Golf Fees ~ by Sean Mandeville

I have told myself probably 50 times not to bother posting about a certain part of the board's article in the focus because the board just doesn't seem to care about the facts on this issue. Then I thought at least give it one more shot and maybe the people of this community will care and bring it up to the board and hopefully get it corrected somehow. It doesn't matter what side of issues you are on, this has to make sense to you and make you wonder how did this happen. 



This is one paragraph of what they published in the Focus.
“The Golf Course/Pro Shop is making great efforts to improve memberships and outside play. This amenity is crucial our home values and is a good socialization sport. The golf dues were raised $150 this year. There is a delicate balance to maintain with raising amenity fees too high. It is a good safeguard that DPOA was set up, as you can read in the Bill of Assurance, to have all members contribute to the amenities’ upkeep. This assures our amenities will do well, which equals stable home values, building and sales.” 
What I would like to talk about is, in this paragraph the board says that the Golf Course is crucial for our home values and they raised the dues $150. I agree the golf course is crucial for this community. What I disagree with and have spoken to the board members about is whether they actually raised the golf fees. 

Let’s look at this as if I had a golf membership. In 2012, I would have paid $980 (from memory) for a golf membership and would have had to pay Diamondhead for rental carts because I do not own my own cart. In 2013 my membership fee is $680 and I would still have to rent carts from the course. If you subtract the 2013 fee of $680 from the 2012 fee of $980 it is -$300. Yes they reduced my membership dues by $300 and every other golf course member who does not own their own golf cart by the same amount. They think they raised the fees because they only considered members who own their own golf cart. They reduced the membership fee by $300 and started charging the appropriate fee for personal owned carts of $450 which raised the cart owner’s fees by $150. 

I spoke to the board president about this explaining the potential financial disaster for the golf course because of this decision. I told her now you must have two members with private owned golf carts join to one member who does not own their own cart ( +$150 for cart owners x 2 = $300 vs - $300 for 1 non cart owner) just to break even with last year. Her response to me was we will hope it works out. I knew this was just too important so I spoke to a few more board members explaining this issue and the president’s response to it. It was like deer in the headlights because they understood but we are still going to hope it works out rather than address the issue. 

Wait, didn’t they say in this article that the Golf Course is crucial to our home values. Yes they did and they are making decisions about this crucial amenity that all we can do is to hope it works out!

They also stated “It is a good safeguard that DPOA was set up, as you can read in the Bill of Assurance, to have all members contribute to the amenities’ upkeep. This assures our amenities will do well, which equals stable home values, building and sales.” I have no problem contributing some of my dues to help out the golf course because I have never heard of a course that actually makes money but shouldn’t we make it as little as possible so we can have the funds to work on the roads and other areas needing attention in our community. The delicate balance of amentie fees is important but how did they figure this balance. In my opinion they are still way to low and because of that we are sacrificing improvements to our roads and security for all. I suppose under their thinking maybe we charge guests in amenities but property owners get everything for free and at the end of the year we will just all split the bill regardless if you used it or not. That may sound stupid but in reality all they have done is assign a reduced fee instead of it being free and we are splitting the rest. 

As a property owner, I hope you would question the board about this crucial decision. As a Golf member who owns a private cart, I hope you would ask – you raised my dues $150 a year and reduced others by $300 and we could possibly lose money and the course may suffer more from this.

The board makes decisions like this and then their solution to our financial problems is to raise everyone’s DPOA dues probably by $100 like they tried last time. Don’t you have to ask yourself? Are these dues being raised because the community needs it or is it to keep the golf course membership rates well below average? If the members who choose to play golf, just paid the average golf membership fee for this area, it may not be necessary to raise everyone’s dues.

Thank you for your time and I hope I explained this well enough for those who have not worked in the golf field.

Sean Mandeville