Paul Sylvester, right, gives Polic Parnell a golf lesson Nov. 20 at the Dunedin Country Club. Sylvester is a PGA golf professional and general manager of St. Andrews Links public golf course and Parnell is a member of the Dunedin Country Club.
DUNEDIN – The Dunedin City Commission unanimous vote for the new license agreement for the Dunedin Country Club was met with applause after 26 months of negotiations. The vote was taken at a Nov. 19 meeting.
The new agreement will be for 20 years, and the new name of the facility will be the Dunedin Golf Club. The agreement emphasizes that the club is to create and maintain a welcoming attitude to the public and make known when its restaurant facilities are open to the public.
It is also to employ a professional general manager to oversee operational control and its day-to-day operations. Also, a city employee designated by the city manager will be a full voting member of the club’s board of directors.
According to City Manager Rob DiSpirito, the current agreement requires the club to pay 5 percent of gross revenues, or rent, which amounts to about $88,000 a year. Under the new agreement, there would be no such requirement for the first five years. Instead, there is a revenue threshold that would act as a trigger for additional payments to the city. Other factors are in place that would benefit the community, DiSpirito said.
In these first five years, the club will pay a license payment of 5 percent of gross revenues from golf-related sources, and one half of this sum is taken out. Half of that amount will go toward the salary and benefits of the general manager, and the other half is for capital improvements.
“This will result in a higher level of capital funding with which to maintain the course than would otherwise be the case under the current agreement,” DiSpirito said.
At year six, the club’s license fee goes up to 6 percent. In addition to the license payment, a memo to the commission states, 20 percent of gross revenues from all golf operations in excess of $1.8 million will be paid to the city, and 10 percent of gross revenues from all other noncontractual revenues to the club in excess of $900,000 will be paid to the city. Both of these thresholds will increase by 3 percent each year.
Jane Baird, treasurer of the country club, addressed the commission to urge them to vote for the new agreement, saying it is “a thousand times better” than the old one.
“It’s a vote in favor of the increased openness to the public through an improved attitude and access to our food and beverage operations in addition to the golf course facility,” Baird said. “It’s a vote in favor of fiscal responsibility through a jointly agreed upon capital funding mechanism. It’s a vote in favor of professional management which has already clearly proven to be beneficial to the club.”
Baird said that the club’s board had recently voted 106 to 4 in favor of the agreement.
Commissioner Dave Carson said that he is pleased to have a document on which to vote after such a long process. Although no one commissioner can get everything he or she wants in such a document, he said he is pleased with the compromises and urged everyone to vote for the agreement.
Commissioner Julie Ward Bujalski also spoke in favor of the agreement and that she is satisfied with the financial plan.
“Is there a substantial difference in the dollar amount paid to the city in the 20-year life of the agreement? What I found between rent and shared revenue payments, there’s roughly only about a $25,000 per year difference between the two agreements all told through the whole 20 years each year,” Bujalski said. “And about half of that $25,000 per year difference is required to go back into the improvement of the public’s property.”
Mayor Dave Eggers said he fully supports the new agreement and was excited to be there for the vote. He said it is a good agreement that the city should rally around.
“To me, there is not a choice,” Eggers said. “There might have been some other choice in some other arena some other day, but today there’s no other choice. This is a good, strong agreement for this city to rally around and it shames the old agreement and I’m really excited about it.”
The new license agreement will go into effect on Tuesday, Dec. 1.
![[Image]](/content_images/112709_dun-03.jpg)
