Robert S. Wood writes about the VOCA restaurant’s financial woes

Sedona AZ (January 9, 2013) – In a letter to the SedonaEye.com editor, Sedona’s Village of Oak Creek homeowner and lien-payer, Robert S. Wood, former TIME/LIFE Staff Correspondent in San Francisco and author of a dozen books, writes:

AN OPEN LETTER TO “FORGETFUL” VOCA  

Your sad attempt to “Set the Record Straight” on the costly VOCA restaurant fiasco has more holes than Swiss cheese. You somehow forgot to mention the million bucks of homeowner reserve funds that you secretly and illegally poured into your glitzy, doomed-from-the-start restaurants. Remember? Maybe your memory needs a little jogging? 

You also neglected to explain how the mere $75,000 you announced you needed to “fix-up” that restaurant quietly became $600,000, then secretly ended up costing us over a million bucks. Your charter required you to get membership approval before spending that much money, but you somehow forgot to ask our permission, or ever apologize for your illegal spending. 

And, since you claim you’re not “hiding” anything from the membership, how come there wasn’t one single word about this urgent financial crisis in the December Villager? 

But thanks for reminding readers of the headline “VOCA HIDING FINANCIAL CRISIS” in your attempted rebuttal. 

You claim the golf course “stands on its own financially,” but then you write that “a golf course must offer food.” And you say “we’ve got to keep the restaurant open to keep the golfers coming.” 

But the cost of the restaurant—a staggering loss of $40,000 per month last year—was borne on the backs of the Whole captive village, not just the golfers country club, which couldn’t begin to afford it. 

You write you’ve “taken decisive action to stop restaurant losses,” so how come they’re still open and still losing? 

But there are signs of hope for 2013.

According to the VOCA Board Meeting minutes of 11/28/12:

• Restaurant subsidies will be “cut at $150,000 until profit is established.” That means once this final budget allocation is spent, not another homeowner penny will be spent subsidizing it. Since losses must end, the restaurants must be closed if they can’t break even. 
• You write the restaurants will only be leased if that’s “profitable to VOCA.”
• Once the restaurant situation is settled, “a revised 2013 budget will be established and presented to the VOCA membership” for its approval. 

Good! These are binding and obligating written commitments by the VOCA Board to its membership, and we’ll hold you to them. 

Now that we’ve jogged the Board’s faulty memory, we’ll look forward to seeing the record REALLY set straight in the next Villager, with homeowner input and commentary included, not just the usual board propaganda. 

HERE’S A SOLUTION TO ALL OUR WOES

Simply sell the whole golf country club and clubhouse! The proceeds from the sale would restore the badly depleted homeowners reserve fund you looted. 

It’s the only way you can repay us for the million dollars you illegally took to dump into the restaurants last year—and are still dumping. It would be a perfect win-win arrangement. All present golf and country club and amenities—including the restaurants and clubhouse—would continue to function unchanged, just under different ownership. Only actual country club patrons would pay the bills, not the whole captive village. 

A greatly scaled down VOCA, with a fully restored reserve fund, could then finally operate as the true HOA it’s chartered to be—with a Sizeable Reduction in Homeowner Dues! 

Why not? The VOCA Board has a clear responsibility to ask homeowner members if they would like to sell the country club, repay reserves, scale down the HOA, and dramatically cut homeowner dues. 

To my Fellow VOCA homeowners I say, if that sounds worth considering, let’s rise up and demand it! 

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