The three amigo fence fixers!
by Kelley Greaves.
These three amigos fixed the fence along the 6th on Monday.
“So I’ve arrived for golf on Monday and a few of the fellows were talking about Bernie and Ronnie needing more than a set of earplugs to use while we did the wire fence down Minnamurra lane, they were so rude!
My response was, “ How can they wear earplugs as they won’t be able to hear my advise on how to do the fence.”
[Kelley was the supervisor and Bern and Ronnie didn’t need earplugs!]
Help Wanted.
1) Cart Maintenance – the club is seeking expressions of interests from members or non members who have appropriate electrical/mechanical qualifications to undertake 6 monthly cart maintenance checks and if necessary repairs. Remuneration to be negotiated.
2) The Board is also wishing to create a list of member volunteers who have chainsaw qualifications and who are willing to assist with cutting up flood debris logs into manageable sized pieces. If any members have appropriate certificates of training and are interested in assisting please submit details to the Bob Neilson, club secretary, through the Office?
Member Update from the President.
Members will be aware from recent Daily Cow articles that the Club has acquired some new machinery (a new greens mower, new fairway mower and a small compact tractor). Additionally, the Club has had to acquire new golf competition and membership management software (MiClub). The two mowers have been acquired under chattel mortgage (basically a hire buy system where the machinery becomes the Club’s property at the end of the hire period).
These were all essential acquisitions, but the bottom line is that it increases our Club’s annual operating costs by around $40,000 per year. Spread across the membership (currently 577 of which 459 are full fee-paying members) this equates to around $90 per member per year.
However, after two disastrous financial years (2021 Covid & 2022 8 months of severe wet weather closures) the club is trending (fingers crossed) towards achievement of a healthy profit for 23/24. The final profit result for the current year will have been underpinned to a certain extent by a “temporary” shortage of greens staff over that financial term. Head Green Keeper Nick has been trying to hire a suitably skilled person to assist his team, but his latest hire decided the work wasn’t for him after just a couple of weeks. Consequently, the team have been working more than the usual amount of overtime which takes it’s physical toll on them. Clearly, our green staff numbers need to increase and soon so those expenses will come back to normal in the near future.
The Board is very sympathetic to the impacts of inflation on our members and has accordingly tried to alleviate the impact of levying the full cost outlined above on its membership but have no choice other than to increase our membership fees for the year ahead. Instead of the full $90 increase the Board has applied an increase of $50 for full members ($1 per week) and a pro rata increase of $25 for intermediate members. Juniors will remain at $30. Members who have attained 80 years of age and held 10 or more years continuous membership will again be rewarded with a $200 discount on their 2024 membership fees.
The Board encourages all members to utilize their trophy account balances to offset their membership fees when they fall due from 1 June 2024, or if you have the capacity follow the lead of many of our members in donating some or all of your trophy account back to the Club to help with the most recent flood recovery.
The Board also aspires to achieving an equitable balance in the burden of maintenance and management of the club between its competition playing members and non – competition playing members. In this regard, the allocation of prize money from competitions will be increased by 50% and the Club has established the option for members to use their trophy accounts through a voucher system with Drummond Golf Shellharbour, Jamberoo IGA and the Jamberoo Butcher. With the introduction of the new MiClub software system members will soon be able to use their trophy accounts to pay for any golf club charges (bar, shop, cart hire, competition fees etc.) The only exception would be for rare things that don’t get assigned to the BePOS (Point of Sale) system.
Other news
At long last the Club received the first tree lopping approval from Kiama Council and is waiting for a response to a second application. There is a 10-tree limit and a $175 fee for each application. You may have seen some plastic tags attached to certain trees; white indicates that approval has been sought, blue indicates that a tree can be trimmed, and red indicates that a tree can be removed. The course was closed due to the recent flood event, and we were able to act on the first Council approval with an arborist undertaking tree pruning work on the 5th and 12th holes. There is a lot more to be done!
MiClub has been introduced in stages from early April and will become an asset to members when it is fully installed in early May. There have been some early teething problems with member access to the booking page for some. I am sure that these will be overcome and soon you will be able to check the balance of your prize account and your results for each competition. The ability to use your phone to score your rounds using the MiScore App is also something of note that members have the option to use.
As you are all aware the course has been seriously impacted by the recent flood event, with significant costs associated with repair and or replacement of damaged infrastructure. The Board is investigating options and processes (Council planning approval requirements) to upgrade many of our more at-risk paths to concrete or an alternative, more flood resistant surface. It is our specific intent to utilize the generous donations of members from their trophy accounts or separately to fund the restoration and any improvement works.
I would personally like to sincerely thank those members who have donated to the 2024 Flood Recovery Fund and to those members and visitors who volunteered their time and energy in the clean-up. The spirit of giving and helping is alive and well at Jamberoo.
Phil Hahn
President