Communications Committee
Report to the SFTR Board of Directors
April 2001
Submitted by Carol Rawle

Regularly scheduled Communications Committee meetings have been changed from the first Tuesday of the month to the SECOND Tuesday of the month, effective immediately.

The committee posted an article on the web site at the behest of the sub-committee of the Emergency Services Committee in charge of trying to petition the southeast quadrant of the Ranch into the Fisher's Peak Fire District. We are pleased to report it is a big success, though we still need about two dozen more lots to respond in order for the district to consider the petition. This does serve to point out, though, that the web site has been able to accomplish something where other methods have failed.  (Click Here to view the article.)

Web manager Patrick Roehl presented a request to the committe to upgrade the web site. Among the benefits to the POA membership will be full-text indexing, advanced searches, customized query forms, integrated security, and most important, zero maintenance. The committee voted to approve the upgrade at an additional cost of about $20 per month. The total cost of the new host facility will be $532.95 per year. An additional benefit of the new service is e-mail boxes for those who wish to have an e-mail address @santafetrailranch.com. Contact the web manager if you are interested.

We are developing several new features for the web site. Gene Downs and Walt Wolff will be supplying daily "fire danger" alert levels to the web manager to post on the home page. We are working on a "Calendar of Events at a Glance" where web site visitors can see what's happening on the ranch and in the community. It will be in a wall calendar format; to get details for a particular event, you need only click on it. Pat, our web manager is also calling for articles on the history of the ranch. Kristin Spinning responded with an excellent feature on Morley. Kris is also working with Pat to redesign the home page.

One of the most important new features the committee is working on is a "Forum" for property owners to express their views about Ranch affairs. This will replace "Membership Comments" and will enable a broad exchange of opinions and ideas among the membership and board. All contributions must be signed, though each contributor will have the option to be posted as "Annonymous". This feature will be password protected to assure Ranch privacy.

The committee also agreed that the "Ranch Water System" page should be password protected from here on. This will assure that any senstive details will remain the business only of SFTR and its property owners.

Patrick is also working on mass e-mailings to the membership. It is crucial that any property owner with an e-mail address submit this to the web manager at santafetrailranch.com. One of our goals is to reduce the cost of POA mailings by using electronic mailings instead of costly paper and postage.