What’s happening with RCSCW’s annual golf discount card?

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OPINION — This next segment of Recreation Centers of Sun City West shell game budgeting is titled “fun with numbers.”

Until the end of the fiscal year that ended on 6/30/26, golfers who purchased an annual golf discount card paid $3,900 up front, including a fee paid for the use of a credit card whether they used one or not. The fee is built into the cost of the card.

Assuming that fee was 3%, the RCSCW kept $3,783 of the $3,900, with the balance of $117 going to the credit card processor.

With the new budget that started 7/1/26, the cost of the card was increased to $4,050, a $150 increase from the $3,900. What didn’t happen, though, was an adjustment to the cost of the card to account for there no longer being any credit card fee included in the cost. If golfers want to continue using a credit card to buy the card, they will now be charged a 3% fee on top of the $4,050.

What should have happened is the $150 should have been added to the $3,783 base cost of the card, making the new amount $3,933, not $4,050 — if we had an honest budget. Instead, RCSCW keeps the full $4,050, meaning not only was the card increased by $150, there’s another $117 buried in there since there wasn’t any adjustment for no longer having to cover that fee.

It’s just another example of the financial sleight of hand played by the people who are supposed to be working for us, not themselves. By the way, the budget for legal and professional fees increased 35.2% and is now just shy of a quarter of a million dollars.

Pray tell, does anyone have any clue why such a large increase was needed? I sure don’t.

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