COVID-19 Updates

Audio may be found at: www.scshca.com/podcast294

Below is a synopsis of this episode.

---

This podcast will provide an update on what is happening in our community:

1. Vanessa Ayon, HOA Asst. Gen. Mgr.: The Annual Golf Walk 2021 (South Course) will be on Fri., Nov. 5th, 8:00 am. Please register at either Fitness Center by Sept. 27. Everyone will receive a tee shirt and snacks will be available. No bikes, scooters nor dogs or cats, please. Starting and finishing behind the Pro Shop by the Shadows Restaurant. Gus Ramirez, our IT guy, will be there to take photos of everyone. This is a free event.

2. Kathy Lindstrom, Chair, Food & Beverage Adv. Com.: Update on food and beverage services:

• Monday Night Football - Tailgate Menu, all-you-can-eat for $11.95, and Happy Hour prices on drinks; from 4:00 pm to closing; no reservations. The Shadows has new large-screen TVs. There are more of them and one is outdoors, as well.
• Montecito Café: due to community concern, we are repurposing the Montecito Café. At this time, it won't be open during the day but we will have Montecito Night : Thirsty Thursdays, starting on Oct. 7th, with an all-you-can-eat appetizer buffet for $10.95, indoors or out. Open seating. The putting course will also be open so it's a great time to socialize with your friends and neighbors.
• Also, we will have Taco Tuesdays, 4:00 to 7:00 pm, with $5.00 Margaritas, $1.50 assorted street tacos, and various Mexican beers, starting on Oct. 26th. Clubs meeting on Tuesdays (or even other days) may also want to incorporate this into their social time. No reservations, just come on down to meet your neighbors and friends.
• Breakfast at the Shadows: Best deal in town! Only $8.50 for a two-egg breakfast with sausage, bacon, toast and home fries. On weekends, there's Eggs Benedict and also chili-cheese omelettes -- not on the menu but be sure to ask for it.
• New comment cards: we want to hear from you so the Shadows and the Montecito Café will be the places to go in our community. The cards will be reviewed every month by the Food and Beverage Advisory Committee. We're also offering a raffle every month for a $40 gift certificate so we want your comments. We're open and we're listening.
• We have theme nights coming up and more in October. Call in early for your reservations because they book up very early. And remember Prime Rib Nights on Saturday for $21.95 -- it's really good!

3. John:

• Bullet points for podcasts: in case you don't want to listen to a whole podcast, there are bullet points listed with times so you can go directly to your topic of interest.
• Dog Park closed one more day: the Dog Park will be closed one more day for concrete work starting at 3:00 pm on Friday, Sept 10th.
• Vendor traffic safety: many vendors are blowing through stop signs. Please remind your vendors that we take traffic safety very seriously here and that "Stop means stop" -- full stop. Maybe count, "One, two, three -- no ticket for me".
• Burrtec trash pick up starting as early as 6:00 am: a lot of people have been complaining about the noise from the trucks at 6:00 am. So Tyler, our G.M., called the city of Indio and their contract gives them the right to come into our community at 6:00 am and there's nothing we can do about that. They have adjusted their hours recently so they will be coming in early.
• Difference between contractors and handymen: Some residents have been asking for clarification on this. Contractors are licensed by the State of California to perform jobs to improve your homes. They are required to carry bond and they are insured so you have recourse if something goes wrong with the contractor. Handymen do not have those same bounds. They can come into your home and do repairs for you for a certain amount of money. They aren't licensed by the State and may not have insurance and most likely won't have a bond. So when you're hiring somebody, just ask them if there are licensed or if they have a bond. For something quite simple, you're likely okay with that but that's your choice and responsibility.
• Safety precautions for residents who live alone: we recently had an incident where a woman who lives alone had a fall in her back yard. It was 117 degrees out there. She broke her tibia and was lying on the ground for quite some time and had nobody to help her. One of our advisory committee chairs heard her from her yard and went over the wall to help her. If she hadn't heard the faint calls for help, the resident could easily have died.
• My point is that if you live alone at any age, please consider getting an alarm button or device to have with you, especially during the heat, to that it makes enough noise to signal loudly that you need help. There are many vacant homes right now with residents away so it's even more important to have a way to get help for yourself.
• Stu Stryker's Past President article in the View: Stu has written an article for the View at my request. We had a chance to sit down and talk and I asked him to write an article to give some insights into the past for the residents who are living here now and who have been living here. So, Stu, my hat's off to you and your family and thank you very much for taking that time and for all the service you have given to our community.
• Second Budget Meeting is on September 22 at 10:00 am at the Montecito Clubhouse: if you are interested in what's happening and what's going to happen next year with your money, be sure to come to the Budget Meeting to ask questions and express your opinion. This will be the second of three meetings.
• Parking Lot Sale: Saturday, October 23, 8:00 am to noon at the Montecito Parking Lot.
• Let's Meet and Eat Club: their event on Sunday, September 12 is sold out. It will be at the Montecito Clubhouse. Then on Wednesday, September 22, they will have the Dueling Pianos at 5:30 pm. I'm not sure if there are still tickets for that.
• Tutta Bella Vino: the will meet on September 18 at 6:30 pm in the Montecito Ballroom. Sign up by Saturday, September 11, across from the Lifestyles Desk.
• I'm told there are 20 spots left for that. Tickets are $25 for residents and $28 for guests. Annual membership is $15. If this is your first time going to Tutta Bella, you can attend this event without having to pay the membership fee but that will apply for your second event.
• September 11th: For me and other veterans, this day holds a special place in our hearts and I know it does for all of us in this country. I ask that you take a moment to reflect on your life and on the lives that were lost on that day. Take a deep breath and say a prayer. It's a day that, for as long as we live, will always be in our minds and in our hearts. Treat everybody that day with a whole lot of extra respect because it's been 20 years now and we remember that day as if it were yesterday.

In closing, just a reminder to keep your pets off the extremely hot pavement. I appreciate you taking the time with this podcast. It was a long one but I had a lot to cover.

Audio may be found at: www.scshca.com/podcast292

Below is a synopsis of this episode.

---

John: I thought it would be important to give you an update on what safety practices we've been following toward COVID-19 and the variants. I've invited Tyler Ingle, our GM, and Mark Dodge, CEO of Desert Resort Management, to share their information with you as well.

We have been working very hard to make sure this community is safe and we've been following the State and County Guidelines. There have been a lot of questions about what exactly are guidelines. The guidelines are coming down from the State government and they go to the local health departments and to the local regional health divisions of each county. In our county we talk quite frequently to Jose to find out what we need to do here at Sun City Shadow Hills. When he advises us, we act on it almost immediately. The Board has already given our management team and DRM the authority to make things happen when something happens in our county. Some people are saying that DRM isn't doing what they can because they won't make their employees get vaccinated or they won't do this or that or that the HOA doesn't care. Well, that's not true. We care so much about this community. When I ran for the Board, I told you that I would always be up front with you and tell you what is happening in this community and I have done that. I live with everything that I tell you folks and I will continue to do that. If I didn't say it, then I will stand up and defend it -- that's for sure.

We've received so many emails that we think it's time for us to tell you directly how things are going.

Tyler Ingle: Effective August 1st, we with DRM went back to a mask mandate indoors for all of our employees. Vintage Landscape, Allied Universal and Troon all agreed to wear masks indoors regardless of their vaccination status. Out of an abundance of caution we wanted to keep everybody safe and show to the community here that we are committed to doing what's right. It is totally voluntary to disclose vaccine status but we've had approximately 73% of our DRM employees attest to the fact that they are fully vaccinated. We expect that number to be up to 85% or higher by the end of September. Riverside County overall is less than 50% fully vaccinated. At this time, DRM hasn't made it a requirement for their employees to be vaccinated but that may change in the future.

Mark Dodge: DRM has employees in a lot of communities like Sun City Shadow Hills and there has been an ongoing effort in all of those locations, and in our corporate office as well, to get our staff fully vaccinated and to have very few exceptions. The property here is indicative of that. We know through conversations with our employees who has been vaccinated and who has not. Our goal is to have our employees fully vaccinated. We know who we are going to be able to get through those obstacles with and who we are not. We are looking at where we could relocate those employees refusing to get vaccinated to where it would fit them and they would not need to have contact with any of our homeowners. That process looks different in any of our communities. We have one community with over 100 employees and they are already at almost 90%.

And that’s amazing because 60 of those are field maintenance workers. The same thing is going on here. We are looking at the remaining population who is left and the decision to get vaccinated or not is a very personal one and usually fits into one or two categories. But we are not at the point of swinging a hammer and hammering employees into getting vaccinated. We may have to get to that point but we are at the decision-making point where we have to see what we have to do to get to 100%. So we're not taking that approach yet. We're approaching the individual employees, we know who they are and we're managing them and their contacts, and approaching the employees to get everyone to make the decision themselves. September is our soft deadline where we would like to be company- wide where we don't need to be having these discussions at the senior management level week after week.

John: I know we have been doing everything we could to be as safe as possible. We've been staying in contact with the employees, staying on top of how they're feeling to make sure we're not having any issues, and if anyone isn't feeling well I know you've been telling them to stay home. We really haven't had any of those issues. I know if we had gone to a mandatory vaccine about a month ago, we would have lost how many of our employees, Tyler -- 50%. So we would have had to shut down different programs, Lifestyles, so that was an incentive for you guys as the management team to see what you could work out with the employees so we didn't get to that position. You've been working really hard to keep our community safe and I personally appreciate that and you guys taking the time to come in here today to get this information out to the community. We are close.

And as Mark Dodge says, if there is an employee here and we have to move them around, we'll do that if they don't want to get their shot. That should be reassurance enough to know that this team here is working hard for this community. I was hoping we could get Jose on the phone today to give us a drop down on what's happening in the county, but he is out of the office. Tyler, you and I had a chance to talk with him last week and he told us that there is still a pattern of recommended masks for people who are not vaccinated, people who are indoors or less than 6 feet apart. That is not mandatory but a suggestion from the State and the County. If that changes, we'll definitely get that out to the community.

So, Sun City, we're here for you. We appreciate your time. Be safe and have a great day.

Audio may be found at: www.scshca.com/podcast290

Below is a synopsis of this episode.

---

1. Traffic rules for service providers: When you request delivery services from companies like Grubhub, Uber Eats and also services like Uber Rides and Lift Rides, please remember to remind them to obey the speed and traffic laws we have here at Sun City Shadow Hills. Yesterday I was coming around a corner and a guy with an Uber Eats sticker on his car went right through a stop sign and made a right hand turn. I was flabbergasted. So, I'm reminded by our wonderful General Manager that we need to send a message out to you to let those service people know that we really want to protect our community. We don't want to hit a bicyclist or a duck or anything that. So ask them to just pay attention to our laws when they're in our community and that will make this a safer place.

2. New mask policy for Association employees - Tyler Ingle, General Manager: John: Today we have a wonderful guest. He is taking time out of his very busy schedule to explain a couple of things that the state of California has put out and our good friend Jose at the Riverside Public Health Office who works very closely with the CDC and the public address system for Riverside County has put out some notices and we have Tyler Ingle who will explain a little about what we have going on here. We're just talking about basic public safety for our community.

Tyler Ingle: Out of an abundance of caution, Desert Resource Management has decided that all of our employees will wear masks indoors. This includes employees who are vaccinated or non- vaccinated. They'll also wear masks outdoors when they're not able to socially distance. We've spoken with our other service providers and management companies, Troon, Allied Universal and Vintage Landscape, and they've all agreed to follow the same policy.

John: So this recommendation comes from the State and then onto the county. So we're not doing this to be aggressive but to be safe. If you don't feel comfortable as a resident and you choose to wear your mask indoors or when you're not socially distancing and that is your preference, please feel free to do so.

Tyler: We're not enforcing anything on the residents. There's no county mandate that requires masks for anyone including our employees. But in our case, Desert Resource Management and our senior management CEO agree that out of an abundance of caution that we would go back to mask wearing at this time and that will be effective Sunday, August 1st.

John: If the state guidelines change and it becomes more restrictive for the residents, we'll get together with the Board and the management team here and we'll evaluate what we need to do and we'll make an informed decision to send out to the community.