate about and just moved on? And do you honestly think he’s going to drop this quest because you’ve pretty much ignored him?
At the July 12 CDD 4 meeting, Deakin also took issue with Rohan and his “Herculean task” excuse for keeping Recreation News in the world of soon-to-be non-recyclable and non-searchable pulp instead of online and easily searchable – where it belongs.
“The wheel has already been invented. The software is out there,” Deakin, a well-known steward of Villagers’ hard-earned money, said while pointing out the potential for significant cost savings.
Many Villagers will remember that the cost of Recreation News received no attention for many years, as residents were largely kept in the dark about the use of amenity fees to pay the Developer-owned newspaper to print the product.
You might also recall that the whole boondoggle with the you-scratch-my-back-I’ll-scratch-yours printing arrangement came to the forefront in 2017 when the AAC was hit with a 73 percent increase in the cost of the Recreation News. Yes, the community was growing. But a 73 percent increase – seriously? – in the cost to print a product in an archaic, non-searchable format that could be available online at a fraction of the cost rightly raised the ire of many Villagers. They made a sound argument about killing trees and the need for the Recreation News to be online – arguments that clearly fell on deaf ears.
But thanks to Bell and Deakin, the whole fiasco surrounding the print edition of Recreation News is top of mind again. Many Villagers have made it quite clear that they’re tired of seeing huge amounts of their amenity dollars tied to the Recreation News. And many of them who are Villages-News.com readers have been kind enough to share their thoughts through Letters to the Editor.
For instance, a letter published Saturday says the Recreation News is getting out of hand and the writer, Steve Bova, of the Village of Hillsborough, pushes for an online version and a once-a-month printed version.
Other Letters to the Editor received this past week have offered similar sentiments about the Recreation News:
- Dale Thompson, of the Village of Buttonwood, suggested saving money with a once-monthly print edition.
- Bruce Myers, of the Village of Ashland, labeled it as “insane” to print the Recreation News every week while knowing it’s being recycled without being read.
- Lynn Johnston, of the Village of Country Club Hills, likes print copies of the Recreation News but suggests having them at the recreation centers instead of included in the Daily Sun.
- Janet Sweeny, of the Village of Summerhill, wants the publication included in the Daily Sun once a month.
- Don DiMatteo, of the Village of Tamarind Grove, wants the information online so it will be searchable.
- Judy Dressendorfer, of the Village of Santo Domingo, wants it online with some paper copies available at recreation centers.
- LeRoy Valley, of the Phillips Villas/Village of Woodbury, is in favor of an online Recreation News but not the touch screens proposed by Bell. And he also takes issue with Rohan’s “Herculean task” statement, calling it a “fairly simple project with today’s technology.”
As we said earlier, we applaud Bell and Deakin for sticking with this nasty issue that smacks of years of good-old-boy secrecy and back-room deals that should make your skin crawl. And don’t even get us started on why other printers besides the Developer-owned Daily Sun haven’t had the opportunity to bid on the Recreation News job.
When Founder Harold Schwartz and Villages architect H. Gary Morse were alive, they’d listen closely to residents. They had their thumbs on the pulse of the community. And they wouldn’t hesitate to make changes if they were warranted and benefited the majority of their residents.
Unfortunately, that was then and this is now. We’d love to tell you that we believe the Recreation News will soon be online and searchable. But as long as the completely-out-of-touch millennial Morses are assuming command of your community, we hardly think a Villages-owned business will be allowed to walk away from an $800,000-plus payday – regardless of whether it’s a good thing for Villagers or not.
Because the bottom line in the mega-retirement community that once saw Schwartz out shaking hands and chatting with his neighbors is this – money talks and everything else just doesn’t seem to matter.
