Cory Lakes CDD

Supervisors,

the purpose of this communication is to ask for your support in approving a plan of action that I outline below. First, I want to share with you that one of the main reasons that I decided to become a CLI Supervisor 4 years ago was do what I am about to describe below. It has not been possible up to now and it would mean a great deal to me if you would support the plan.

Let me give you some background. I first got involved in CLI matters half-hazardly because I wanted Gene (CLI's developer) to fix a broken and dangerous treadmill 10 years ago. The difficulty in getting the treadmill fixed led me to get involved in CDD matters. Over the course of the following 2 years I became a defacto volunteer gym leader and advocate and developed a methodology of getting input from residents about the gym and bringing that to the new resident run CDD board to improve the gym. That time represented the period of greatest growth, improvement and resident satisfaction with the gym in CLI's last decade. If you think that the gym looks dinky now, you should've seen it then when it was half the size and held only 1 treadmill, 1 elliptical and only about 8 dumbbells. When I saw how successful we were enacting positive change in the gym using the methodology outlined below, I decided to become a supervisor so that one day we could do the same thing for the whole community. That day is today.

Now, it may feel like early in the year to be thinking of the 2017 budget, but the reality is that we have to submit our proposed budget to the county in late Spring and then hold public hearings. So, now is the time to get community input on what we want to do in 2017 and beyond.

Therefore, I am asking for your support to enact the following plan and methodology that was shown to be very successful in the past:

1. In order to ensure that we don't filter out and block resident input due to our own biases, we send out a very simple survey that asks one questions, which is, "What do you think the CDD could do to improve our community?"

2. Next, we review the text responses and break them down into categorical items. Here are some examples from the past, "Get a new tennis court", "Get a dog park", "Limit pool parties to 4 guests", etc.

3. Now that we have a list of all the items that residents feel will improve our community, we send a second survey with that list of items to the residents and ask them to rank those items in order of importance from 1-10.

4. At this point we will know which items are the most desired by the greatest amount of respondents. This is great information because it tells us what we can do to serve our residents as a government to give them the greatest satisfaction with their community.

5. Next, we research the cost of the items (if they have a cost) that residents want most. At this point, we determine if they can all be had within our existing annual budget limit or if we would need to have a special assessment to get the residents what they want.

6. If a special assessment is required, then we would have one final survey which would ask the residents if they would be willing to pay the extra money for the things they have asked for.

7. At this point, we would be as well informed as possible to create the 2017 budget and beyond.

The timeline for this survey would begin after approval at our January CDD Meeting and each survey would be conducted approximately 1 month apart. This would give us time to submit the budget to the county when it is required.

Ok, now is the moment of truth. Baiju, Bob, Jorge and Joyce, are you in favor of this plan? Feel free to reply for clarification if necessary.

Best,
Cyril

Strongly agree. However, we should work to get maximum input from as many residents as possible for the direction of Cory Lake, and especially for those projects with a dollar threshold above $50K. We should ensure that we use every mean of communication possible 'ie, email, letter, the Islander and the online Sunshine Board. We need to ensure that we are not just making decisions based on the same few people that provide input to the online Sunshine board meeting.

Cyril I have no issues with the approach you’ve outlined and I’ll be in favor of an early Survey to get feelers from the community for early planning for next year’s budget. However my #1 concern is timing, as you know whatever gets approved for next year’s budget we won’t be able to address anything until October which leads me to believe we won’t see any of those changes taking place until earliest Jan 2017.
Again I’m ok with the survey for early feelers for 2017, however we should put the focus on what we’re going to change from now thru September 2016 and we are already about 30-60 days behind due to the cancelled meeting in December.

I agree with Bob's suggestion and we should have enough resident data now that we will know for which residences we have email addresses and for the others we can send postal mail.

I also agree with you Jorge that the surveys leading to the 2017 survey should not slow the progress of the 2016 capital projects which we want to complete.

Baiju, Joyce, what do you think?

Happy new year to all.
Its great idea to start early survey. This will give us early direction. Provided we have enough people reply on the survey with good representation of community as a whole. I like to see some idea on how to make community mamber more active to help us make better decision. Survay is a start. Agree witn Bob regarding caution on making descision over 50 k..
Thanks
Baiju

I think that if we approach a survey, we should poll as many residents as possible using the least amount of money possible. Mailers can get quite pricey. Also, I think there needs to be very clear and specific information conveyed to residents explaining the entire plan and the reason for such plan. I don't think you'll get much buy in if they are just seeing survey after survey and they don't understand the logic behind it.

Joyce,
I like your suggestions. We should definitely include an explanation of the process with the survey to residents. Also, by only sending postal mail to the residents for whom we don't have emails we will probably spend only a couple hundred dollars versus $800 and still send a survey to every household.

Cyril I like the approach of email to those we have addresses for and snail mail to those we don't.

The only thing I request is that the wording be approved by a vote at a board meeting before any mailings are actually sent out.

Sounds great to me.