In Decembers meeting the Board of Trustees (B.O.T.) officially announced the increase in your dues for the upcoming dues year April 1st ,2019. There is a bylaw change which reduces the time you have to pay your dues it is now 90 days from April 1st, after that you will be removed from the membership roll. Also, if you pay late you will be charged an additional $25 Per month starting May 1st. There are other consequences involved for late payments please read your dues notices and bylaws for these consequences. Your dues are now $450 and boat slips have all gone up $100 for all slip holders. All members have to understand that by joining Gilford Park Yacht Club they become an integral part of its existence both in the present and in its future. Joining G.P.Y.C. is a long-term investment that means all must and mostly be involved and share in its principles, support the club through their dues and support all activities throughout the year. All of what I said above is essential. Your club can not exist without your support. These increases came with a lot of thought and compassion taking into consideration all of the different stages of life that encompasses our membership and what it takes to operate the club and nothing was taken lightly. It is the responsibility of the B.O.T. to make the best overall decisions about the current and future direction of the Club. To not look into our finances and not make these hard decisions would be a failure on the B.O.T.’s part and would be failing the membership. This would happen regardless of who is in office. This Commodores message is to Address any questions not all but what I think might come to mind. Before Sandy our dues were $185 a year, we had it easy, we had no mortgage, we had a small loan, we had a money market certificate which was the clubs nest egg in case of an emergency and a reserve of money just sitting in our daily accounts. The bar and kitchen were well established. After Sandy it was a totally different game. We lost bar and kitchen revenue for 4 long years. Our parking lot was also our emergency fund whereby we could always get a collateral loan on that parking lot. ALL AVENUES to obtain any type of collateral loans are gone almost forever. We need to move away from credit cards because as you know paid interest money is money you end up not having. We need to become our own bank and become self-sufficient and to do this we need a reserve of money. By our bylaws we only have two ways to raise money, its either by increasing the dues or assessing the membership when needed. Assessing the membership is not the way to go every time we need money for any type of emergency, it’s already too late. To ask for a lot of money from each member is not fair for anyone to come up with a large sum of money at one time that’s why we plan to increase our reserve money slowly over several years through this latest increase. All money will not go towards this reserve some will go to the operation of the club, reducing credit card balances and other items that I will mention below. We went for an SBA loan because the insurance money wasn’t enough and in order to get the SBA loan, we had to prove we could pay it back. That’s when we went with raising the dues to $300 a year. We had start up which also exceeded our expectations. Bar stools, furniture, resupplying the bar with glasses, and lavations. We had to start from scratch with the kitchen pots, pans, utensils and a whole lot of other items. Now looking forward we have unexpected costs: Yearly elevator maintenance contract, yearly fire inspections, third party security system, water systems checks all come with a cost and go up every year. We have yearly Maintenance on HVAC equipment and other equipment and we have a yearly cleaning contract. Our insurance requirements have increased. We had unexpected costs over the last couple years we had to pay $17,000 to fix the docks and pound down the outer poles. Approx. $1000 to fix the ramp, we had to purchase a $7,000 bubbler system to replace the deicing fans. We had costs for professional services that went beyond our expectations. We need to pay off the credit card debt. Future costs we will have to rebuild the ramp and fix the building break water. To make the club a quieter place sound proofing will be required. As I mentioned above being a member of GPYC is a long-term investment and requires everyone to support the club in mind, body, and sole and your Wallet. We are very fortunate to have our club opened year-round. Your Commodore: Ed Horton Comments are closed.
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AuthorVanessa Heinzman is the current Commodore of the Gilford Park Yacht Club. Archives
January 2024
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