JUNE 2025 NEWSLETTER

RRPOA Road Advisory Committee

At the June 21, 2025 meeting Ms. Sandy asked the Board and was granted permission to form a Road Advisory Committee.  We are asking for volunteers for anyone who would be interested in being a part of this committee to please contact Ms. Sandy or email us at theboard@rrpoa.net with your name and contact number.

The committee is being formed to help fix areas of main grade and 4 wheel drive.  We are NOT looking to pave the roads nor are we looking for people who are just wanting to complain.  If we are going to tackle some of the issues with those roads we want to spend funds wisely to fix issues and not just do bandaid fixes.  We are asking for help becasue we realize there may be a lot of knowledge and expertise with the membership that can help us tackle this.

Main grade and 4 wheel drive are identified as essential roads to help get equipment out to areas to fight fires or help transport emergency personnel in the event of an injury or medical emergency that members may have.  This is why we are only focusing on these roads.  If, at a later date, we identify other roads that would fall into this category we will look at adding them as well.

River Ranch Coloring Book

We had a member approach Ms Sandy who has put together a coloring book about RR. The pages in the coloring book are from pictures that members submitted on a Facebook post that he made along with other pictures that he had. We would like to thank Stephen Johnston (Camouflage) for taking the time to put this together. We will be printing off a few pages from this for the kids to color at the Summer Bash.

We have also contacted a printing company to have them make a bound coloring book with all the pictures. Due to the amount of pictures, we will do a second volume at a later date. We are also wanting to break this up to keep the cost down. All going well we would hope to have these for sale at the front gate on June 27, 2025. Cost of the coloring books will be $6.50. We had another member donate crayons for this and will be giving out a 4 pack of crayons with the purchase of the coloring book. We would like to thank Dan Curly for donating the crayons.

We really hope members like this and have talked to Camouflage already about making this an ongoing thing using photos from members around RR. This is new to us and I’m sure there will be a learning curve regarding this.

Again, we would like to thank Camouflage for putting this together! We would also like to thank Dan Curly for the crayon donation. 

RRPOA Cattle Gaps

RRPOA has had a gang of cows that like to wonder into the camping area from time to time since they feel the grass is greener on that side (this is light hearted joking). In response we are in the process of fixing the cattle gaps with the help of Mr. Gill (the cowman). Below is one of the cattle gaps that were completed today. This is a time consuming process and we expect this to take a few weeks to fix all of them. 

The thought process behind this was to make the fence on the side to keep animals from simply trying to walk around the fence post by the cattle gap. The cattle gaps have been repositioned and have been raised slightly higher than the surrounding area. Pavers were put leading up to the gap to try to keep the dirt in place leading up to the cattle gap and further deter the cows from trying to get across them. Open graded pavers were used because we are hoping that this will provide some grip for tires and keep them from spinning on the pavers. 

We are hoping this will keep the gang of cows on their side of the fence. We wanted to let the membership know why they will start to see these changes in the cattle gaps. We would also like to thank everyone involved in this project.

RRPOA 4th of July Fireworks

The Activity Committee was approached by a member who would like to donate their time and money to have a fireworks display on Friday July 4th at 9pm at the Burnt Bridge. This time may shift slightly due to any weather conditions. We have decided to have this event at the Burnt Bridge since it is a more open area and will have plenty of room for members to attend. We are planning to have a fire truck on location for any just in case scenarios. As we continue to plan this event, we will make sure to update the membership. 

We would like to take a moment to thank Chris Coleman for putting on previous firework displays at his own expense. This was much appreciated by the membership. 

We would like to thank Donny Ginoris for donating the fireworks and setting this up at the Burnt Bridge. He expects this to be a 25 - 30 minute show. 

We hope to see everyone there.

ATV Committee Poker Run

 

The ATV committee will have another Poker Run on August 9th. We will post additional details once they become available or you can join their Facebook page.

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.