MAY 2025 NEWSLETTER

The RRPOA Fire Prevention Committee had their second meeting on 5/17/25. Below is a link for you to view a recording of this meeting.

Fire Prevention Committee Meeting 5/17/25

If anyone has any information regarding this past fire or any previous fires please contact the Forestry Arson Alert Association by clicking on this link.  

Members can also contact Crime Stoppers if they would like with any tips they may have regarding this recent fire or any past fires by clicking on this link.

It has come to our attention that some people, NOT all people, that were selling property in RR have not been filing the deeds. We are asking members to please do their due diligence if they have bought property and check the Polk County Clerk of Court or Polk County Property Appraiser website to ensure that your deed is recorded and recorded correctly. It is a requirement that you own a certain amount of property to become a member. Also, it should be noted that RRPOA does NOT sell property. RRPOA does not have the manpower to keep up with every member’s property and we have noticed that deeds have not been filed or they have been filed incorrectly or they have been filed with incorrect addresses causing the taxes not to be paid and the property to go for sale on the Tax deed auction. While the majority of sellers are not doing this there are some that are. Sellers who have done this, RRPOA generally checks to ensure that the deed has been filed and the deed is scrutinized before allowing a membership. We know that some do slip through the cracks and is why we are asking people to also do their due diligence, especially prior to renewing your membership. If you see that your deed has not been filed in a timely manner or an address is wrong, etc, we are urging you to contact the person whom you purchased your property from. 

Forestry requested if we could put some rain gages in RR so they could more accurately calculate the drought index. Ms. Sandy asked for some volunteers to put up some weather stations throughout the RR camping area and have them registered to weather underground so that Forestry could easily get the information online. We would like to share the link for these weather stations with members so they can also have access to the current weather conditions in the RR camping area. Anyone who has been a member for a while knows that it can rain in the back of the camping area and not get a drop of rain at the front gate. That is why we have a total of 6 stations that will be throughout the camping area. The link is below and can also be found by going to our website as well. We would like to give a thanks for all those that volunteered to help with this.

Link for Weather Station

Special Hog Hunt

The Wildlife Committee will have a special hog hunt on May 30 - June 1st 2025.  Members who would like to participate need to sign in on May 30th at 7pm at the Front Gate.  You can go to the Wildlife Committee Facebook Page for any questions or additional information regarding this event.

New windows have been installed at the front gate and below are photos. These were installed for two reasons 1) to hopefully reduce the amount of dust that gets into the office. This dust has been playing havoc on our copiers causing us to have to pay for numerous repairs due to the dust getting throughout the system, despite our best efforts to clean the copiers. 2) windows were installed a little bit higher in the hopes that members and staff will not have to haunch over as much to speak through the windows. We just wanted to let members know why we made this change.

Below is a photo of the historical data that was submitted to the board for review and justification for RRPOA to do our own garbage disposal. Prior to 2019 RRPOA used to have their own dumpster and disposed of their garbage their selves and the cost for just disposing of the garbage during those years is shown on the sheet. Also in 2019, the membership voted to increase the membership by $10 to keep the dump open. In December of 2019 the board decided to contract the garbage to an outside vendor due to new DOT changes and the expenses related to getting our current vehicle in compliance. It was estimated at the time that including garbage fees, insurance, maintenance, employee wages and DOT compliance fees that it was costing the club over $100k a year. In 2020 the board decided to take an initiative to clean up the dump and had spent more money than usual on this. Also in 2020, the board decided to institute as $250 per trailer deposal fee. Garbage fees leveled out during 2021 - 2022 and in 2023 - 2024 the garbage expenses increased. It appears there are multiple reasons for this increase based on the number of people that have come through the gate, fires and a decrease in the amount of fees that were collected for trailers taken to the dump. It appears that people were putting trailers in the dump, but were not paying for them. It should also be noted that RRPOA tried to reduce the amount of garbage that was being hauled and our current vendor responded with increasing the cost per dumpster by 30%.

Based on all this historical data, we proposed spending $178,000 to purchase a roll off truck and $40,000 to buy dumpsters. RRPOA could have purchased a cheaper truck, but decided on this truck because we plan on using it to back haul road material. It was estimated that updated costs for RRPOA to do their own garbage would be $130,000 which includes insurance, garbage disposal costs, maintenance, fuel and employee wages. RRPOA will also save and estimated $20,000 a year for back hauling road material. The increase cost of the dumpsters was factored into this spreadsheet. The total savings until the truck is paid off is estimated at $35,000 per year. The ROI for this is estimated to be 6 years. After this we expect to save around $80,000 per year. RRPOA plans on using these saving to pay for clay and other materials to fix the roads, fix fences and other maintenance items needed.

Member Update: Since March RRPOA has been working on various projects approved by the RRPOA board and we have tried to keep members informed regarding these projects. An update on these projects was presented at the last board meeting and we would like to pass this along to the membership. We have a photo of the update presented to the board and just want to give an explanation of each. (We apologize in advance for the length of this post).

Cameras - The board approved the installation of cameras at locations in the camping area in April 2022. This was approved since we had tried cell cameras at the dump and other locations and did not have good luck with reaction times of the cameras and found that we were missing sometimes critical footage. Due to that it was decided to install camera systems that have continuous recording and is saved to a DVR. The board spent a total of $5149.88 for this system with the majority of the expenses incurring in 2022. We were able to beam our internet to the dump for the cameras and will then be able to go from that location to other locations for cameras. We looked into the cost of internet, such as star link, for that location and would spend an estimated $2400 a year. With this setup we have the initial setup cost and no additional costs associated with this.

Internet - In an effort to pay for some of the projects that we have worked on, we took on the task of looking at current costs and trying to reduce them. Currently we spend $1040 monthly for internet at the gate and $490 monthly for internet at hwy 60 for our security there. We were able to negotiate this cost down to $777 monthly at the gate and $333 monthly at our Hwy 60 location. This would be an annual savings of $5040.

Asset Trackers - We purchased asset trackers in an effort to have a better idea of where fire trucks were to help keep members better informed. The assumption is that the fire would be where our fire trucks are. Many times through the years we have had difficulties giving members an exact location of fires or emergencies. We are hoping this would help. This has an annual cost of $5785.36 and is mostly offset by the internet savings.

Vehicle Insurance - We were able to speak with our insurance company and reduce the insurance on our street legal vehicles for an annual savings of $2009.44

Garbage Truck - This has been posted previously, but by RR doing their own garbage, we expect to save an estimated $35,600. This is slightly less than what was previously reported since we got a higher interest rate than what was previously quoted. The reason for the higher interest rate is primarily due to the fact that in the 43 years since RRPOA has been incorporated they have only financed things 10 times. We do not have a long credit history since traditionally RRPOA just pays cash for their purchases and does not typically finance items. This estimated sayings may not be realized during the first year and were thinking that savings would be taken by the cost of purchasing dumpsters. After the first week of hauling our own dumpsters we were able to haul our own scrape material and did not have any trash thrown on the ground by the dumpsters to pick up. For comparison purposes, tonnage for the second week of May was 7 tons and cost the club $1950 for disposal. Our first week for disposing ourselves cost us an estimated $1110.21 (including disposal, fuel, cost of truck, insurance, employee wages, etc) and was 6 tons of trash. We also made $617.50 for the scrape that we took from the dump and $450 for trailers. This would make our first weeks cost only $42.71 compared to $1950 for a first week savings of $1907.29. We know that every week will not be like this, but this first week was very promising.

Fire Prevention Committee - Currently there are 24 members and they have assisted with the previous 5 fires to quickly respond, gather information about suspicious fires, help use the water hoses and help us quickly get information to the membership about the fires. Only costs associated with this has been $305.30 to purchase weather stations to post throughout the camping area to help forestry get a more accurate drought index in this area.

Overall we expect to see a saving of $39,264 for doing these projects and expect to use these saving to do other much needed project in RR. We would like to notify the membership that during the months of June, July and August our operating expenses are typically more than the revenue that is brought in. Due to that we typically pull back from doing major projects and just focus on spending money on the musts. The only projects during this time will be "water gates" (gates that will open to allow water to flow on the hunting fenceline) and fence repairs (since we already have this material). We expect to discuss sharing some costs with our neighbors for these repairs.