David Whelchel
For the last year, David Whelchel has been finding time in his schedule to volunteer as a member of the POA board. It isn’t always easy, he said, since he’s still working in a field that involves travel, often to other golf courses. Whelchel is a semi-retired golf course architect who doesn’t always have time to play golf.
“Sometimes it’s fun,” he said about his board position. “I enjoy it.”
Since moving to Bella Vista in 2005, he served on both the Golf Committee and the Branchwood Ad Hoc Committee that was formed to repurpose the former nine-hole golf course. He was appointed to the board in 2017.
Although his career has been in golf. Whelchel understands the importance of all the other amenities.
“What we’re seeing is the younger families like the playgrounds, the bike and hiking trails,” he said. “It would be nice to have a new indoor swimming pool. Those things are the ones that the young
families want.”
But he’s also interested in bringing at least some of the young people to the golf courses, perhaps with a junior golf program. That may be the only way to keep the courses busy enough to remain open.
He doesn’t believe the city will ever want to run the amenities. It doesn’t have the workforce to run the golf courses, and it would be too expensive to hire the staff.
So the POA will have to remain intact to run the amenities, and he believes the last few years have shown that it can be done well. He believes it’s a vocal minority that favors abolishing the POA.
But there may have to be an assessment increase, he said. Although he wasn’t a board member during the last assessment election, he was in favor of it.
“We need an increase, but how much hasn’t been decided yet,” he said. He believes if the board asks for a small increase, and continues to improve facilities that bring in potential revenue, like the Scotsdale Golf Course and the new event center at Lakepoint, members will agree.
“I’m trying to make sure that Bella Vista stays a great place to live and the things we’re doing will keep our property values up,” he said.