Sounds interesting. What about residents who don't bring their cell phone to the pool, and what about those who might be out of sight as in the restroom. And would it pick up just those people getting their mail of walking their dog around the neighborhood pool?

When I lived in an exclusive home community of about a thousand houses a few years ago, the HOA there issued each household two fobs that one could attach to one's keyring. They were about the size of two quarters stacked one upon the other, but were more postage-stamp in shape.

One simply held them up to a sensor along the mag-lock gate doors to access the community pool or the private beach access.

If one lost the fob or it was stolen, you went to the office, paid your $25 and got a replacement. They went into "the system" immediately and deactivated the lost fob. When you sold your house or moved out, your fobs were deactivated and the new residents were issued two new fobs when the new residents went into the office to get their access fobs. IIRC, they had to bring an escrow settlement statement of some such document, but it was fairly easy to "Redfin" the address to see the date the most recent escrow closed to verify the house had new ownership.

Same happened if you rented your place out. Every time you got a new tenant, you had to go and obtain their fobs for them. Usually the fee for fobs was part of the initial rent cost. Then the previous tenant's fobs were deactivated.

Worked pretty well. Tougher to do with short term rentals unless the owner left their own fob(s) and replaced if they disappeared with the renter. Of course, when they did that, the short-term renter's fob would get deactivated, thereby lessening the attraction of stealing it for their own personal future use.

Fob holders were, of course, always discouraged from holding the gates open for people coming along behind them. Unless you knew them personally as neighbors, family members, or whatever.

Just for an idea of scale, how many gates (doors, pools, etc) were equipped with fob readers?

No more than a dozen. Just like your Villages ID cards, there would be a handful of major Rec Centers that would have someone that handled this task. Seems pretty do-able to me.

To be useful:
- 100+ pool gates will need to be updated. My nearest neighborhood pool has two gates so perhaps the number is closer to 200
- 100+ pickleball and tennis gates would need to be updated (this number is just a guess based on at least two gates at each rec center)
- 130,000+ devices would need to be provided to residents
- 1,000+ devices would need to be handed out EACH DAY for guests according to the numbers provided recently

This will be one more thing that needs to be carried by those that can't remember their Villages ID today and this one won't fit conveniently in a wallet.

If these are handed out for free then the cost will hit the amenity budget. If these are not handed out for free then there will be complaints about the cost and there will be demands for the ability to re-activate guest devices used previously.

With 300+ new points of failure there will be a maintenance cost that hits the amenity budget.

It's a solution; we just need to accept that it could require a one-time amenity fee increase that never goes away.

And poof, the solution goes away.

Ya know what they say, "Good Security Is Not Convenient." Nor it is cheap, generally.

It's kinda like the "Good, Fast, or Cheap - pick two" paradox. You can have any two, but not all three. You could say the same thing with "Good security, convenient security, or cheap security - pick any two."

lol…did you pick up on it? That was the whole idea…

What an insane waste of time and money to keep out the small fraction of 1% of people from using our facilities.

Don’t all those access points need to be tied back to a main server, to update when new fobs are issued or fobs are lost.
This would cost a fortune to maintain, let alone roll out

1%? Okay let's roll with that. There are around 150,000 people who live in The Villages. Let's pretend that 50,000 of them are snowbirds, leaving us with only 100,000 full time residents. 1% of that number would be 1000 people.

Please let us know where your neighborhood's closest rec center and pool are. We can invite that 1000 people there, and they can stay away from everywhere else. Y'know, since it's just 1%, and keeping them out is an insane waste of time and money.

Well using your math that would be 3 people per day across nearly 100 recreation facilities!
I agree that everyone should do more to prevent scofflaws from using the facilities that we pay for but recognize that the cost of many proposals will probably outweigh the benefits.

But those 1,000 people don’t travel in a herd any more than the 100,000 do. Yeah, 1% of 100,000 is a big number but 1% of the 30 people in your pool today is a little less than 1/3 of a person. So let’s say one person every three days or 100 people total I’m the course of the entire year.

Are you ready for you amenity fee to go up $16 this year rather than $6 to keep that 1/3 of a person out of the pool tomorrow? Some will say yes while others will say even $6 is too much.

As an ammenity fee paying resident, it would be well worth it to me if I showed up at a sports pool to swim some laps and one of those 1% was taking up the last available lane. If that happened, it wouldn’t be the first time.

You must be at one regional center that doesn’t have 10 people in line 30 minutes before open. Each person I’d scanned before entering. I swam at 4 sites, since 2010, only once was Id not scanned, because of malfunction. However ID’s were still checked. Water sports are far more brutal to acquire a spot that open swim

Since guest aren’t allowed at sports pools and most swim 30-40 minutes. Didn’t take long to acquire a lane to get 2 miles in every morning. Bunch of lanes open at that 50 degree temp

I’m not a morning person, so I can’t speak for ID checking for lap swimming during the early morning lap swimming window (dawn until when the organized group activities begin). I mostly swim during the late afternoon/evening window when the group activities end for the day. In 10 years, and probably about 1,000 times swimming laps at the various sports pools (during both open swim and lap swim times), I could count on both hands the times my ID was checked. The only times my ID has ever been checked were either during COVID, when the pools were reopened to a very limited amount of people, or if I showed up when a group activity was still going on because I got there early enough to lay claim on a swim lane knowing they would immediately fill up when the class ended. They seem to almost always check ID’s for organized activities like water volleyball or exercise classes, but never for either dedicated open swim (half the pool for lap swimming and half for water walkers) or lap swimming time. Over the years, I have witnessed many people using the sports pools who I highly doubt were Villages residents and over 30 years old. Perhaps on rare occasion my intuition was wrong, but typically it’s very obvious, and some openly admit it like they are proud of what they are getting away with. I would be totally in favor of some kind of a gated system, where the only way possible to enter the facility would be by having to scan a valid ID.

Are the MMPs public?

If not, is there an agreement in place that permits reciprocal usage between Middleton and the Villages?

I suspect the MMPs are equivalent to a sidewalk in that respect. They are "owned" and maintained by the various CDDs but they are provided for the use of the public.

There is a welcome to Middleton sign along the road but there is no gate, no checkpoint, no speed bump, not even a painted line on the MMP to let you know where the border is.

Again, I have to ask, what percentage/number of freeloading trespassers and potential troublemakers ARE you willing to tolerate? For me, the number is ZERO, as in ZERO tolerance. In general, I have found that zero tolerance policies tend to be the most effective, whether it be in public gathering, schools, or the workplace.

Also, please realize, that if no effort is made to keep these people out, their number will only grow as word gets around that there is no problem stealing our amenities, especially with all the new apartment buildings going up. Get the zero-tolerance message out and numbers will dwindle.

Full disclosure: In over 11 years I have never used a pool here, but I do side with the 80-year-old ladies who are apprehensive when young non-villagers invade our pools.

I don't believe they are for use by the GENERAL public, just Villages residents. And there probably is an agreement for Middleton resident to use the MMPs

It is difficult to get a non-Villages golf cart to the MMPs but it is not at all difficult for a non-resident, non-guest to walk or bike to a MMP or to get a LSV to a MMP. Does your zero tolerance policy extend to checkpoints on the MMP to ensure only ID'd Villagers and guests are walking or biking on them?

Does the zero tolerance policy extend to roadblocks where the MMPs meet the county roads to check for golf cart speed settings? How about zero tolerance for exceeding the 35mph speed limit on Morse and Buena Vista? Otherwise, what percentage/number of freeloading trespassers and potential troublemakers are YOU willing to tolerate?

Also, those zero tolerance policies are going to require quite the buildup of the police force - something I've seen argued for and against in other threads.

Nice post but COMPLETELY out of context. I was not referring to MMPs or the roads with the zero-tolerance post, just pools, golf courses and rec center facilities. Morse and BV. like most roads ARE public. There probably are some outsiders using the MMPs, but if we have zero tolerance on amenities, just why would they use them? To go where? The entertainment at the squares, maybe, but not worth the long cart ride from outside TV when a car would be easier.

Yes
 

Yes, absolutely willing.

Agreed. It's an astonishing amount of energy being spent on this thread that will not result in any relevant, or actually needed, changes at this point. Cooler heads don't get out of bed for 1% of anything (or even double that).

The easiest assist on this is for the phone number(s) to be provided widely to report any suspected interlopers and let TV management/employees handle it.

Next.....

There isn’t any “paying more in amenities for people to drive around checking IDs”. The amenities fee increases are tied to the CPI. If more people were to be hired to check ID’s then something else would receive less funding.

Just tack 10 on
 

Just tack the cost on across the 150 k residents and have ID checkers a full time job like community Watch is.

Just run the math in that like I did several pages ago. It’s only 70,000 or so homes (amenity fee) and hiring will be an issue.

10 dollars a home would bring in 700k a month for funding. Very realistic for a budget. Many retirees wouldn’t mind the extra cash flow for working a few peak hours once or twice a week. They could focus on the pools and pickleball courts. Have them cover the 4 zones in random fashion. If they catch someone violating the law “theft of services” they could get bonuses.

There is no "just tacking the cost ...". The amenities' fee cannot be arbitrarily raised. If you hire additional people then the cost comes out of something else in the amenities' budget. I'm not saying this should not be done; maybe additional people should be hired. However, there is no free lunch. What are you suggesting that should be cut in the amenities' budget?

That is about 5% of the amenities' budget. Good luck with that.

What about establishing a separate fund, for the purpose of increasing enforcement, what would be the process and a referendum could be taken first.

You make several good points. I suggest we raise the monthly amenity fee to $10,000 for each and every homeowner so that we can keep out the total of four people who gate crash our over 100 pools. That way we can have zero tolerance. Since you have NEVER used any of our pools, why are you imagining what an 80 year old woman feels when a younger person is in the pool? So, be ready to cough up the money that your ill informed proposal would cost us.

I will restrain myself from posting what I really think of that nonsense. So, with great difficulty I will politely respond:

If you think it is only 4 people, you haven't been paying attention. Community watch stats, although somewhat ambiguous, stated that there 158 CAUGHT in a 5-month period, which implies there were many more NOT caught.

If you think it would cost $10,000/home/month, you might need to recalculate. 70,000 homes x $10,000/month x 12 months = $8.4 BILLION/year. Now, if you would pay me that yearly I'd be happy to organize a zero-tolerance program.

I don't have to imagine what an 80 year old woman thinks about freeloaders, they have posted it on similar threads multiple times, all one has to do is READ.

So, who is "ill-informed" now??????

True I think we really need to crack down
 

I agree Golfingeagle. Most would be willing to pitch in 5 to 10 dollars a month to prevent misuse of our facilities. The other guy was definitely stretching it with exaggeration.

There is no "pitch in 5 to 10 dollars a month". There is only reallocating funds within the existing amenities' budget, which increases by the CPI each year on the anniversary of when each house was sold. You may wish to consider sending your thoughts to the CDDs.

Speak for yourself and count me as one who will not be supporting that..

MANY (perhaps not most) have complained about their yearly amenity fee increase. MANY are calling for a cap on the amenity fee to stop the increases from eating Into their fixed income. MANY will not be happy to hear about an exceptionally large increase to fix a problem that MANY do not experience.

The size of the increase that MANY see as too large: $4
Your proposal: A $5 to $10 increase ON TOP OF the $4 increase which would be the largest increase in recent history.

BTW: Wasn't the number 168 over the five months? 168 non-residents over a 150 day period or about 1.1 non-residents each day or less than 0.011 non-residents per pool each day (or 0.33 non-residents per pool each month). Sure, that number is an undercount, but it needs to be a LOT larger before I would be willing to pay an extra $100 just for pool monitoring.

Pool monitors *could* be considered an additional amenity. In that case, the amenity fee could be adjusted to cover the additional amenity.

Otherwise, if it is simply taken out of the existing amenity fee budget, I believe now would be the time to attend the budget workshops and present this idea.

I don’t believe that would pass the sniff test and I doubt it would have much, if any, support. In the 11 years I have lived here, I have not seen such a thing done. According to my deed restrictions, you would need 1/2 the people to vote “yes” on an amenities’ fee increase for a new amenity and, again, I don’t think more people checking IDs is a new amenity. As I already stated, reallocating funds within the existing amenities’ budget is presumably a possibility.

No, you haven't seen that done even when amenities have been added (Black Lake walking path) or proposed (Lake Sumter Landing Recreational Boating Facility). But that doesn't mean the clause doesn't exist.

4.1(c): Each Owner agrees that as additional facilities are requested by the Owner, and the erection of such additional facilities is agreed to by the Developer, that upon a vote of 1/2 of the Owners approving such additional facilities and commensurate charges therefore, the monthly Contractual Amenities Fee provided for herein shall be increased accordingly. For the purposes of all votes, the Developer shall be entitle to one (1) vote for each Homesite owned by the Developer.

As Community Watch and gate manning are considered amenities, the pool monitoring could be considered an amenity and that clause could be exercised. I doubt it would come to that, but it's there.

There is currently pool monitoring. Additional monitoring is hardly a new amenity. As you already suggested, any amenities’ fee increase beyond the deed restriction limit of the CPI would not be popular and I doubt it would have support from the CDD board members.