How Sustainable are the OGC’s Operations?
After months of spirited point and counterpoint argumentation, the debate surrounding the Golf Club issue has become predictable and repetitive.
While most residents who post regularly take umbrage at the demand by the OGC for a hefty subsidy by the OVA, nobody has yet ventured to analyze or publish the true needs of the Golf Club, least of all the club itself, nor the OVA Board of Directors.
As a result we are faced with assembling a list of requirements based on estimates arising from the limited information available.
For instance, we have learned that the club is short of 12 golf course workers. The results are seen by the neglected portions of the courses. The streams and ponds have not been cleaned out for a length of time.
Residents are complaining about the quality of the food at the Quail Inn, therefore fewer people eat at the restaurant.
Taken these facts alone, a certain cost picture emerges:
- $325,000 to hire back the 12 employees ($13/hr hour average.)
- $300,000 Deferred maintenance, and pond dredging.
- $80,000 at a minimum to hire a much needed “Superlative” chef for the Qual Inn
$705,000 TOTAL
These assumptive numbers – based on published data – would indicate that in order for the golf club to remain operationally viable, there has to be found added income in the order of three-quarters of a million plus dollars a year (Their current expenses are 4mm). Add on to this the considerable costs to remodel the Quail Inn as envisioned by OGC with new decks and interiors.
- Where would these funds come from?
- Increased golf play?;
- Increased revenue from the restaurant operation?;
- Payment from OVA for water management?;
- Additional subsidy from OVA?
How reasonable are these expectations, and what is a sensible time frame for a sustainable turn-around scenario?
Unless and until these needs are explored and questions answered, we can continue to hold town halls and engage in online debates yielding little or no progress.
Good article, but I think your estimates for OGC’s needs are on the low side.
In order to utilize the additional 12 employees, OGC will almost certainly need to buy new equipment. In all likelihood, their financial distress has caused them to delay replacement of old equipment and certainly not to replace old equipment no longer needed by the smaller work force. How much this would cost? Who knows, but certainly into 6 figures.
Adding in those costs, it is unlikely that the OGC need for funds beyond what they are taking is is less than $1 million/year. I would not be surprised if, in order to get the golf courses into the premium shape that we would all like to see, OGC needs more like $2 million per year.
If this money were to come from OVA members (and where else can it come from?), the monthly cost per OVA member would be $17 to $35, hardly the “latte per month” that proponents claim.
Hello Bruce –
Unless and until OGC, and in turn OVA, releases actual facts and figures, all numbers are at best speculative.
It would take professional assistance to determine what is the actual shortfall under minimal conditions (current) and what investment and/or divestment would be necessary for a long term optimal golf and restaurant operation?
Agree, 100%
Why do we have a newspaper called the Oakmont News that provides no meaningful information about the issues Oakmont faces so that we read The Oakmont Observer for substantive information? After 5 minutes on Next Door, I stopped reading it, however our OVA paper is apparently no more useful. Perhaps it should be reduced to calendars and announcements only, since it does not seem worth all its pages except for the ads it helps local business.
Instead of reading an extended and patronizing editorial under “President’s Message – Community Activism and Social Media,” our Board should collectively do their job figuring out substantive proposal options for Berger, the East Rec as well as other OVA business, present the major decisions to the residents for a vote, and remove themselves; not their charter, from the woes of the OGC – the question by Mr. Kendrick, at the 7/10 meeting “Raise your hand if you want the OGC to fail,” was the wrong question. The correct question, is, the OGC is failing or has failed, so what are our alternatives when they go out of business- or do they have a way of staying in business without asking OVA members to bail them out?
First at the meeting, we were told by Mr. Kendrick, the purpose of the meeting is to hear from the residents and then we listened to a dog and pony show about the history of the OGC, and finally when done, were told our questions should be about the totally impractical suggestions in order to do a work-around to give the OGC money. Like the Newpaper, it seems the Board wants to not only control the message, but the response. Additionally, his tone was also controlling and patronizing. Good educators (if that was truly his purpose, and I think this is questionable,) don’t even talk to their children like this!
Ellen,
Bravo to you for relaying the very disturbing facts of this ‘meeting’.
Many Oakmont residents could have saved a lot of time and just not attended if Kendrick had pre-announced that he planned to just PARROT the OGC’s party line using the exact wording in OGC’s script. E.g., “you want the OGC to fail”, OGC’s been giving OVA “a free ride”, etc.
IMO their no chance that all this use by Kendrick of the exact same wording as previously repeatedly used by OGC BD members is just some accidental coincidence.