August 22 Meeting

There were between 60 and 80 people in attendance.  Of those who attended, 30 signed up to volunteer on a committee to approach the BOD to explore ways in which we can survey the neighorhood.  The purpose of the survey will to be find out if the home owners in Turkey Creek would like to explore ways in which the community could support the Club if it ever reopens.  I have requested the item be put on the agenda for the September 7, Board of Directors meeting.

If you could not attend the meeting tonight, but are interested in being a part of the committee, please contact me at turkeycreekcc@gmail.com  If you have neighbors or friends that don't use email, they can call me at 352-494-1700.

Theenie

Meeting

Just a reminder that I will be holding a meeting Monday, August 22, 2011 at 7pm in the clubhouse.  Please check the previous post for more details of the content of the meeting.

Please come if you are interested in supporting my efforts or if you are just interested in what I might say.  Please don't come if you want a debate, this meeting will not be that forum. 

Theenie Smith

Are you willing to help me?

I invite you to attend a small informal meeting on August 22, 2011 at 7 pm at the clubhouse.   My hope, as is the hope of many others, is that the club will sell and reopen one day soon. Unless we can come up with a way that the HOA can get involved, the tragedy of the club closing will only repeat itself.    

The Board of Directors of the HOA is in the first stages of setting the budget for 2012.  What I would like for the committee to ask the board to do is not unlike what they did after the 2004 hurricanes.  The following year a line item went into the budget for Storm Damage.  Now is the perfect time to get a line item on the 2012 budget that would allow the Association to spend some of our assessments on expenses such as Social Memberships in the club for all residents.  I don’t blame the BOD or the homeowners for the current state of the club, but I do feel that we as a community should be proactive in the future.  There will be some responsibilities as a member of this committee that will require more time than others.  Please know that any amount of time you are willing to spend working on this, no matter how big or small, will be appreciated and is needed.

If you haven’t already read it, I encourage you to read the information provided in the following links to see what a community in Green Cove Springs did to prevent their neighborhood from suffering because the Club was on the brink of closing.

http://community.magpt.com/use_agreement.pdf

http://magptioc.com/Final%20Report(1).pdf

If your email system does not support URL links you can copy the link and post it into your web browser.

I am also posting this email on the blog and the address for it is

http://turkeycreekupdates.blogspot.com

On the blog you will find an illustration of how much the assessment would cost you personally.  If you are not following the blog or do not want to look at it, I will be happy to email it to you.  Please request the information by email to turkeycreekcc@gmail.com 

Thanks for taking the time to read this email and I look forward to working with people who are interested in weighing all the options that could help preserve our property values.

Theenie Smith

What would it cost you?

Because our assessments are calculated based on our property values we don’t all pay the same amount in HOA fees.  This makes it a little difficult to make the following illustration using only assumptions.  The purpose of this post is to show that it may not be as expensive individually as some residents think to actually help the club if it ever reopens.

If the HOA budgeted $280,000 for purchasing social memberships in the club, the club would net approximately $191,000 in membership dues assuming it gave a discount for upgrading to golf memberships.  The discount would be equal to the amount the resident was paying for the social membership through assessments; not everyone would receive the same amount of discount. 

$280,000 divided by $183,492,500 (total assessed value of all Turkey Creek property) would calculate into a millage rate of .0015 for this item of the budget.

The highest assessed home value is $493,000 and the lowest assessed home value is $79,500.

This means that the largest assessment would be $61.62 per month the lowest assessment is $9.93 per month.

The average would be $35.77 per month.

The club’s assessment would be $235.17 per month.

I am not considering the vacant lots assessment for possible discounts.  I just don’t feel like there would be enough of them upgrading memberships to include them in the average discounts allowed for upgrading memberships.

                    $280,000.00         Total assessments for social memberships

          Less   $  2 ,822.10          Club’s assessment

          Less   $85,848.00           *Discounts 

          Net    191,329.90            additional club revenue

*Discounts based on the average assessment for 200 homes times 12 months.

This is a rough estimation and it’s based on 2010 assessments.  The discounts could end up larger or smaller because of the upgrade discounts.

With this illustration, I am trying to show that not only would the club have to pay the assessments, it would also offer discounts for upgrades that would decrease the amount of revenue actually realized.

Mine and Walter’s assessment would be $16.76 per month.  It would sure be worth that to me to have the club open again.  I do believe that the club being closed has lowered the value of my home by so much more than $201.12.  This is the amount it would have cost me in 2010 to possibly ensure the club would have the revenue to remain open.

If you would like to calculate what this scenario would cost you per month, you would multiply the value of your property by .0015 and divide by 12.  You can find your assessed value on your 2010 tax bill or online at the property appraiser’s website http://www.acpafl.org/search.html.  Make sure you use the value under the column heading Market as this is the amount the HOA uses as the value of our property. 

Hopefully this post will show you that it won’t really cost you that much individually to support the club in this manner. 

The BOD is gearing up to create the budget for 2012. If the majority of the community would support something along these lines, maybe the BOD would be willing to add something like this in the budget in the event the club does reopens between now and the end of 2012.  This is a board decision, NOT a 75% affirmative vote of the owners.  The board could base their decision on whatever percentage they wanted and could also consider those who don't respond as neutral.  Hopefully, they would canvas the community to find out how many owners actually would support this expense.  If the club doesn’t open or if it does open and an agreement can’t be reached, the worst thing that could happen is that our 2013 assessments could be reduced because of the surplus we would have from 2012 operating expenses.

I mention the next thing just for comparison purposes.  The amount budgeted to transfer to reserves for 2011 is $314,879.00.  This money is reserved in part for capital improvements to be made 5,10 or 15 years from now or later as well as things in the current year.  Some people may be appalled to find out that some of their assessments will be used long after they have moved out of the neighborhood.  The total amount available in the reserve fund reported in June’s financial report on TCMOA's website is $416,854.25. 

The first budget workshop is September 13^th.  These workshops are open to all home owners and feedback is welcomed.  I urge you to join me in attending it and let the board know how you want your assessments spent.  If you can’t attend the workshop you can always email the BOD at board@tcmoa.com to express your wishes. 

Would you buy your home today?

My last blog entry was not meant to discredit the BOD of the Association or any individuals of the BOD.  I don’t know if any of them interpreted it that way but I do know at least one resident did.  Most of my comments are not only meant for the current board members but to all past members as well.  What I meant by my comment of them dropping the ball, was they have made not made a very significant effort to figure out a way to help support the club.  The attitude is mostly let’s govern to the point of making and trying to enforce rules but not provide any financial support.  The BOD has made requests of the club that may seem to some to have been totally ignored.  There are two sides to every story and if you are faced with choosing because of financial difficulties between picking up a dead limb or mow the greens, you would probably choose mow the greens because that is what your customers expect.  Many of you know Walter, and you know that he is not a person that likes conflict.  If something needs changing and he has the power and resources to do it he will.  He did not ignore request and there are many residents that will attest to that.  I have never blamed the BOD for the failure of the club.  I have stated that things may be a lot different if the club had ever had the support of the community and that that support will have to start with the BOD.  Maybe I am really way off base but I think that one of the missing links that has been a large factor in the failure of all owners and managers past and present is the community’s support.  Many residents will be against any form of support, they will say that they didn’t buy their home because of the golf course and don’t plan to ever support it.  Well I really would like to know how many of them would purchase that same home today.

My focus now is getting the community involved so that any potential buyers can be assured that they would have the support of this community.  Something no previous owners or managers have had.  I want to recognize and thank again, residents that were members and that did support the club in some manner.   I have been in and around the golf business long enough to know that not unlike all businesses there are fixed costs that need to be met whether there is any daily business or not.  For example Real Estate taxes don’t care if it’s raining and no one can play golf, they continue to accrue whether the club can be open or not.  Insurance is another example.  Key employee salaries another.  Cart and equipment leases are not based on number of rounds played.   In order to meet these fixed costs, a club has to have a member base that can support it.  That base doesn’t have to come only from the community.  In the past the majority of the members were not residents of Turkey Creek.  There is study after study available on the internet of industry standards and what percentage of a club’s members must come from within the community of a club if that club is located within a community.

Please get involved

Magnolia Point is a golf course community in Green Cove Springs.  Recently they were faced with the chance that their club would be closing.  The HOA and residents got busy trying to figure out if there was anything they could do to help preserve their property values.  I am providing the link to a recommendation to the HOA by Investment Opportunities Committee and the link to the agreement that was signed in July of this year.  These people really did their homework and I applaud both the BOD and the residents who volunteered to do this work.  The recommendation is a very interesting document as it compares to the situation Turkey Creek is faced with.  The largest exception to the comparison is that our club is already closed and to my knowledge there are no concrete deals in the making to change that.  Our HOA may have to take it a step further and find a management group willing to open and operate the club but there is a solution, someone just has to find it.

 I attended the meeting of the BOD on August 3, 2011 and the attitude toward the club was basically “make them mow or we will do it for them.”  The BOD purpose is to help preserve our property values as well as enforce the rules.  I feel they have dropped the ball, if they ever even picked it up, where the club is concerned.  The time to blame has passed and the time for searching for an answer is here.  I am asking, no begging, all homeowners get involved in the fight to preserve our community. 

If you have any suggestion for the Board of Directors, you can email them at board@tcmoa.com.  Using this address will send each of them your correspondence.

The link to the recommendation is http://magptioc.com/Final%20Report(1).pdf

The link to the agreement is http://community.magpt.com/use_agreement.pdf

I remind you that I only post comments of identified authors.

Theenie Smith

I just can't or won't let myself believe it's over.

I too am sad that this didn’t happen YET.  It’s not too late, the greens are still alive.  For those interested in numbers we had 199 pledges for associate memberships and 107 golf memberships.  The goal for the number of golf memberships were based on 200 individual memberships.  We received pledges for 24 couple memberships and 1 family membership in addition to the individual memberships.  When you do the math that works out to 60% of the calculated money needed.  We were at 2/3’s of our goal for associate memberships and I think once people realized that the pool was going to become a very nice place to take your family and visit with neighbors from all over the community along with the other family activities that would be held at the club during the entire year, we could have filled that gap fairly quickly.  My concern and what has me scratching my head was number of golfers that we did not hear from.  I thought that once Dan laid out his strategy on how he planned to get the golf course in great shape, they would have responded with at least a pledge.  We did have 107 respond and I want to thank those people for their pledges and apologize to them that we weren’t able to get the other 40%.  There are several golfers that pledged associate memberships just because they wanted to do something while the golf course was getting ready and I want them to know that their support in that way was also appreciated.  Although I think Dan has had the wind knocked out of his sails, I don’t think he has given up entirely so if you haven’t pledged please do so.  I am still checking the turkeycreekcc@gmail.com email and will continue to log the pledges.  One thing I am also considering, just to satisfy my own curiosity, is another door to door campaign to simply ask if each resident has pledged a membership and if they haven’t would they mind telling me why.  We did not send letters because we didn’t have money for the mailing.  We don’t have everyone’s email address and some people don’t even have email.  One of the questions I keep asking myself is whether or not everyone in the community is even aware that they have the opportunity of helping the club reopen.