Chronicles
From the MyRSF.net archives of the Email Chronicles
Golf, Assessments and more
Author: Phil Trubey
Date: May 17, 2024
Hello, Phil Trubey, RSFA Board member here sending an occasional email about RSF.
Have you noticed there are a lot of bad drivers in Rancho? I don't know if it's our badly engineered roads, or too many Type A personalities, but very few people even know how to properly navigate a four way stop sign without cutting someone off.
I mention this because I've been letting my car drive me everywhere, in Rancho and other urban areas for weeks now. Tesla's "Full Self Driving" used to be a heart pounding video game where you'd have to snatch the wheel at any given moment to stave off hurtling yourself into a tree. But after a series of updates this year, it now works really well.
After using it, I'm convinced that when more and more people use this technology, it will absolutely save lives and reduce accidents.
Since so few people know about this (even many Tesla drivers don't know how good it's become) I went to the trouble of videoing a series of automated drives around Rancho. Check out my narrated tour of Rancho while my car drives me various places like the Arroyo, and our recreation campus. I promise it'll be an eye opening video.
Tips, use the settings icon to bump the resolution to 1080p if looks a bit pixelated. Google may insert their own ads into the video, but if you have YouTube Premium like I have, I never see any YouTube ads.
There seems to be some confusion over "private" and "public" golf courses and ownership thereof. Let me break it down for you.
First of all, partial ownership of a corporate entity does not mean you get to do whatever you want with it. I own a (small) part of Tesla, the car company since I own some stock. That doesn't mean I get to walk in and take ownership of a random car off the assembly line. I have to pay for a Tesla car the same as any non-Tesla shareholder would.
Likewise, all RSF Association (RSFA) Members own a (small) part of the RSF Golf Club. But that doesn't mean all such Members get to play golf on the course.
In both cases, the corporation's (yes, RSFA is a corporation) Board of Directors ultimately decides how the corporation's assets are to be used.
In the case of the golf and tennis clubs, the Board has historically decided that access to these facilities be restricted to those Members who pay an initiation fee and regular monthly dues. This makes sense since both those club's facilities were literally built and maintained by the various club member dues through the last 90 years or so.
OK, so is the Rancho Santa Fe Golf Club a private or public golf course? Well, in the wider golfer community, it is well known what a "private" vs a "public" golf course means, and in fact the very first words out of any golfer's mouth when asking about a golf course they don't know anything about is, "is it public or private?".
Any person may reserve a tee time at any public golf course, pay a one time fee and play there. No up front initiation fees, no monthly dues.
Private golf courses, on the other hand, require anyone who wants to play there to pay an initiation fee, and then regular monthly dues, no matter how often they play or don't play.
Private golf courses may also have wait lists to join, or selection committees that can deny or approve a person to join. RSF golf has a similar policy in that you must be an Association Member to be able to join, but it does allow any Association Member to join, regardless of how full it is.
In that standard vernacular, Rancho Santa Fe is obviously a private golf course.
I honestly get annoyed when an Association Member points out that all Association Members own a part of the golf club. It is a true statement, but it is in practice meaningless. Unless the Association Board were to radically change club membership rules, Association Members cannot play at the golf course unless they pay the initiation fee and regular monthly dues. Just like my stock ownership in Tesla doesn't grant me any special privileges.
Huh, I didn't know I'd be explaining the ins and outs of Association assessments today when I got up, but so be it.
In a recent email, an Association Board candidate outed me that I was one of about 40 Members who (supposedly anonymously) sued the Association in 2018 over the Assessment structure. I now fully regret my involvement (yes, my dear wife was right again). I didn't initiate the lawsuit, but chipped in some money. It was a pretty benign lawsuit in that we didn't depose anyone, we expedited the case right to court, unlike a recent litigant who seemed to delight in deposing as many people as possible. Nonetheless, being on the other side of an Association lawsuit recently, I very much regret even chipping in some bucks.
But what was the lawsuit about? Most HOAs assess their Members the same dollar amount, or base it on some objective criteria like square footage or lot size.
RSFA does it based on County assessed property value, and that worked fine until Prop 13 and other laws came about. Assessed value of a California property now often bears little resemblance to its actual value. In general, if you've lived in a Rancho home for 20+ years, you will be paying far less in Association dues than someone who just bought a similar sized home now. The disparity can be large. While the average Association assessment is around $400/month, some pay $60, while others pay $1,500 or more.
I won't beat a dead horse, but the lawsuit was an attempt to get a judge to realize that the intent of the Covenant language was to base assessments on the true property value. That used to be the same as County assessed value until the mid 1970s, but Prop 13 changed that, and it has gotten worse ever since.
Anyways, the Association won the lawsuit, the 40 people weren't organized enough to take it to the appellate level, and thus the effort died.
By the way, there is a non-judicial way of changing the assessment structure, and that's by getting 50% of all Members to agree to change. But given that only 30% of ballots are even voted in a typical Board election, that's a huge bar to clear. I'm certainly not going to touch this issue again.
By the way, if you're an RSFA Member and you aren't getting Association emails that get sent every Monday around 5pm (soon moving to Fridays to give more notice for meetings), first, check your spam folder and mark them as not spam if they are in there.
If you can't find them, email rsfa@rsfassociation.org and ask to be put on the mailing list.
You can also ask them to opt your email address out of being sent to other Members if a Members asks for such a list.
As an RSFA Board member, I am always available to any Member that wishes to talk. I can be reached at ptrubey@rsfaboard.com or just reply to this email.
Phil Trubey