By Sam Richards

Staff writer

Monday, February 10 (8:30 a.m.): The first phase of the longplanned- for rollout of the Net-Suite software system went live as scheduled in early January. As is common in projects of this size, the implementation encountered a few early bugs, said Todd Arterburn, Rossmoor’s chief financial officer.

One of the challenges involved entering customer information for residents with multiple properties, which delayed automatic coupon withdrawals in early January.

“We couldn’t know for certain how everything would work until we were in NetSuite and using it,” Arterburn said after last week’s GRF Finance Committee meeting, where he gave an update on the software program approved by the GRF Board more than a year ago. “That we actually went live on schedule is a plus. Now we can get down to the real work of switching from the legacy system to the integrated software that will improve our operations.”

NetSuite is the successor software to Jenark, which had been in place for more than two decades. Having reached its “end-of-life,” Jenark could no longer be updated and had limitations that made it obsolete and required modifications that were difficult to maintain.

The automatic coupon withdrawal procedure that didn’t work in January has been fixed, Arterburn said, and residents should see their coupon payments processed on time this month. But neither he nor GRF Board and committee members are under any illusions that everything will fall together perfectly going forward. More processes – including resales and room reservations, and later budgeting – are expected to come online into NetSuite in the coming months.

“Hopefully, those processes are going to go smoothly, but there could well be some hiccups,” said Arterburn, who offered a similar report to the GRF Board at its Jan. 30 meeting.

Arterburn said that, in the interest of transparency to Rossmoor residents, he will write a regular column for the Rossmoor News, and for the Rossmoor.com website, explaining various updates and developments (good, bad and otherwise) with NetSuite. The first of those columns appears in this issue of the News. Planning for capital projects

On Jan. 28, two days ahead of the GRF Board’s first reading of the 2025 Capital Projects budget, Finance Committee members discussed the importance of being able to effectively plan funding for future projects and identify the steps needed to raise funds that can be counted on. Because those projects are paid for through the GRF Trust Estate Fund, which is replenished by a fee paid by first-time Rossmoor buyers, feeding that Trust Estate Fund will require more money from home sales, committee members said.

But with qualifying home sales down over the past three years – 489 in 2022, 430 in 2023 and 399 in 2024 – if current sales trends continue, any increase to the Trust Estate Fund would have to be accomplished by raising that fee, called the Membership Transfer Fee (MTF). Currently, that fee is $13,500 for homes being bought by first-time buyers into Rossmoor.

On Jan. 28, the Finance Committee discussed increases to the MTF – beyond the $500 it is programmed to rise each year – to raise more money. That, in turn, would help GRF plan for more capital projects further into the future.

There was no vote Jan. 28 to recommend any specific MTF increase to the GRF Board. But committee members spoke of a potential increase of up to $1,500, which would bring the fee to $15,000 per transaction.

Many variables remain, including whether the long-vacant GRF-owned Medical Building is sold and whether standard Freddie Mac/Fannie Mae-backed mortgages return anytime soon. But Committee Chairman Dan Ring said budgeting for capital projects based on 400 MTF-qualifying home sales “is probably unrealistic” under existing conditions, and suggested setting capital budgets based on 380 to 385 sales a year, with a higher MTF.

Committee members said they expect the GRF Board to have an in-depth discussion about the capital budget, and its funding, at its February meeting.