Board members for the Sunland Golf & Country Club look to preserve the 18 hole course and its amenities with a new aggressive business plan.

In September’s Sunland Golf News, a newsletter to club members, board President Bruce Mullikin announced the club’s board of directors plan to recover from a $250,000 shortfall with staff cuts and new efforts to encourage new members.

Months prior, Mullikin discussed the club’s financial hardships in newsletters and that the board was considering various options to save the course.

In a separate email to 900-plus homes with the SunLand Owners Association, a separate 501(c)3 nonprofit from the for-profit club, Mullikin said the board’s new business plan started eight months earlier than scheduled “to protect our only real shared asset, the beauty of a community surrounding an equally beautiful golf course.”

For the first phase of the business plan, Mullikin wrote in the September newsletter that they’ll recover $50,000 by not replacing the club’s food and beverage manager, two food service staffers and one temporary office employee, and that “more staff cuts will be made at the appropriate times.”

He called the club’s new budget “bare bones” and that directors will “continue to aggressively reduce our operating costs for the near term, to help get us back on track by April of next year.”

Mullikin said in the email to homeowners, “That aggressive short-term budget reduces the number of our employees and our member services in order to buy enough time and money to restructure our management system from being a board controlled inefficient system to a club operating with a very accomplished general manager.”

Effective Sept. 1 the board hired course superintendent Michael Snyder as the club’s general manager. He will continue to manage maintenance of the golf course as well.

Changes

Mullikin said that more changes may be coming too.

For now, the club is “walking a financial tight rope,” he wrote, and that with the cuts they are filling the positions with volunteers.

“The board’s focus for the remaining months of 2018 will be directed at signing up new golfing and social members, and revising our food service operation through the fall and winter months,” he wrote in the newsletter.

The club’s cafe will close on Tuesdays and Thursdays while other days remain open normal business hours, wrote Bob Eichhorn, who oversees the cafe, in the September club newsletter.

In April 2019, pricing for new members will be introduced; however, dues for equity members — stake owners in the club and its amenities — are not expected to increase.

Social members of the club can upgrade social memberships to a trial golfing membership at $150 for six rounds of golf, or $1,200 for unlimited golf good through March 31, 2019, and can be renewed at current yearly rates on April 1, 2019.

Mullikin said the only reasons he’d expect Sunland homeowners to donate to the club are for the beauty of the course resulting from maintenance and community pride.

“Residents’ donations will help expedite our efforts to establish our new business plan that will reorganize the golf club as a standalone viable entity,” he wrote to homeowners.

“With the board’s subcommittees’ hard work and your generous support, we should enter next year with a positive financial position for the first time in many years,” Mullikin wrote.

August meeting

Weeks prior to the business plan becoming public, Sunland homeowners rallied in large numbers in the club’s ballroom on Aug. 15 — more than 300 attended — after SunLand Owners Association President Fred Smith called a special meeting.

Smith’s intent was to gauge interest in contracting with the club for landscaping at about $118 more per year in annual dues (for $350 annually).

What followed from residents were some suggestions and complaints, ranging from building a putt-putt course to offering different foods in the cafe to being more open about finances.

Smith, who asked for an unofficial vote towards the end of the meeting, received a majority from the crowd to form an advisory group between the homeowners and club to discuss green space contract possibilities so long as the club provided a business plan.

However, Mullikin said in the email to homeowners that because state guidelines could prevent any contract from going forward the two won’t go into negotiations.

Previously, homeowners discussed an annual due increase to $300 per home between 2008-2010 to help the course with maintenance for five years. Some residents contested the increase while at least 10 percent of homeowners signed a petition asking for a vote on the increase, which was withdrawn later for legal reasons.

At the August meeting, Mullikin told the crowd while he’s optimistic the club can survive he didn’t see a solution from the discussion.

“Let me put it in perspective for you. My membership in the golf course has cost me $2,500 a year for maintenance over 25 years to keep it nice for me and for you,” he said. “As a SLOA member I’ve paid zero dollars in those same years. The idea of not being willing to pay is fine with me. It’s your choice. Even if you weren’t willing to pay, there must be some of you out there who’d be willing to donate to keep it the way it is and improve upon it. The intention is to do just that with or without you.”

Any support from the homeowners is tabled for now, Smith said, and no vote is set related to the club at the homeowners’ annual meeting on Sept. 19.

Finances

Multiple times at the Aug. 15 meeting, homeowners asked for more transparency from the club, but Sunland club board member Bill Engle said the club’s bylaws don’t allow it to share finances — even with its membership.

However, Engle told the crowd the club has lost about $35,000 annually for about seven years.

The club also used the last of its savings last year, he said, and established a line of credit worth $50,000 with a bank.

Engle said in 2017 the club borrowed $30,000 to pay employees and bills.

The club also used $100,000 in dues from this year to pay off bills from the previous year, too, Engle told the crowd.

One donor helped the club significantly in recent years, however: Engle said an anonymous donor loaned $500,000 with 2 percent annual interest that the donor donated to the club.

In the donor’s will, it cleared the club of the loan last year following the donor’s passing, Engle said.

Options

In the club’s July and August newsletters, Mullikin said its board was considering multiple options, including a lease option for the course.

Mullikin told homeowners the offer is a lease for three years.

“It’s an interesting offer, but we have not determined it has enough financial backing if it’s something we’re going to jump on,” he said.

In the recent email to homeowners, Mullikin said a subcommittee will continue to consider a purchase proposal.

Suggestions

Sunland membership fees range from $1,200-$6,000 a year, Mullikin said previously, and the club dropped a $10,000 initiation fee.

Club members say opening to the public on Saturdays and Sundays hasn’t been a significant financial positive while some residents say the change has hurt the course.

“I live on the golf course and on Monday morning it’s in terrible shape,” Smith said to the crowd. “People do not respect your property if you’re living on the course. Public play is not something we really want here.”

Engle said opening daily to the public would not benefit the course. If Sunland made that change, he said, the course would likely lose some of its equity members (who own the golf course), some of whom pay as much as $6,000 each year.

“All equity members would go away if I can walk out there and pay $35 (each 18 holes),” he said. “It’s been discussed at length.”

Smith said they’ve also looked at various investments such as installing a cell tower but found the permitting to be too long and that other nearby projects were already in progress.

Pepper Putnam, whose father built the golf course, asked the crowd to consider a non-golfing certificated membership focusing on the 300-plus homes along the course.

He also suggested “thinking outside the box” by selling Sunland’s water rights to the City of Sequim and watering the course with water from SLOA’s treatment plant.

Phil Merlin, a social member of the golf club and a SLOA board member, made a few suggestions on Aug. 15 as well, asking for a forensic audit of the club’s finances, and for the club to connect with a lawyer specifically dealing with condominiums.

In feedback leading up to the meeting, Smith said several people asked for permission to walk on the golf course, which they aren’t allowed to do now.

Smith said it’s a matter of liability.

“All it takes is one person being hit by a golf ball,” he said, but that signing waivers could be one future option.

For more information about Sunland Golf & Country Club, visit www.sunlandgolf.com.

Reach Matthew Nash at mnash@sequimgazette.com.

Bill Engle, a Sunland Golf & Country Club board member, said on Aug. 15 the club lost about $35,000 a year for about seven years. Club board members anticipate current changes such as staffing cuts and adding more volunteers could help recover about $250,000 in lost revenues. Sequim Gazette photo by Matthew Nash