Officials want to review ‘excessive use’ of guest passes in The Villages
 

The guest passes review workshop is coming up.

https://www.**************.com/2025/...-the-villages/

“Excessive use of Villages guest passes sparked discussion at a meeting Wednesday of the Amenity Authority Committee.

A review recommending revised fees and operating policies related to recreation, community watch and facilities in The Villages is scheduled for completion this fall.

The review will recommend additional ways to offset operating and maintenance costs…..”

This will be a great way to keep our amenity fees in check! Let the first 20 passes be free and then charge an additional 10 dollars for each pass after that in a given year. The additional funds required to take care of guests could be used to keep our amenity fees from climbing.

The amenities' fee automatically increases by the CPI on the anniversary of when your home was first sold.

I like the idea. How many residents, who aren’t running a short term rental business out of their home, would need more than 20 guest passes per year. We typically get about 6-8 passes per year, and have never needed more than 10.

And the number of people in the pool does not affect the price of chlorine or replacement ACs or roofs or lawn maintenance or…

Not true, have you ever gone in a pool after two hours of water volleyball being played on four courts. The water is so cloudy you can’t see more than a few feet underwater through swim goggles. The number of people might not affect the price of chlorine, but more is certainly needed (or the chlorinators that convert salt into chlorine need to run harder). Also, filters need to be cleaned/replaced more frequently, pumps run harder, water needs to be changed more frequently, and general cleaning and maintenance increases. Plus, the number of people in the pool most certainly affects the enjoyment of Ammenity fee paying residents.

Frequency
 

And Frequency does equal wear and tear! Along with the extra flushes in the bathrooms, paper towels/TP, and trash disposal.

Let those who want to abuse the right, pony up the cash for the continuing maintenance!

Grasping at straws is bad enough but counting sheets of TP?

Next you’ll be blaming the guests for exhaling too much water vapor, increasing humidity, and causing rain storms.

Omitted Scientific Statement
 

I don’t know if you recall Calculus class, but remember all those formulas you were permitted to write on an index card before those blue book examinations? Wear and Tear calculus


(F * A * N) / (S * (N^b))
Mechanical Wear Estimation and Fatigue Analysis Calculator | True Geometry’s Blog

The more the use, the more the cost. It’s just science…with mathematical absolutism.

The bottom line, increase use does cause increased failure of equipment etc.

So, back to straws?


More people in pool means pumps work harder? No.
Means more than 24 hours in the day for them to run? No.
Means the AC in the rec centers age faster? No.
Means the roofs wear out faster? No.
Means the grass needs to be cut more often? No.
Means the Community Watch needs to be staffed up? No.

Give a real example of an increased cost for the homes with more than 20 guests and what percentage of the budget that increase means. With any real numbers the added wear that actually increases cost will be in the noise.

Then remember, as others have pointed out, that your amenity fee is increased by the CPI each year regardless of the cost of the amenities.

No straws
 

No straws, just science and math

More guests equals more wear and tear. No question.

By the way, 20 people? Hilarious Understatement

Try 300,000 people in 2024! Are you suggesting that that mass of people doesn’t affect anything? You would be 100% incorrect.

Why are you against the abusers of the system paying for their abuse? There should be no beneficial free ride for those who continually abuse what we all pay for!
I’m sure the computer system knows who they are. Just run a query and bill accordingly. Abusers steal from the rest of us.

We all win if amenities are cheaper and usage costs are evenly distributed.

Uh oh math
 

Uh oh, math. As you were.

Why shouldn't guest passes cost something to contribute to the increase costs we all share? We have never needed guest passes when friends or family would visit because we entertained at home. Never used the community facilities. Yet, when others have guests and use the amenities the increased costs of maintenance and repair are passed on to us. Many folks have friends and family that come and stay and use "our" amenities extensively and the cost is passed on to all of us. I think a nominal fee ($10?) per guest, per month, would not be unreasonable and ma be significant in terms of offsetting costs.

Usage costs are evenly distributed now and, as I wrote above, the cost of amenities does not currently impact your amenity fee.

20 people was YOUR cutoff to define “abuse” and to begin adding an additional charge. IF the 300,000 number is accurate, how many of those represent guests in excess of your limit of 20? My guess is very, very few. I know my guests account for 12 of those and there a heck of a lot of grandchildren in that number as well.

If each of those passes was for a one week stay (remember, you are tackling the short-term renter problem) then that would be equivalent to fewer than 6,000 permanent residents. Compared to a population of nearly 150,000 that is about 4%. So ALL guest passes add about 4% BUT, not all those are the “abuser” so divide 4% accordingly to get a very small impact.

And again, the number of guests does not affect the largest budget lines. A fraction of 4% might affect a small portion of the budget but has no affect on the amount of your amenity fee anyway.

Limit Abusers
 

Actually they are not.

Family wouldn’t be a concern. The issue that needs to be addressed is some are renting homes and then passing off “the gift” of guest passes and their costs onto all who pay amenities. If they are using our amenities as for their profit, they can pay. I would recommend registered landlords and Airbnb’s who are abusing the system pay more to offset the additional costs.

20 passes should be more than enough. If you do have a bunch of grandkids coming in, you could even apply for a family exemption. The additional costs should be aimed at those who tote and advertise our amenities for their own personal gain.

This is less about the actual cost of guests and more about appearing to "fight the landlord" and the legend of the AirBNB nightmare. I don't know the stats, maybe someone here does, but of all guest passes issued, how many are every actually used (scanned)? I've had about 10 passes in the last year and I think one of the guests used one putting course once.

The notion of the bad guys using our amenities and driving up the costs is more about keeping them for ourselves and less about real cost increase. The friendliest community really just doesn't want to share because they resent the monthly fee they signed up for.

None of it impacts me too much.

Of the 220 person-days my guests had passes I would say they used a pool for six of them. 214 days they just carried the passes in their pocket.

I don’t think that guest passes should be free at all. And they should be time limited, weekly or daily. It means people who are owners and who don’t regularly have guests have to pay for the extra wear and tear on our facilities. Now, unless you are going to argue that guest are actually, like angels and float on air etc…

Tell me where people can use facilities for free, try Disney, or movies, anywhere? For a WHOLE month? Why is it okay here? The laws of economics works differently for us? I personally have guests and family visit and I am quite happy to pay for them.

Also the argument of large families, go into Publix or anywhere and see if they’ll give you more bread for the same price because you have a “large” family. If you have a lot of people you pay proportionally more.

I get guest passes so my visiting friends can get the better resident golf rates at the Championship golf courses, which are not amenities paid for by residents. That being said, I do support the floated idea of limiting free guest passes to 20 per year as a deterrent to revolving door short term rentals.

Renters shouldn’t be eligible
 

Renters aren’t eligible for guest passes. If they were there alone an uproar among most. I think the article needs to clarify this.

They are
 

I guarantee you there are landlords getting passes for their customers.

From the article… James Vaccaro said a man who operates an Airbnb told him that he has applied for hundreds of guest passes for those who stay there.

Vaccaro suggested that a $10 fee per pass might be affordable for residents who have a few guests a year, but more difficult for Airbnb operators.
“I don’t think we should be subsidizing anyone to use our facilities,” he said.

If so, it’s disheartening and dishonest
 

If so, it’s disheartening and dishonest. Just ban landlords from getting guest passes. One poster said they aren’t hardly used anyway. The problem would be solved and the solution is straight forward. No harm no foul for anyone.

If a landlord of a reasonable rental unit wants guest passes for his tenants, I have no issues with it. They already pay a fee to get them. I would recommend a limit, like 4 per month. That's enough for a monthly renter and their occasional visitors. Seems reasonable to me.

Now if you're talking about new tenants every weekend or several times a week, then I'm not in support of guest pass issuance for these folks.

How would anyone be able to differentiate between a resident getting a guest pass for a visiting friend versus another resident getting a guest pass for a tenant that is renting a room in their home short term via AIRBnB? That’s why I like the idea of limiting the number of free guest passes to something reasonable for legitimate resident guests but would be a deterrent for revolving door short term rentals.

Yes
 

That would be the easiest and generate income too. Now there are big families out there. In that case a person can make a simple exemption request. I know the rec centers put all the guest pass info in the computer, so it wouldn’t be hard to see who was abusing the system.

The rec enters have put ZERO of my guest pass info into the computer.

Er, that's how those guest passes are generated. They're put in the system, and the names of the guests and their home addresses and birthdates are saved. That way if they return to visit again, you can just go to the rec center, tell them John Doe and his wife Susie are coming back, and they look it up and print you out the passes. I've done that twice for my cousins who visit for 2-3 days, a few times a year.

Was it the rec center flagpole that entered the information or was it the automatic door, the pool table, the card room, or one of the employees?

In my case it wass me, my ten little fingers, typing on my keyboard while sitting in my home that put in the information.

Does it exist in a database? Sure. Did the rec center put it there? Not for my passes.

Semantics...

Yes, you can register your own guests on-line, but the very same info is entered whether you do that or if you show up in person to get a guest pass...

Not semantics at all. The assertion was that because the rec center employees always entered the data they would be able to see who was “abusing” the system. I doubt it would be that simple but since the rec center employees DO NOT always enter the information they would not be able to identify “abusers.”

If I sit at home and enter the information then have my guests pick up their own passes the rec center employees don’t see a familiar face come in every third day. They might notice a lot of passes under my name but I can always vary the pickup points to avoid that.

I don’t care how they enter the data, but guest passes should not be free and they should be time limited daily or weekly. If the guest doesn’t use it, they shouldn’t get one in the first place. I don’t buy a ticket to the movies IF I’m not going to go.

Where can you use their facilities for free for a whole month? This idea was introduced (most likely) as a way of advertising TV when it wasn’t well known. We no longer need this form of advertising. We can go to normal behavior like other venues.

Poster #2 above is completely missing the more important point. It’s not about how the database is populated, it’s about the information contained within the database.

Consider two residents that both have a history of 200 guest passes.

Resident one’s 200 guest passes were for a total of 20 people, who each visited the villages 10 different times over the last 8 years.

Resident two’s guest passes were for 196 different people over the last 10 months.

Which one of these residents appears to be having family members and friends occasionally visit, and which resident is very obviously running a short term revolving door business out of their home? The answer is about as obvious as it gets!

If it's the boogeyman landlord that you are after, a hard limit is the only way. They will just pass the $10 to the tenant. Problem with a hard limit is when a non-landlord villager hits that limit and then simply can't have guests.

This is all a made up problem to me. None of it will reduce our amenity fee and guests, while they certainly have impact on the amenities don't impact them substantially. The vast majority of amenity cost and maintenance are fixed costs.

Why call a landlord names?
 

I disagree with your assessment. But you have a right to an opinion.

Wear and Tear is a cost and a mathematical absolute. Additional users do cost additional funds. Extra money collected can offset costs.

There is nothing wrong with charging a landlord who exploits the loopholes of an antiquated system for their own personal gain.

Most of us could care less if a landlord has to charge a higher price for their rental. All of us should care about our neighbors who have problems with the current amenity fee or costs.

radrxman
 

Owners of rental homes and winter residents actually subsidize the amenity fees for homeowners who live here year round. We pay amenity fees every month even if the home is empty. You are welcome.

Is that a denial that SOME short term rentals are a problem? Because we have heard from those living next to an "imaginary nightmare" what their lives have turned into. I can also guess that those two posts suggest a perspective from someone who runs STR's.

From my perspective, a friend or family member who stays in my home FOR FREE is a guest. Someone who is paying to stay is a RENTER. I would simply deny guest passes to any RENTER who is staying less than 30 days and end the "AirBNB nightmare."

Best to end short term rentals. One month should be the minimum rental duration. We can do this. Many communities have banned short term rentals.

Here’s a novel thought. Full time residents are not having that many guests.
As for renters, charge ALL renters a fee regardless of length of stay.
There is no reason why us full timers should be inconvenienced with so many outsiders. And we will be.

The guest pass system costs plenty, and so do the people who monitor the recreation centers and pools and check ID cards. I disagree about twenty free guest passes a year. I’d say $10 for EACH guest pass for all of us. That’s pretty much what guest passes cost Villagers through our amenities fees. I don’t mind paying $10 for a guest pass if someone comes to visit me.

It would be nice if we could also charge $5 or $10 to those without an ID card or guest pass to get into the enclosed areas where the bands play. But I know that wouldn’t work. Self-defeating.

Perhaps golf only guest passes would be free and those passes would not be able to enter rec centers, pools, wood shops etc? Or, does getting guest passes to reduce golf fees hurt the rest of us? Generate income vs generate less income.
Either way guests I would think help to stimulate our bars and Resturant economy.
Hmmm. 🤔

Guests are not allowed in sport pools