United SaddleBrooke Board
S.W.O.T. stands for “Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats.” These are essential components of long-range or strategic planning, an activity engaged in by almost every successful organization of any size. Essentially, it involves establishing goals that will help your organization thrive in an uncertain and highly competitive future. If you search the Internet, you will find dozens of examples of strategic plans for real-life HOAs.
Historically, both SaddleBrooke homeowners associations had active strategic planning committees who sent representatives to the other’s meetings. Sadly, the SaddleBrooke One Board quietly decommissioned its Long-Range Planning Committee (LRPC) this past December (2022), and SaddleBrooke TWO has not had such a committee for several years. The SaddleBrooke One board, as part of its announced reasoning for the elimination of its LRPC, stated that its existing Ten-Year Plan would suffice.
We beg to differ. The Ten-Year Plan is no plan at all. It is a financial projection that provides cost estimates for maintaining existing amenities, facilities, and services. It doesn’t provide a mechanism for developing new amenities, nor does it provide for the enhancement of existing ones. It doesn’t outline a plan for improving our restaurants, security, or cost structure. It doesn’t set a direction for how our communities will be managed in the future or how we might go about becoming more efficient and effective.
What the 10-year financial projection fails to do is what strategic planning does so well—identifies what is needed to continue to attract homeowners to SaddleBrooke in the future and establishes plans to fill those needs. Our home values and continued enjoyment of SaddleBrooke, plus the long-term viability of our beloved community, depend on it. There is a lot of truth in the adage, “If you don’t know where you’re going [or how to get there], you’ll probably end up somewhere else.”
We in United SaddleBrooke believe that to survive in the highly competitive world of active adult communities, we need a vigorous, imaginative, and practical long-range planning process. So, we strongly urge the two HOA boards to reactivate their formal strategic planning with a joint Long Range Planning Committee (LRPC), thereby involving the whole community in planning for our future. Each HOA planning separately for duplicate facilities and amenities is a terrible waste of time, money, and effort. Instead, collaboration will deliver the best results for SaddleBrooke as a whole.
We believe a return to long-range planning—and doing it together—will further unite SaddleBrooke’s goal of making SaddleBrooke “One Big Happy Family.” What do you think?
Please visit www.UnitedSaddleBrooke.org.