Quote:
Originally Posted by graciegirl
In our younger days we lived in a golf course community, it was a public course and we enjoyed it but it was put up for sale and we didn't want to see it become a bunch of homes so....a hundred or so homeowners bought the course. These were folks who we played golf with for years and thought a couple of thousand dollars each, we are in. What a disaster. We soon learned that common sense is a rarity. Meetings were dominated by know it alls and funds were argued about. Some women wanted to enlarge the ladies locker room and hire a masseuse, some guys wanted to get a loan and redesign the whole course with a golf course architect. There were those who wanted to use private carts on the course and those who didn't. There are those who wanted to turn the hamburger beer concession into fine dining.
WE all finally got out of it and sold it to someone who did build houses on it and we all lost about a thousand bucks each but learned tons about a group of homeowners coming to agreement on what money should be spent on.
And the suit of which you speak..profited those attorneys about four million bucks personally, if I remember correctly and the now president of the POA fifty grand, not that was the reason for the suit. No one can say quite clearly what the reason for the suit was because they aren't allowed to talk about it if they were involved. But we do hear a LOT of opinions. Some must be true, but who knows??? Since I have lived here, the last six years the south side of 466 is maintained perfectly.
Here is a link to that suit from the Orlando Sentinel from March 2006 when it happened.
Villages developer to pay $40 million for recreation upgrades to settle a lawsuit - Orlando Sentinel |
I spent my life working at golf courses and the majority of that time running private country clubs and you are absolutely 100% correct. Everyone that gets elected to a board has their own little agenda. Couple that with the fact that most people have never really run anything and you have a recipe for disaster. That is exactly why I left a good job at a country club and went on to teaching full time for less money.
You will always have people who think that they know better then the experts that they hire do perform certain duties. I remember having a member of the greens committee call my superintendent one day to tell him that he needed to syringe the fifth green. The committee member was a retired postal carrier. Nothing wrong with that, but he knew nothing about maintaining a golf course. He and the superintendent almost came to blows.
I also had a tournament chairman for several years that tried to set up every tournament so that there were large cash payouts for the top few teams. Of course, his teams always finished in the money.
I did have one club president for a long time who ran his own business and back us up completely. He would tell the board members to let the professionals do their jobs. Give them and idea of the outcome that you want and then let them do it. If people who get elected would take this kind of attitude governments would work a lot better. Unfortunately, they seldom do and we end up with situations like Gracie has described.