Without a referendum, golf course triage is the best option
Commentary by Tom Stauss
Ocean Pines Association general manager Bob Thompson has presented the board of directors with a detailed description of challenges facing the Ocean Pines golf course, together with a possible long-term solution that can be charitably called a $1.7 million poison pill. That’s the estimated cost of rebuilding the greens on the course, supposedly to prevent the sort of failure that occurred on the course this past summer, and restarting the moribund golf drainage project, specifically holes 11, 12 and 13, over the next year.
This $1.7 million doesn’t complete the golf drainage project, which would only be halfway towards a total course rebuild if holes 11, 12 and 13 are funded. Figure an additional $2 to $3 million or so for the remaining nine holes if the program is resurrected.
Do the math: The real cost of a long-term solution is at least $3.7 million or more.
The possibility of rebuilding and replacing the greens is just the latest example of how previously unanticipated "big ticket" capital projects can emerge out of the ether and compete for the OPA’s reserve dollars. Thompson is well aware that the prospect of spending $1.7 million and counting on golf course improvements will not be popular among the 8,200-plus households and lots whose owners do not buy annual golf memberships in Ocean Pines.
He wisely stops short of recommending that the board spend that much on the course next year for long-term improvements, but he makes it clear that short-term improvements and repairs – triage is the word he uses imprecisely to describe it – is the only alternative. Triage, in the medical sense of the term, means that some patients are allowed to die while others, deemed more likely to survive, are tended to. Such stark choice between life and death is not analogous to maintenance issues in Ocean Pines, or at least it shouldn’t be; indeed, no critical repair should ever be neglected, a standard of performance that the OPA has not always met.
But selecting less costly shorter term solutions to management challenges is not triage; it’s good policy and effective management in challenging economic times.
The central policy question underlying what to do with the golf course is whether the board of directors wants to continue a prior board’s announced preference for longer-term solutions to maintenance issues facing the OPA’s aging amenities. Given the costs associated with these longer-term options, less costly shorter term solutions, such as the re-sodding of several greens that occurred in September and October, may very well be the more sensible approach.
Given the large expenditures associated with rebuilding the Ocean Pines golf course, the board of directors should let property owners, in referendum, decide how to proceed. Taken in isolation, a green replacement program costing an estimated $868,906 would not require a referendum under OPA by-laws, nor would the next phase, at a cost of $868,906, of a multi-year golf drainage program..
But that is a technicality, as many property owners would group various components of golf course improvements – from green reconstruction to rebuilding fairways and roughs – under a single banner.
OPA President Tom Terry, in a brief conversation after the October board meeting, recognized this, telling the Progress that he would not be inclined "to play games" with these project components in an effort to evade a referendum. OPA Treasurer and Director Pete Gomsak, unfortunately, reacted somewhat differently to that same hypothetical; he seemed more inclined to apply the letter of the bylaws in deciding whether this or that golf improvement project should be subject to referendum. He seemed to be suggesting that if a particular component costs less than the current referendum threshold of about $1.6 million, the board would be under no obligation to ask for property owner permission to proceed with it.
It’s possible that the predispositions of Terry and Gomsak will converge once the hypothetical becomes more finite and immediate. That said, Terry’s predisposition seems far more respectful of property owners, who really ought to have the final say on whether millions of dollars are spent improving the golf course. After all, they own the course; and it’s their money that would be used to rebuild an amenity whose annual membership is only slightly more than 200 households this year.
Gomsak’s more literal approach to applying the letter of the bylaws, though technically correct, is tone-deaf politically and morally bankrupt. Other directors should follow the Terry prescription and avoid playing games with OPA member contributions.
Simply put, total dollars at issue in golf improvements far exceed the referendum threshold, and it’s that fact that ought to guide the board in its future deliberations
A right-sized approach to the challenges on the golf course is to take corrective actions well short of a robust multi-million dollar reconstruction. Resodding of greens, preferably using grass with eight-to-twelve inch root systems, should be limited to those holes that failed this past summer. Not every hole did; the worst offenders have already been resodded with grass whose root systems should be able to withstand a brutal Eastern Shore summer. That isn’t triage; it’s fixing what’s broken and not trying to fix what isn’t.
Similarly, drainage issues on holes 11 and 12 have been long-standing. Hole 13 hasn’t been afflicted particularly by flooding and should not be rebuilt with fixes to 11 and 12. Indeed, the entire golf drainage project should be abandoned in favor of targeted fixes to areas that, over many years and decades, have been prone to flooding, such as the 11th green and 12th tee box. Isolated low spots can be filled and trees thinned out to promote air flow and sunlight. OPA Public Works and golf maintenance staff can handle tree-cutting chores over the winter.
The board and the community would be well served to have Billy Casper Golf experts in for a thorough grilling on options for the golf course, including those that fall short of a total reconstruction.
The course can be made more playable, acceptably so, by learning from this past summer’s mistakes and taking lower cost corrective measures as needed. If the board feels differently about this – and that remains to be seen – then let that judgment be sold to property owners in a referendum process.
– Tom Stauss
Uploaded: 11/8/2011
