Sending warm wishes and heartfelt congratulations on your retirement Bonnie Wertanen! Thank you for 11 + years of service in the Accounting Department. It has been a pleasure to work alongside you and you will be missed greatly.
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As her retirement draws near, please join us in celebrating Kathy Vossler and the beautiful career she has built with Royal American/First Service Corporation over the last 27.5 years. She is currently the Vice President of Accounting and has run this wing of our company for over 10 years. There is not one part of our company that isn’t touched by her department and she has run it with efficiency, leadership, and grace. Currently she oversees over 30 people and 3 major departments – Accounts Payable (AP), Payroll, and General Ledger (GL). Not only do they get an enormous amount of work done, but they also do it well. Kathy is beloved by her team and will be missed tremendously.
It would be near impossible to cover all the contributions and accomplishments amassed during her time at Royal American. Just to note a few – During her tenure, Kathy was instrumental in us changing our banks from Bank of America to Summit Bank later known as Bancorp South. This has allowed RA to make money as opposed to being charged monthly banking fees. In addition, she converted our company credit card into a money maker. She was instrumental in several Timberline conversions throughout the years. She led the accounting department through the Great Recession of 2008 and the chaos that followed Hurricane Michael which took out our entire corporate headquarters in October 2018. With no office space and limited resources, her team was able to get checks cut and payroll paid to employees within 10 days of Hurricane Michael. This was an incredible moment we still talk about today! It took an open mind, a willingness to adapt, and an abundance of strength.
Kathy’s consistency brought year after year of ‘year-end’ audits completed with excellence. Kathy’s ability to adapt quickly made it easy to establish new accounting procedures for newly acquired businesses such as restaurants, airplanes, and many third-party apartment owners to name a few. Kathy has brought so much to this company and she will be greatly missed. Many do not know that Kathy was part of the first accounting department of the newly acquired Boardwalk Beach Resort in 1993. A special thanks to Bobbi Cown, the then VP of Accounting, who convinced Kathy to transfer to the corporate office way back. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be wishing Kathy all the happiness and joy as she embarks on a well-earned retirement.
The corporate maintenance department has implemented new procedures in the way our communities that are subject to REAC inspections prepare. We use a similar software that is used by HUD that documents any deficiencies found during our pre-REAC inspection. The goal is to ensure all communities are maintained to RAM standards at all times. In 2021 we completed 66 pre-REAC inspections and finished with an average score of 46. During 2021 there were 14 out of the 66 that received their official REAC inspection and by following the protocol to correct the deficiencies found on their pre-inspection we have been able to finish out the year with a RAM average REAC score of 90.
We are excited to continue moving forward into 2022 with this procedure and setting new goals to make RAM the best in property Management.
