OCTOBER 2025
GVREC.ORG
GVR Board Summer Activity Members, it is hard to believe the ’25–‘26 season is already starting—it feels like the summer just began. Nevertheless, fall classes are underway, performances are filling up, and club leaders are busy making plans for the winter. As President of your Board of Directors, I’d like to let you know what we worked on over the summer. If you’re new to GVR (welcome!), you should know that GVR is governed by an eleven-person Board comprised solely of members. Three Directors finish three-year terms each year in March. The Board meets most months, year-round. Our role is to set new policy, modify existing policy, monitor the fiscal health of the organization, and manage the CEO, Scott Somers. When making policy decisions, the Board relies on the work of several committees comprised of members like you. Recently, the GVR Board has tackled two policy-level issues that affect members on a day-to-day basis. At the August meeting, the Board adopted changes to the member Code of Conduct policy. The purpose of the revisions was to provide more timely, consistent, and hopefully effective responses to troublesome member or guest conduct. The Code of Conduct is summarized on the back of your GVR ID card. Policy changes clarified some language that was open to interpretation, increased the authority of the CEO to issue member suspensions, and clarified how a member may appeal a suspension. The revised policies 1.2.4 and 1.3.2 can be found in the Corporate Policy Manual at GVREC.org under the “Governance” tab at the top of the page.
Over the summer, the Board Affairs Committee and staff did extensive work on a topic that comes up every few years: GVR’s guest pass policy. Unauthorized use of GVR facilities is a chronic problem that is difficult to solve because few of our centers are designed with a single point of entry and because we do not spend money on staff to monitor the entrances. Aside from those members who simply let unauthorized users through the gates, the number one avenue for unauthorized access is the GVR guest pass. Guest passes are to be used by temporary visitors who live more than 20 miles from the GVR boundary. That means that non-member residents of Green Valley, Sahuarita, Amado, and Tubac are never eligible guests. Tenants who are staying in rentals, including Airbnb and VRBO rentals, are not guests and should be purchasing tenant passes. Why is this a concern? For some, the concern is about security—our guest passes, even when used legitimately, do not require the member to attend with the guest and do not identify the guest. We have no way of knowing who is using facilities and many of our members are vulnerable due to advanced age. For others, the concern is about capacity. During peak hours, courts are full, swim lanes are full, parking lots are full, and nobody wants to think they are waiting for an unauthorized guest to be finished with their free recreation activity. For many, the concern is financial. In survey after survey over the years, members say they chose GVR because of the value they get for their dollar. Many people say that GVR’s dues-to-opportunities ratio is one of the best active retirement deals in the country. Keeping expenses down for
Continued on page 6