Welcome. Thanks for attending the Club’s Annual Meeting. My name is Steve Dreybus and have been serving as the General Manager of the Club since last September.
Over the last five months, I have had the pleasure of getting to know many of you. One thing I can say for sure…we have a very impressive group of members. As we begin transitioning from this long and dreadful Winter to the Spingtime when the Club becomes even more vibrant and active, I do look forward to getting to know you better and getting even more involved with the membership.
In my view, the purpose of today’s meeting is to inform the membership as to how the Club is doing, particularly in light of this very difficult economy. I’d also like to review the various aspects of our operation with you and discuss areas that we believe the Club is doing well in, areas that we need to focus more closely on, and share with you some of the concerns and challenges we face as we begin a new year. I would then like to review our 2010 goals and objectives and what we believe are the keys to achieving them. Finally, we will open this meeting up to member questions on whatever issues or concerns that you may have.
Before we begin, let me acknowledge to everyone that we have just completed a very difficult year at the Club. However, this has been a difficult year for our Nation, its people, our members, and small businesses everywhere. So we are not alone in the challenges that we face and unfortunately, we are still very much dealing with this so called “Great Recession” and look forward to it coming to an end hopefully sometime soon.
With that in mind, I am not going to paint a picture to you that everything is normal and that our Club is thriving in spite of the economy around us. We have our challenges like everyone else. As I mentioned in the letter, the Club’s revenues were off “across the board” in golf, food and beverage, initiation fees, and dues. Additionally, the developer (Realtec) is no longer able to provide financial support to prop up the Club. I believe it is important for our members to know that even in good times, the developer was providing financial assistance to the Club.
Thus changes have been made over the last few years to deal with the changing economic conditions. However, in spite of these changes our goal has always been to do so in ways that do not “take away” from the member experience or the quality of the product that we provide to you. In fact, our goal has been to actually improve service as part of whatever changes have been made. Certainly there continue to be areas that we need to improve upon and situations when we occasionally “drop the ball”. When this happens, please know that we feel as badly as you do. However, we should also recognize the many areas that we excel in and the many wonderful things that our Club offers that far surpass what others can or are doing.
This Country Club is very important to the Ford’s Colony community. In the member survey performed last year…and by the way a special thanks to Barry Golliday for his extensive time and effort in performing this… we saw the importance of having Club “promoters” versus Club “detractors” within our membership. We understand that gone are the days when we could automatically count on the developer to sell 60 to 140 new Club memberships per year. This means that we must work harder to both get new members and at retaining our existing members. This is not easy given the economy and the unique nature of this business where both members and non members alike can enjoy our Club. Thus, it may sound corny but our primary goal is to “exceed our member’s expectations”. I believe the staff that we have in place subscribes to this philosophy and is committed to making this happen.
For us to succeed, we must work closely with our members to listen to their concerns and respond to their constructive comments, input, and counsel. Equally so, our members must recognize that we too must be able to meet our payroll, grow our revenue, and pay our bills and obligations. I am proud to say that we listened to your CCMA Board last year when they recommended that now is not the time to raise dues as a means of balancing the books.
Conversely, the Board and our members listened to our concerns that we were losing revenue primarily from our inability to sell the “public” course due to a lack of available tee times. We were told that Marriott was routinely sending their guests to Williamsburg National and other local courses due to their inability to access our courses. Working together, we were able to modify the tee time policy during those peak times of year which should help.
Perhaps this is a good time to thank Lovee Curtiss, last year’s CCMA President, and the entire CCMA Board for their leadership. I admired how Lovee listened to her colleagues on the Board and listened to Club management in trying to understand the issues and reach consensus in developing common sense solutions.
As we begin a new year, we very much look forward to working with your new President, Sam Bowlin, along with new Board members Dan Desmond, Barry Golliday, and Frank McMorrow.
What makes our Club great is not its three golf courses or the elegant dining venues or the fine food that we serve. Clearly, those types of things are important. But what truly makes our Club so great are the members that we have.
Just last week I was at Home Depot for three hours with Jim Baldridge, one of our members, who was spending his own time picking out two by fours so that he and his fellow woodworkers within the HOA (some of whom are also members) could construct 15 benches to benefit the golfers that walk our courses every day. Recently John Zivica, member, was busy coordinating another “Divot Repair Day” enlisting fellow members to help repair divots on our golf courses. I just met with Gene Kessler and Tom Brownlie as they have begun preparing for this year’s Olde Town Medical Classic which provides free health care to the poor and indigent people in our community. I also met with Don Baker and Bob Keith who have started working on the Land Conservancy Challenge which preserves the undeveloped land in our community. The list of selfless acts by so many of our members is truly endless. Whether the beneficiary is our Country Club, local charities, or people that our members will never even meet, we know how lucky we are to have such quality members as part of this Club.
I would like to pay a special thanks to the 2009 Committee chairs and their members. Their guidance, input, and recommendations within these committees provide the Club with critical information and feedback needed to better manage and constantly improve. Their input is critical to our ability to “exceed your expectations” and we thank you all of you.
At this point, I would like to begin reviewing our 2009 slide presentation.
(click here)
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