By Sam Richards

Staff writer

 

Thursday, September 21 (9:30 a.m.): The GRF portion of the coupon for 2025 could go up approximately 9 percent from this year’s monthly payment, with further refinements to be recommended by the Finance Committee at its Sept. 24 meeting.

The full GRF Board could then approve a final 2025 coupon amount, along with Rossmoor’s 2025 operational budget, at its next meeting, on Thursday, Sept. 26. The preliminary 2025 GRF operations budget, preliminarily set at $23,621,628 (not counting Comcast cable TV/broadband) would be about 6.2% higher than the 2024 operational budget.

For now, the numbers are preliminary. But ahead of a joint meeting over Tuesday and Wednesday of last week, the GRF Board and the Finance Committee were given a draft that would call for a 2025 coupon of $294.86, a $17.42 (9.4%) increase from the $277.44 per month 2024 coupon amount. The coupon does include the cable TV costs, which add up to $4.762 million.

At last week’s joint meeting, board and committee members informally approved three new GRF positions – an assistant golf course superintendent, an application support specialist and a custodian (the latter two part of the Recreation Department) on the condition the needed money, about $324,000, can be found in other parts of the proposed operational budget.

There was little disagreement from Board and committee members that each of these proposed positions would fill an important need. GRF Golf Supervisor Mark Heptig said an assistant to course Superintendent Blake Swint would be a much-needed decision-maker on the courses and carry out tasks – certification-required spraying, for instance — only Swint is now qualified to handle.

The two new Recreation positions, said GRF Director of Community Services Ann Mottola, would concentrate on improving setup for room reservations, and some reservation application work. Not having enough staff to do that work, she said, can result in delayed applications, among other inconveniences for residents.

“We know we were failing to meet expectations,” Mottola told the group last week.

But with these positions, and with many other budget discussions over the day and a half of budget discussions, it will be finding a way to pay for them while keeping the coupon amount as low as possible. Walking that fine line, while it’s always been an issue for GRF Boards, has become more challenging as costs have gone up.

Ted Bentley and others at last week’s joint meeting said saving money is important, but that amenities and service is more so. Bentley’s comparison was between the “money piece” and the “people piece” – residents and employees, one reason he supports the three new positions.

“They’re something we need now,” Bentley said.

But GRF General Manager Jeff Matheson said finding that money elsewhere in the preliminary operations budget will take some work.

“There’s just not a lot of wiggle room in this budget, not a lot of room to make a significant impact on what we’re proposing,” he said at last week’s joint meeting.

These, and other pending decisions about spending – postponing a $40,000 transit study, $6,000 to send GRF representatives to active seniors communities in Southern California, $4,500 for a on offsite GRF Board retreat, $5,000 to cancel one of three large annual employee events — will affect the final draft budget figure, which wasn’t available at press time. The Sept. 10-11 public discussion was wide-ranging, covering topics including whether Rossmoor’s bus service should be reimagined, if more Rossmoor user fees should be increased in 2025 and the pros and cons of converting the Lawn Bowling greens to artificial turf.

The operations budget is separate from the capital budget, which is established through a different process.

Whatever that operations budget number turns out to be, it will be affected by property insurance costs, which continue to rise worldwide in response to payouts for an increasing number of fires and other disasters around the world. Rossmoor’s property insurance premium is expected to go up about 18 percent in 2025 (actually a smaller increase than the past few years). Rossmoor CFO Todd Arterburn said water costs for Rossmoor are expected to climb 8.5% next year, garbage collection costs by 7 percent and the cable/internet costs by 4 percent.

Said Matheson, “Insurance and utilities, those costs are out of our control.”

So last week, members of the GRF Board and Finance Committee asked questions of Rossmoor’s department heads about the budgetary costs they can control. The balance between saving money and preserving services and amenities for Rossmoor residents spurred talk of how Rossmoor should market itself. Matheson said it’s getting increasingly difficult for Rossmoor to be considered a “premium” place to live with what he called “thin” staffing.

Board President Leanne Hamaji floated the possibility of charging fees for vendors taking part in events such as the Health Fair held each November. Separately, Finance Committee member Alice Lau suggested GRF department heads should each comb their respective budgets to find ways to cut them by 1%, but that isn’t happening, at least not yet.

The GRF departments with the largest initial draft operations budgets for 2025 are General Services/Unallocated, $4.908 million, down about $68,000 from 2024; Public Safety/Securitas, $2.455 million, up almost $72,000; Custodial Services, about $2 million, up about $76,400; Recreation, $1.368 million, up about $45,000; the Golf Courses, about $1.35 million, down more than $17,000 from 2024; Bus Transportation, almost $1.12 million, up about $56,000; Facilities Maintenance, $1.14 million, up almost $65,000; Information Technology, about $1.045 million, up about $176,000; and Landscape Maintenance, about $1.045 million, up about $19,000.

Again, any of the departmental budget numbers could be tweaked ahead of the anticipated final budget approval on Sept. 26.

Nevertheless, Board and committee members asked about ways to save money, even in small increments, with the goal of keeping the coupon as low as possible.

“I know it’s nickel and dime – a lot of my comments are like that,” Hamaji said. “But it all adds up.”