Last month the new wannabe mayor of Rossmoor Alfred Colletta listed the accomplishments of the Rossmoor Community Services District. One of their accomplishments was the payment of $500,000 toward reducing the amount of money owed on the bonded indebtedness of the Rush School site.
Mr. Colletta did not inform the public of the actual bond indebtedness, the amount of money they actually have collected from the homeowners, and how much longer will Rossmoorians have to pay for that assessment.
Nor did he inform Rossmoorians that the RCSD takes $25,000 per year for doing the administrative work of the bond issue.
That is a new wrinkle.
The RCSD did not take $25,000 for keeping the records of this bond issue when it was first issued in the early 1990s.
In fact, the RCSD did not take the money until this past year when they had their attorney give them an opinion that they could do so. It appears that there is approval within the paperwork of the bond that allows them to do so.
The question is: Should they use $25,000 of our assessment that should be used to pay the bond issue and why have they just decided to do it now?
The Orange County Tax Collector collects the money. Should we the people of Rossmoor have to pay the exorbitant cost of $25,000 for the RCSD to mark it down and put it in the bank? That should be relatively easy with their new computer system and not worth $25,000 per year.
Why did they do it?
The Board in their wisdom needed the money to shore up their bank account balance, so they took $25,000 for each year previous to 2011. How much was that? I don’t know. Ask the Board at its next meeting. But I do know that money should be used to pay off the bonded indebtedness for the Rush School site, and not to augment the coffers of the RCSD.
The RCSD wants to appear prudent in their expenditure of money, but in fact they spend money with abandon.
Another of their “accomplishments” was the placement of pads and picnic tables and 10 acres for a park where the residents are complaining about the parking and the traffic because of Girl’s softball. Twenty-six picnic tables placed close to the street augments the parking and traffic problem.
A survey of parks in the area of Long Beach, Los Alamitos, and Cypress would find that none of them have the congestion of picnic tables that Rossmoor Park has.
Considering that residences bound Rossmoor Park on all sides and other parks are usually larger and removed from the residences, I would say that this Board should not be too proud of their accomplishments.
Joyce Bloom is a Rossmoor resident and former member of the RCSD board of directors.
