Club Business

Letter to Haig Point Board 1/30/23 Hello Board, We have been here as full-time property owners at Haig Point for one year. We love our island and our community and want to never consider moving away. We are both very vested in doing everything we can to create a flourishing and healthy, which starts with financially healthy, community. As there is a lot at stake regarding the proposed assessments, we wanted to explain our reasons behind our vote. For ease of further communications, they are numbered as follows: 1. The total of the proposed assessments is $21 million with a $7M assessment in the future to bring our roads up to serviceable conditions. We do not see valid reasons for funding all the proposed at once, all at this time. Combined with factors listed below, it seems not only problematic to fund them all right now but is a bigger ask of our members than seems prudent. 2. Three of the proposed projects (golf, the grill room upgrades, and the pickleball courts) are potentially revenue producing amenities. Our money has been requested to fund these projects, and it would be unreasonable for the members to consider doing so without reviewing a business plan for each proposed revenue producing project. Please make immediately available to all members to be assessed a detailed business plan for each of these projects. 3. A key element for each of these projects would be to name a professional project manager with education and experience in each project area that would oversee the entire project and be accountable for all monies spent and for the successful completion of the project. 4. The Grill Room patio project’s business plan needs to detail exact steps for training all our kitchen and serving staff to be able to consistently execute delicious, hot, and beautifully plated offerings delivered with competent speed to each table. We are not adequately delivering this now, when the Grill Room is mostly empty. To expand the space and invite more customers, particularly non-members who may be considering buying a home here, before we fix our food service lines, would be disastrous. 5. The proposed road repair project is ambiguous. It is not only unclear which roads will receive repair, but also what kind of repair is being planned. Even though there are limited contractors available to do this work, a conscientious plan describing which roads, what level/type of repair, and estimated costs as given by a project manager (covering all aspects, including tree/root removal, barges, etc.) Also, at the Q & A meeting last week, a member with decades of experience in road building called into the meeting and made a clear point that the proposed $3M was far too low of a figure. A plan of “using the $3M for as much road as it gives us” doesn’t address the pertinent issues. Please provide detailed plans that will satisfactorily repair our roads. Perhaps a larger scope is necessary to make the best choice possible. Instead of piecemealing the road work, get all available contractors to provide a comprehensive plan to repair all of the roads at Haig Point. Another option is to provide an exact plan of repairing the troubled areas of road that are currently hazards. Detail which roads, type of repair to be done, etc. and make this available in a project plan to the voting members. 6. The proposed golf course project gives only one costly option. Many members are heard to object to the almost $12M price tag, saying that the proposed upgrades are unnecessary and extravagant. It is concerning to us that not all members would be represented by the only choice available. We request that a new golf course assessment proposal be presented with all pertinent details outlining three different choices for which members may vote. That way, the choice of repair or upgrade chosen would represent the majority of the members. While these above reasons could be reason enough, there is a far greater reason: Trust, or lack thereof. You have not demonstrated that we can trust you with our money. Our membership fees were assessed recently at a quarterly increase of 10%. Since we made an offer on our home in late 2021, our fees have increased 25%. A prior assessment for docks was taken for operating expenses. Two other assessments were passed in the past 10 years. Where did this money go? Monies given in the Covid loan have been absorbed by operating costs. There are no capital reserves. There have been no individual project bank accounts to protect past projects from leaking funds into operating expenses or other needs. There is not a plan in place, nor one proposed, for strictly controlling costs. Instead, Ty Wooldridge has offered a plan to artificially make some areas look solvent by adjusting profits and losses on the books, to make the deficit producing department “feel better.” There is an apparency if not reality of lack of communication, transparency, coordination, and accountability regarding spending. We have the same concern that we have heard echoed by many others in our community: that should the assessments pass, the unbridled spending will only become more so, and most of the $21M of this new assessment will become lost in “operating costs.” We had voted for the increase in dues last year as we were promised that our operating deficit here at Haig Point would be healed and we would be able to operate back in black. It has been acknowledged by the CFO that we are not at break-even at this point. While we do not expect to have cleared the deficit at this point, we believe it is responsible for us to require documentation that we are making excellent consistent progress in becoming financially sound before approving any further increase of funds. We shall be voting NO on each proposed project assessment. It would be a precarious risk to approve $21M. It is a huge outlay of funds with unaccountable spending. We cannot risk project incompletion and worsening conditions. At such time trust is restored, we would entertain detailed business plans for the revenue (or potentially revenue producing) projects, and comprehensive project plans for the infrastructure projects proposed. Thank you, Jim and Lisa Hutchinson