Dear Members,
I hope everyone has had a good summer at Lakeside and enjoys the Labor Day Weekend.
The Lakeside annual meeting is coming up Monday November 5th . Each year at the annual meeting 4 of the 8 board members have to re-run for the board or we need new board members to replace the board members that do not want to re-run for the board. The club needs a strong board to survive and I feel at
this annual meeting we are going to need some new board members. If you have the desire to help run the club, please talk to a board member or myself about the possibility of running for the Board of Directors for Lakeside Country Club.
Tiger Woods made a great run at the PGA golf tournament in August at St Louis, as he returned from a decade of injury. Golf was a more popular sport during Wood’s earlier career when he won several major championships. In 2016, America counted only 23.8 million golfers, down from its peak of 30.6
million in 2003, according to the National Golf Foundation. In 2016, alone, 230 courses around the country closed for good. I bring these stats up since members want to know where we stand financially. As
of December 31, 2017 we had 148 golf memberships and at the end of July 2018 we have 135. As of December 31, 2017 we had 95 total social and social supreme memberships. As the end of July 2018 we had 101 social and social supreme memberships. So overall total memberships at the end of 2017 was
243 members and as of the end of July 2018 we have 236 members. Yes we are only down 7 members in a year but down 13 golf memberships that pay 3 times the dues of a social supreme member.
Right now the club is getting by financially but we need to look at the future of the club financially. We did have some minor repairs this summer that is hard to budget for – as the pump for irrigation system had to be fixed this spring for $ 5,000, we had the cooler in the kitchen go down twice- needs to be replaced but we are limping by at the moment. The Air/Conditioning unit and heater in the club’s office needs to be replaced. Also a few pool repairs will be done once the pool closes to check for leaks.
I don’t think a lot of people realize the daily cost of running a country club: the electricity, water bills (especially when pool is open), payroll in the summer includes lifeguards, golf maintenance staff, patio servers, pool servers and additional kitchen staff to service the members. We have insurance costs, chemicals to buy for the golf course, pool supplies and many other daily costs to run the club. The daily costs to run the club exists whether the clubs sits vacant (like the coliseum in downtown Bloomington) or is busy in use with members.
I talked at the annual meeting last year that we need to put a committee together to look at a possible dues increase and I thank those that volunteered to help serve on that committee. We will explore this
before the annual meeting to give you an update at the annual meeting on the progress of our findings.
We did some major updating of the club in the winter/spring of 2018 with the new flooring upstairs in the lounge and dining room. We finally got the parking lot resurfaced and anyone who visits the club notices this improvement right away. Also the pool wall was completed and everyone seems to like the
new look of the pool.
I hope some members will seriously think about running for the board in November and we want to continue the tradition of Lakeside Country Club like we have for the past 102 years for many more.
Please let me know if you have any question at seanpcraig@yahoo.com or at (309) 531-1109.
Sincerely,
Sean P Craig
President, Lakeside Country Club
