Eagle Harbor owners face golf assessment

COURTESY : The Florida Times-Union
Published August 3, 2003 
By R. Michael Anderson 

A proposal to require all Eagle Harbor homeowners to pay $124 a year to support the upscale community's financially struggling public golf course will be the subject of a meeting at 5 p.m. Thursday at Fleming Island United Methodist Church, 7170 U.S. 17.

The meeting was scheduled by the Crossings at Fleming Island Community Development District Board of Supervisors, which has the authority to impose the controversial assessment, says the developer's attorney, John Kopelousos.

There is no legal document stating that homeowners are obligated to provide financial support for the golf course, Kopelousos said Wednesday, but "the five supervisors get to vote on it."

If most board members vote to levy the assessment to help boost revenue for operation and maintenance of the golf course, homeowners will be expected to pay it unless they go to court and get a judge to "set it aside," Kopelousos said.

The board of supervisors held a four-hour workshop on the issue Monday, during which "a lot of people got up and said they didn't want to save it [golf course] and some said they did want to save it," he said.

The board recently placed legal ads in newspapers announcing the plan to impose the $124 assessment, an amount that could be lowered Thursday but not increased, said Kopelousos, who has served for years as the chief legal counsel for the Eagle Harbor developers.

Eagle Harbor property owners currently pay about $300 a year in special assessments for the operation and maintenance of common amenities, such as the tennis complex, swim park and landscaping.

Kopelousos said he could understand why some homeowners, particularly those who do not play golf, might not want to pay the extra assessment, especially because the golf course was purchased by the Board of Supervisors in 1999 from East West Partners for $6.5 million and residents were told at that time that "the golf course would be self-sufficient."

"When we bought the golf course it was going in the right direction, but after we bought it all golf courses started going downhill," he said. "We ended up paying too much for it, as it turns out. Today, you cannot build a golf course for less than $6.5 million."

But in the past four years, he said, revenue has continued to drop at the golf course. While nearly 50,000 rounds of golf were recorded there in 1999, the number of rounds had dropped to about 46,000 last year.

The developer has agreed to kick in an additional $200,000 this year to "help the golf course out," Kopelousos said, but homeowners will be expected to make a contribution as well.

Kopelousos said raising membership and greens fees is not something the Board of Supervisors favors because it could have the opposite effect, particularly among those who pay $200 a month in membership dues.

"The last time we raised the fees we lost 60 members," he said. "We've got to get more people playing out there. It's a great facility."

Kopelousos said he expects a large audience to attend the meeting Thursday. One resident likely to be there is Scott Binder of Eagle Watch Drive, who said homeowners should not be required to help the golf course management meet its financial obligations.

In a letter to the Board of Supervisors, Binder said he felt the proposed assessment would be unfair and, perhaps, illegal. 

"This issue is viewed by me and many others that I have spoken to as a misappropriation of funds with regard to the purchase and operation of the golf course," Binder said in his letter. "It is not the responsibility of the members of this community to bail out the golf course. As with any business that falls upon hard times it may be necessary to reduce operating expenses through layoffs, debt refinancing, wage and benefit concessions, and managerial changes."

If the board insists upon levying the proposed assessment, Binder said, the decision could lead to "costly litigation by ... homeowners" and, possibly, a request for an audit by the Florida Attorney General.


 
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