EDITORIAL - FCSA: Short-term Focus, Long-term Gamble

  This week we start a new year and the second quarter of the Fort Clark Springs Association fiscal year. Many people hold hope in the new year as a beginning of something mysterious and new, but since this isn’t my first rodeo I’m fairly certain the future will be the same as the past if FCSA doesn’t do something different. It's kind of hard to expect different results if we focus on the short term and leave the future to work itself out. As of the end of November, FCSA published a bank balance of $691,316 which indicates we have spent nearly all of the money received through COVID relief efforts since June of 2023. Take a look at the charts for yourself at treasurer.fortclark.com . Some of the more recent spending on insurance and property taxes will save us money over the year, but will we be able to do that in the future? It’s most likely that we will not have the funds to do that in the next few years. 

  Last month we held a workshop to update our vision and put some wishlist items on a fancy table. We did this last year too. After a few emails about these goals we never heard another word about these items. Let’s hope enough people ask about these wishlists and we don’t let them collect dust in the “nice ideas drawer” again. Over the last year, we have spent money with a budget we copied from the year before, and we are three months into a budget we are unlikely to hit as more information has been published by FCSA that shows we have more expenses than income. Despite having rules in place to produce a capital budget, we have yet to see that be approved by our board. It seems many of the projects we discuss would live inside this budget, but I don’t know because we haven’t taken the time to produce this plan. 

  Since we are almost out of COVID relief funds and our income is less than our expenses, how are we going to fund anything beyond daily operations? Sounds like a pipedream. Recently we have seen an increase in the number of member events, and that's a wonderful experience for a handful of members. However, these short term wins steal the time and efforts of our FCSA team when the focus should be on long term planning and reporting. 

  In all likelihood we are looking at a situation where we are going to find out we need additional funds to achieve anything other than the status quo. Where will these funds come from? More dollars from the RV park, hotel, or hunt? Will the landfill become a true commercial venture? A special assessment for members? All of these paths take long term planning and execution. There are a lot of things we want as members, and it seems all of those wants start with the same basic structure: a plan. Until we have the required audits, budgets, and financial reports necessary to make decisions, FCSA needs to pause and publish a strategy we can hold our leaders accountable for in the future. You can’t manage what you can’t measure.