BELLA VISTA — During August we saw TV snippets of mad and frustrated voters challenging their congressmen and senators at town hall meetings all across this great land.

They were doing what people in this country have done for hundreds of years - because we have the right to do it - they were speaking up and speaking out.

But sometimes it isn't the noisy ones, or the squeaky wheels who get the attention. Sometimes silence wins out.

Take for instances the Bella Vista Townhouse Association.

The Board of Directors sent out a survey in 2008 asking homeowners if they would be willing to pay more in monthly assessments to keep their amenities, or go ahead and eliminate them.

The result was 65/35 to not increase the assessments.

Rather than close any facilities on the spot, the board of directors voted to give one more year of life to their swimming pools and tennis courts, and at the end of the 2009 summer season they would re-evaluate their future.

For decades before nobody on any board had even considered saving any money for the repair or replacement of those amenities, and they were coming to the end of their life expectancy.

Board members, generally all of them, believed it would not be in the best interest of the BVTHA to spend thousands of dollars of money they didn't have to keep those facilities open, especially when their membership had access to similar ones through the Bella Vista Property Owners Association.

A small group of people were very vocal and very much against closing those pools and tennis courts. And during the meeting where the Board decided to wait one more summer season, those folks spoke up and they spoke out - just like those at the town hall meetings did last month.

But then something unexpected happened.

Those same people who were adamantly against closing their amenities for any reason stopped using them.

The BVTHA Board releasedfigures earlier this month that showed only 9.8 percent of the more than 1,000 homes in the association used the pool at Drake Courts. The other two were never opened this summer.

Half of those people came from renter-occupied dwellings. They weren't even the people paying the monthly assessments.

That means that the people in 90.2 percent of the homes never once went to the pool or played a game of tennis on the townhouse properties.

Talk about your silent majority.

As a result the BVTHA has voted to keep pools at Metfield and Britten Circle closed, and go ahead with planned demolition of them.

They have authorized their general manager to seek bids on closing and covering the Drake Courts pool as well.

The Board, in my opinion, had no other choice, and they made the right decision.

It was going to cost tens of thousands of dollars to fix or replace the ageing equipment.

And they don't have it.

Sometimes it takes a lot ofscreaming and yelling to make a difference. Sometimes all it takes is for people to do nothing.

What's to become of the tennis courts isn't yet known, but they will likely come to a similar fate. I just don't see people flocking to them in the coming months in an attempt to justify their existence.

***

Grant is the managing editor of The Weekly Vista. He has two decades of experience in journalism in Virginia, North Carolina and Florida.

Opinion, Pages 6, 10 on 09/23/2009

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