Recreation News
 

I see that this mornings insert has implemented more of the reductions. This has gone from its usual 64 pages to 56 last week to 36 this week. All of the eliminations have come from the clubs pages and I'm left wondering who is now deciding what makes the cut. Just comparing this week's to the previous week, I see that art groups, billiards, bridge,mah-jongg, pickleball and swimming are the big losers.

While I agree that the weekly insert in the paper is a huge waste and would prefer to see either a monthly, or an online version with copies made available at rec centers, this new approach is totally unacceptable.

I noticed the announcement in today's paper about the changes said nothing about how they were reducing the size nor how they were now deciding which groups deserved promotion and which did not.

It is my understanding that all groups must have a responsible villager to volunteer to head a group or club and to take responsibility for the room. I have always been told that the recreation department doesn't pay the people who teach the classes. I know that is true of my art group, my ceramics group and my craft group. They are all kindly volunteering their time. If the group becomes too small, they can lose "possession" of the room for which there is no charge as long as only villagers are involved. People are not supposed to use the room to make money or to accept money. But generally groups of grateful members try to honor them with a gift.

Not exactly true. You can collect money to fund the costs of running the club.

But it isn't supposed to be a "money maker", right?

In other words a Tupperware sales person can't rent the room to have profits to sell her wares.

Yes, that is correct. However, you can collect money that would not be considered a gift. Many of the clubs have expenses associated with running the club.

I agree with the OP. The point is that MANY activities information have been eliminated from the publication. I have just learned to play MahJongg and am truly enjoying it. I found a class with lessons and beginners in the Rec News (RN) several weeks ago. If I were going to try and find this today, I'd be totally out of luck. This is very disappointing in that I would like to find new things to try/learn, but so much has been omitted.

New Rec Guide
 

Very disappointed in the new version of the Rec Guide. How do you find out what the recreation activities are without going through every rec center looking for it. How do you find out where to play Samba and whether it's for beginners or not? How do you find out about clubs that used to be listed in the Rec Guide but are not listed in "Other Locations". I agree with the other comment to put the complete, full of detail Rec Guide on line. The Villages advertises and boasts of hundreds of clubs. Where is the information found about these hundreds of clubs because it's not in the Rec Guide.

A listing of the clubs/classes in on-line at districtgov.org.

It is on-line at districtgov.org.

What is on the district.org site is the current Rec Guide that doesn't have the descriptive write-ups that Francie commented on.

I agree with Francie.

Jayhawk - Thank you! This is fantastic!

The full descriptions of the monthly clubs will continue to be published in the Thursday rec guide but they won't publish them every week since the monthly clubs are mostly not changing.

I hope that the small listing this week was due to the transition and is not an on-going plan. Essentially none of the resident performance groups were listed; Pops Chorus, Village Voices, the Bands of the Villages, Music in Motion, Evolution Dance, Villages Musical Theater, Villages Theater Company, on and on. The Activities Link that Jayhawk provided is helpful but doesn;t give any info other than the name and meeting time and location. Better than nothing, but not as helpful as the Rec News has been.

I believe the upshot is that you would need to hold onto the latest 2 copies of the rec guide (instead of just the latest) to see a full description of all the clubs. I believe they are trying to reduce the amount of printed material. We shall see if this is in fact true within a week or so. I have asked them if they could put the complete descriptions of all clubs on-line in addition to the current on-line listing of just the club names (with contact info).