The Balboa Yacht Club (BYC) Gate Security Survey Results as promised. The results detailed below are from a snapshot of the survey taken on July 4, 2019, as originally promised. As of the 4th of July, 761 villagers completed the survey and voiced their opinion. (See the updated results below.)
Due to overwhelming response, the survey is still open and you may take it if you haven’t already. (Edited to add: the survey is no longer open.) This article will be updated with the final results and these final results will be presented at the next Lakes Committee Meeting and then the following week at the Board of Directors meeting.
The Lakes Committee meets the second Wednesday of each month at 8:30 a.m. at the Coronado Community Center. The final survey results will be presented to the Lakes Committee on July 10, 2019.
The Hot Springs Village Board of Directors meet on the third Wednesday of each month at the Ponce de Leon Center at 9:00 a.m. The final survey results will be presented to the HSVPOA Board on July 17, 2019.
YOU ARE WELCOME TO SHARE THESE RESULTS WITH ANYONE YOU BELIEVE WOULD BE INTERESTED. THANKS IN ADVANCE FOR ALL YOUR SUPPORT AND TIME.
QUESTION 1: Do you believe the POA needs to do more to protect our lake and beach amenities from non-property owners?
| Yes Answers | 752 | |
| No Answers | 9 | |
| Yes % | 98.82% | |
| No % | 1.18% |
That’s right. Only 9 villagers, that responded to the survey believe the POA Administration doesn’t need to do more to protect our AMENITIES. That means 98.82% want to see some change. We believe POA Administration needs to get the BOD to pass rules that will allow them to give the police department the authority to secure our gates and make sure unauthorized non-property owners are prosecuted to the full extent of the law for trespassing on private property.
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QUESTION 2: Do you believe the POA should require every non-property owner entering the gates, with a boat, be required to pay a $10.00 per day lake use fee before being allowed to enter the HSA gates for the number of days they are going to be in the village?
| Yes Answers | 733 | |
| No Answers | 28 | |
| Yes % | 96.32% | |
| No % | 3.68% |
The Villagers understand why this needs to happen. They want invited non-property owners entering the village to pay at our gates. We believe, if required, the POA Administration needs to ask the BOD to change whatever rules or policies are required to implement this immediately.
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QUESTION 3: Would you like to see the POA charge and require every property owner to purchase and display a village decal for their autos? These fees could only be used for road upkeep and hire additional police personnel in order to secure our card and manned gates.
| Yes Answers | 602 | |
| No Answers | 159 | |
| Yes % | 79.11% | |
| No % | 20.89% |
We understand it takes money to provide security. We need policies which allow our police department to act judiciously to keep unauthorized non-property owners out of the village. We believe the first step is to require that every village automobile must be required to display our current auto decal. If the POA Administration, can require all boat owners in the village to display a boat sticker on every floatable object, surely, we can require everyone to display their auto sticker. Our police need to have the authority to patrol and enforce the rules utilizing the AMENITIES of the Village.
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QUESTION 4: Would you like to see the creation of a patrol, that has the authority to cite violators in the parking lots, loading ramps and beaches and issue citations as an additional deterrent and revenue source?
| Yes Answers | 681 | |
| No Answers | 80 | |
| Yes % | 89.49% | |
| No % | 10.51% |
Based on the overall response of the Villagers to all the questions, they really want the POA Administration to protect our AMENITIES and village from unauthorized people. We believe the property owners have voiced their opinion, now it is up to the POA Administration and BOD’s to act together to secure our gates and protect our AMENITIES. NO GATES IS NOT AN OPTION.
YOUR THOUGHTS AND FEEDBACK ARE WELCOME. Please share these results with all your neighbors. We would love to hear your thoughts in the comment section below.
Click the PDF below and scroll through for Balboa Yacht Club UPDATED FINAL survey results July 9, 2019
Final-Recap-of-survey-and-narrative-of-issues.-2019.07.09Click the PDF below and scroll through to read the letter presented to Lake Committee on July 10, 2019
Copy-of-Letter-presented-to-Lake-Committeeby DC Reed, Hot Springs Village, July 7, 2019
Edited and formatted by Cheryl Dowden
Lloyd Sherman
07/07/2019 — 11:55 am
IMHO this survey represents not just the views of those who took the survey, but the majority of property owners. We personally moved here for several reasons, but two were privacy and security. We will now be told however that the gate issue is in litigation and mum is the word. UNACCEPTABLE! Where are the other bids we heard about being gathered last year? That has also been mum is the word. I did not vote in the affirmative on Q3 as two car stickers are now included in the fees we pay and in my opinion, this would give them another avenue to add money that will be squandered. If people have more than two vehicles they have to pay the $5 fee. We do have a revenue issue but adding less than $100K a year is not going to help and I am personally unwilling to accept increases until I see cost controls instituted.
Jim Langford
07/07/2019 — 11:55 am
The results of the survey was not surprising. Will the POA do anything about it? Probably Not. I have always said the POA could establish a fine for workers using their gate cards to access our beach or fish our lakes on weekends and use the fine money to pay the Police overtime to patrol the beach and launch areas. The problem would go away pretty quickly.
Karen D Lundberg
07/07/2019 — 11:58 am
Thank you for performing this survey. I think it should be very clear to our CEO and Board that the results are overwhelmingly asking them to do a better job with our lakes and outside visitors.
NittyGritty
07/07/2019 — 12:14 pm
Good stats to know. Thanks for publishing this. Although, wouldn’t it make this survey project unnecessary if the board were to reference the Village Voice police reports? Do we think the HSV police just make those reports up? (Some of the reports are hilarious…I laughed out loud at the one when a concerned resident reported shots fired and it turned out to be…a nail gun.)
HSVP C
07/07/2019 — 12:31 pm
No, the Voice does not make up the police reports, but they do omit a LOT. I have this on good authority. Things aren’t as rosy as portrayed.
NittyGritty
07/07/2019 — 2:05 pm
I’ve heard that also. There do seem to me to be enough reports in the Village Voice of tailgating to warrant police presence at the gates.
Andrew Kramek
07/07/2019 — 3:20 pm
Like so many people, for us the promise of the “largest gated community in the USA”, with the enhanced levels of security that it implied, was a major factor in our decision to move and build here four years ago. The events since then, that began with the out-sourcing of gate security, then the removal of the need to use a valid card to exit through unmanned gates and now the complete lack of any enforcement at manned gates has proven that security here is just an illusion.
While house hunting recently we went to a REAL gated community where security was taken very seriously. WHAT A DIFFERENCE!
Like us, there were two entry lanes – one for residents and one for visitors. But any resemblance ended there. The resident lane was completely open – except, of course, for the tire spikes that only retracted when a resident’s card (actually I think they also used RFID tags) was used. The Visitor lane had a manned barrier. To enter we had to give names, destination and time of entry to the guard who logged our vehicle details too.
On leaving there were also two lanes. As for entry the resident lane had spikes that could be lowered by a resident’s card. To exit through the barred visitor lane we had to be logged out of the community by the guard who cancelled our entry and noted how long we had been there.
Admittedly this was a much smaller community, maybe 2 miles East-West, but it did have two gates and they did communicate with each other, so presumably it CAN be done…
Linda Anderson
07/07/2019 — 4:21 pm
EXCLUSIVE, PRIVATE – A REAL GATED COMMUNITY would certainly make a difference to boost the ” Value” perceived by all. This should be #1 priority.
Haven’t we always been told that retaining value is the mission of our leadership?
It’s time to make a decision without having to figure out if this is feasible in the CMP.
Tom Blakeman
07/07/2019 — 4:55 pm
Yes, retaining value is what they should be doing and is what they say they are doing. They claim our ‘balance sheet’ shows it. But I would argue that the minuscule gains they show are mostly smoke and mirrors plus some creative accounting.
The ‘gates’ and ‘security’ we currently have are a facade as well. Anybody can clearly see this if they would just take off their designer sun glasses and look. There are some, of course, that will always argue how great everything is. They are already active on ND about this topic and dissing the survey.
That’s to be expected. They are the status quo old guard supporters. A few are prior board members too. But what else would you expect since they were part and parcel of getting us to where we are.
As far as I’m concerned the BYC has done us a great service by creating and running the survey. Now all we need to do is get the stubborn mules to listen. Anybody got a 2 by 4 ? (and yes, that’s a joke not a threat)
Andrew Kramek
07/07/2019 — 6:03 pm
To paraphrase: You can lead a mule to water, but you cannot make it drink!