OGC Town Hall, My Impressions
PHOTO: Deferred maintenance at the ERC has left our facility partially barricaded for the past three years and Reserve Study costs escalating from $690,000 to $2 million
This town hall was apparently not meant to address the question of whether or not OVA SHOULD fund OGC but instead HOW OVA should fund OGC.
Director Kendrick opened the meeting by asking the audience 2 questions, both of which indicated the tenor of what we were about to hear. He asked a room with an apparent majority of OGC members:
1. Raise your hand if you are “interested in the golf courses failing.”
And
2. Raise your hand “if the golf courses did fail, it would improve the value of the homes in Oakmont.”
A more important poll Kendrick could have taken is:
1. Raise your hand if you oppose subsidizing a private entity that has a history of poor management practices.
Directly following the questions of the audience, John Williston was called to give a 30-minute historical synopsis including a misrepresentation of what transpired relative to the 1992 purchase of the golf courses by Oakmont residents. He said:
OVA passed up the opportunity to purchase both courses, which was a terrific deal. What he did NOT say was that the OVA attorney advised against this purchase. When this fact was presented later in the meeting to correct the misrepresentation, there was no response from Williston or the board.
John further asserted:
OVA has been given a FREE RIDE regarding the benefits of the waterways flowing through the golf courses and that OVA has not contributed financially to their maintenance. (What he neglected to state to the audience is that, per the City of Santa Rosa, the OGC, owner of the property, is solely responsible for this cleanup.)
John said that the waterways throughout Oakmont provide flood control, ostensibly for OVA. However, as it has been highlighted in the article, “OGC Water Drainage Argument Explored,” these water features were purposefully established to fill the cisterns the golf course uses to store water for irrigating the courses.
It’s evident that these waterways “have not been maintained for years” according to a Santa Rosa City Water Quality Investigator who came out and reviewed the waterways with OGC a few months ago.
Apparently, even during their profitable years, the OGC was NOT maintaining their waterways!
Kendrick spoke about the criteria the Board will use to justify financial assistance to OGC. He stated the following:
RISK – if you disregard the risk, it will not go away, and the
CONSEQUENCES get worse, so you can
PREVENT or RECOVER – prevention means financially assisting OGC
These statements reflect Kendrick’s opinion, not certainties. He failed to note other risks, including but not limited to the potential reduction in our property values should OVA establish a “partnership” with the OGC that includes financial participation or poses legal liability due to OVA’s involvement in OGC’s maintenance or other operations. Such involvement will increase our dues and divert OVA’s much-needed funds to another entity. Kendrick also neglected to mention the fact that interest in golf will continue to decline and the OGC may not be an INDEPENDENT and sustainable enterprise for the long term!
And what about the years of DEFERRED maintenance of the OVA facilities, a reality ignored by previous boards until forced into the sunlight by the We Are Oakmont board?
And yet, here we go again with the current board seemingly ready to vote on funding OGC’s deferred maintenance projects without having received its own OVA 2019 Reserve Study Report. The physical inspection of OVA assets has just been completed with cost projections for the next 3 years.
Simply “TAXING” the Oakmont residents to support a separate business entity in long-term decline, is not Fiducially responsible. What happens in 2020, 2021 and beyond? Kendrick flexed his proverbial muscle by essentially telling us the OVA BOD can do whatever it wants as it has “no specifiic line item constraints on spending.“ (not sure of his exact wording here)
It is fiscally irresponsible for the board to be funding the OGC in 2019 without any type of plan addressing the long-term viability of their golf business. At a minimum, OVA needs to complete its own long-term financial projections addressing ERC, CAC, Berger, and OVA offices.
Here is a reality that has not been addressed by the board… OVA does NOT have enough funds for our 2018 scheduled maintenance obligations. Once again and much like WRC, escalating costs of the East Rec remodel are more than double initial estimates.
“Raise your hand if you are “interested in the golf courses failing.” I wonder how long it took Kendrick to come up with that question – that is beyond stupidity (and he’s supposed to be one of the smart ones)
Of course, no hand was raised –
Thanks, Lynda.
You raise the questions the board should be addressing the membership, rather than staging choreographed events intended to achieve a predetermined outcome.
As I understand “trans-partisanship” at its core is an effort to ensure that the process is fair to all sides. If everyone can’t get what he wants, everyone should at least come away with a sense that any decision was fairly reached. At this point, it’s hard to see that happening.
Great article Lynda!
The way this process is being handled and managed is exactly why I spoke up during the election process about how there was a need to vote for a Board that understood how important it is to establish an open and well crafted process to make decisions such as this. It seems that factual information from the past about the OGC, the waterways management etc. is being skewed to convince the members to go along with a 1 million+ subsidy to a private business.
Lyn also has a very good point about Transpartisan, defined by one site as:
“Transpartisan: valuing inclusive solutions that transcend and include all political party positions
and promote cross-spectrum collaboration for the benefit of all.” See, http://mediatorsfoundation.org/resources/transpartisan-definition/
How does this plan effect renters (25% of the population) for example who are paying member dues to live in Oakmont? Is this even being talked about, or is property values more important to the Board? Also, what happened to transparency? Does everyone know yet what each member on the Board is thinking about this issue, or what they will need in order to make a decision on this issue?
It is clear that the majority of the OVA Board is convinced that OGC *must* continue, or it will be a disaster for Oakmont. To pretend to be open to member input on whether or not OVA should support OGC, while orchestrating a blatantly biased event (again), makes it clear that they are not open to any possibility that allows OGC to fail. This is worrisome, because they really should be making contingency plans for OGC failure and looking for how to achieve a positive outcome should that happen.
Enough golf courses have failed that there is an experience base out there for how to recover. Tom’s assertion, to the premise that a failing golf course will destroy property values, that “there are no articles supporting a contrary position,” is simply not true. Even the infamous Adobe Creek example is not all that clear — property values there continue to go up, though perhaps not as quickly as they would have with a thriving golf course. It is probably true that the majority of golf course failures have turned out badly for surrounding communities, but there are success stories, as well. The key, as in most challenges in life, is to forecast and to make plans for how to react if things go badly.
There is no certainty that OGC will survive, with any limited amount of support from OVA. I believe that $5/OVA member/month would give OGC only a fraction of what it needs to return to full health. The only sure way for them to survive is to be purchased by or otherwise merged with OVA, thus creating a situation where our dues will have to go up, as needed, to meet golf course expenses. I believe that this is OGC’s ultimate goal, and everything going on this year is just an attempt to put us on the road toward that goal. If such a merger is not OK, then we should not take the first step on that road, which will only make it more difficult to decline future requests for increased financial support.
I don’t understand Bruce. The TH PowerPoint presentation (see graphics at OVA website) shows that the OGC is making a profit (a slim profit, but a profit) but averaged over the past three years they are not in the red. And, as Kendrick said, this year’s revenue projections are positive. So why all the doom-and-gloom? The ON article quoted Kendrick saying,) when asked about the OGC finances) “They aren’t great.” O.K. they might not be ‘great’ but that doesn’t mean they are bad, in fact, you could argue, that compared to other golf course communities, the OGC financial outlook is better than most!
Jim, my diving of the OVA graphics is that the OGC was profitable only because it reduced expenses to match income, especially routine maintenance. This view is supported by the decline in maintenance staff and growing complaints from residents with golf front homes. That, plus the obvious neglect of upgrades periodically necessary in any business, suggest to me that the club’s cash flow is barely sufficient to keep the doors open. That’s not sustainable.
Admittedly, I don’t have the numbers, so I can’t be sure. For whatever reason, the board is acting like we must do something. Either that’s true or there’s a con going on.
“the decline in maintenance staff” happened three years ago Lyn when Kemper took over – since then the quality of the golf courses have improved – they are doing better with less labor. And, your assertion, ‘growing complaints from residents with golf front homes’ …that happened when Empire ran the operation – they cut back on watering and so some golf course view homeowners looked like they were living in the Sticks! I was one and I was pissed. There may not be a “con going on’ but I do think it could just be this OGC board shouting, “the sky is falling…”