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DEAR BOARD: RAISE THE DUES! TRLA is facing significant fiscal difficulties. We need to hire a ranch manager, we need to buy a grader, we need to gravel roads, and we need to amend the CC and R's. Our current dues level is grossly inadequate to the tasks.
Part of the problem is that former boards, including those on which your editors served, focused more on keeping the dues low than on meeting the monetary needs of the ranch. As a consequence, we are facing a quickly growing community without the money we need to protect our landowners' valuable, and in the case of those landowners with homes on the ranch, often their most valuable, resources.

Property in Timberlake Ranch is growing in value much faster than most other land in the area. In part this is because we have passable roads, and CC and R's which we have vigorously and successfully enforced and defended. Most homeowners' associations in the state with CC and R's and significant infrastructure to maintain have dues many times in excess of ours. And they don't maintain 37 miles of roads.

If we were to just keep up with inflation since 1999, the last time dues were raised, today our fees would be $158. Even that is nowhere near enough. We must purchase a grader, and that is a very large investment. We must amend our CC and R's so that they are clear and appropriate to avoid some of the litigation we will encounter otherwise, and that will involve legal and other expenses. We are getting more and more houses and recreational use of the ranch, and we must improve side roads.

Our current board is one of the most competent and hard working groups of volunteers we have ever had. Jerry Toellner and Ted Rodda have plowed snow from our roads all winter to avoid the expense of a ranch employee. They are now facing the difficult decision of a dues increase, and we encourage them to raise dues enough to provide the ranch with what it needs to do the job. We also encourage them to establish a policy that, at minimum, the dues will be maintained in an amount equal to inflation every year so that our basic services don't erode over time.

When our houses need painting, we aren't penny wise and pound foolish--we face the cost and paint them. We've got to do the same thing here on the ranch.

--Tim Amsden and Roger Irwin, Editors, TRnews

DEAR BOARD: BUY THE NEW GRADER, SET THE DUES AT $250
     (Posted 3-28-07) We recently posted an editorial encouraging the TRLA Board to raise the dues. We pointed out that our dues are grossly inadequate to provide the services and protections we need.
     At their last meeting, the board laid out a series of alternatives for replacing the grader, and setting the dues at a level adequate to make the grader payments and accomplish some of the other things needed (like hiring a ranch hand and purchasing some gravel). They also asked members to provide input to them as to which alternatives they prefer.
     The choices the board describe are the result of a very thorough examination of alternatives, driven by the hope that there would be some relatively cheap and good used grader available. There isn't, and it seems to us that purchase of a new grader is far preferable to buying someone else's problems.
     Our recommendation is for the purchase of a new grader, and establishment of a dues level in the vicinity of $250/year. We encourage our readers to review the alternatives, and respond to the board as well.
     In closing, we repeat the last two paragraphs of our earlier editorial:
     Our current board is one of the most competent and hard working groups of volunteers we have ever had. Jerry Toellner and Ted Rodda have plowed snow from our roads all winter to avoid the expense of a ranch employee. They are now facing the difficult decision of a dues increase, and we encourage them to raise dues enough to provide the ranch with what it needs to do the job. We also encourage them to establish a policy that, at minimum, the dues will be maintained in an amount equal to inflation every year so that our basic services don't erode over time.
     When our houses need painting, we aren't penny wise and pound foolish--we face the cost and paint them. We've got to do the same thing here. -The Editors

Democracy: a Sacred Duty

(Posted 4-26-06) We are fast approaching the day that landowners will receive TRLA ballot materials for the annual May election. Four of our seven Board positions are up for election this year. This represents a majority of the seven member board. Danny Montoya and the nominating committee have been successful finding five good candidates. Howard and Joanie Williams have done an excellent job of preparing the voting materials and getting them ready to mail to landowners. David Skinner has managed to get us a "Timberlake Times" newsletter for the first time in two years. And, at that, it came with the promise to publish quarterly! The management of Timberlake Ranch has not shown this much promise for a very long time.

Unfortunately, we have devoted much of our time and energy these last two years to problems that should not have ever happened. I have always believed that the root of these problems, and missed opportunities, has been the failure of landowner participation: especially voting in elections. Even if some landowners hold democracy in low esteem, they should understand that the value of their investment is extremely sensitive to the amount of participation in the political process. It is a crime that, in the past, only 20% or fewer, of our landowners voted -- especially when many of our citizens are daily losing their lives in the effort to export democracy to faraway lands.

If Timberlake Road, traversing the Indian land, had not been fixed last year, landowners, along with emergency vehicles, would have continued to find it impassable at times. If the road continued to be impassable in the rainy season I'm sure the investment we have in our properties would have decreased quickly and significantly. Last year's success with the Timberlake Road improvement was due to the volunteer efforts of several landowners and two gentlemen from the Ramah community who aren't even TRLA landowners! It didn't just happen on its own. Good roads, good infrastructure, and a happy community are all keys to the health of our investment. We're talking "bottom line" here. These things do not happen automatically: they require landowner participation.

There are a lot of Landowners who proudly display our American flag on the Ranch. As landowners drive around the ranch and see those flags I hope they will be moved to step forward and honor the flag by caring for democracy enough to vote. However, just voting is not enough: landowners need to try to communicate with other landowners and convince them that democracy in TRLA is better than its alternatives.

I am looking forward this year to the annual meeting in the hope that it will be a gathering of landowners who feel they can bring their children and grandchildren to see grassroots American democracy at it best. Since I was old enough to vote I have never failed to participate in an election. I consider it a sacred duty. Even if some landowners don't share my enthusiasm for American democracy enough to take ten minutes to complete a ballot and send it in, I hope they, at least, see that it as a very personal matter of self interest to do so. If nothing else, this is a personal pocket-book issue that is very real. I am convinced that if we work hard we have a chance at getting the highest vote percentage in history of TRLA. Grow your investment: VOTE!

-Roger Irwin

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