President's Message from Scott

Over the last month, the Board of Directors has been focused on soliciting feedback and finalizing the path forward on bylaw changes and the new membership categories. There has been great thinking and feedback from the membership (via the information session as well as over 50 one-on-one conversations) as well as the perspectives of the Membership, Golf, and Finance Committees – each support moving forward with the planned memberships with important changes. The Board has aligned around a path forward, incorporating the feedback we received. A communication is planned very soon along with the announcement of a Special Meeting to finalize the results of the bylaws vote.

February Past Business

Our GM, Leslie Ludlow kicked off our meeting by summarizing Sahalee’s financials through the end of February. The club is slightly ahead of our operating budget. Probably most encouraging is the volume and momentum of our F&B operations which has been steadily building. I commented to the Board that through one-on-one meetings I have had with Leslie, I’m impressed with her efforts to build a cohesive, well-functioning team as well as her attention to a wide variety of details on both the member experience and cost side of our business. Leslie is introducing good management leadership practices that will help with effective team communications. And I think we all agree we are starting to see her influence over Sahalee’s food & beverage operations with an increased level of planning, communicating and executing more regular themed events (prime rib night – yea!). I’ve heard from several members who tell me the quality and experiences are noticeably better. We all recognize there’s more to do, but I feel we’re heading in a positive direction. And the results show it with food cost of sales improving by x% versus the first 2 months of 2022 and “covers” (number of persons serve being up 26% over last year in our first two months of 2023

Charlie updated the BOD on the conclusion of the bunker transformation project I think we can all agree they look fantastic The project took a bit longer but was completed slightly under budget – which is a great demonstration of vendor management on Charlie’s behalf I suspect we’re all going to be in for a rude awakening when we have to hit a golf ball out of our new jewels and can’t just admire their beauty from afar. At this time, Charlie is anticipating an April 15th open date for all bunkers.

The Board approved a recommendation from the finance committee for a focus on Proprietary Membership sales, with a small discount of the Membership Price to select recipients who the club already knows (e.g., Jr. Executives). Our Proprietary Membership sales goal is 36 new members for 2023 with a blended Membership Price slightly lower than our full rate of $50,000. I’ve heard from a few of you that we should focus on Proprietary Memberships and I couldn’t agree more. In addition to touring new Prospective Members we are hopeful that this targeted effort will produce 10 or more new Proprietary Memberships conversions / sales. With this approval, Deann, our new Membership Director is on it.

Additionally, the Board approved a new tee time reservation policy. As part of the plan to create more value for Proprietary Members, the Board approved a policy whereby Proprietary and Senior Members will enjoy 7-day advanced access to the tee sheet. Associate Members other than Social will continue to have 5-day access. And Social Members will have 3-day access. Additional benefits for Proprietary Members were also approved including free use of the aboutGolf simulators all year, exclusive access to our Golf Professional team to request reciprocal rounds at other clubs, and complimentary club fittings The leadership team is now determining how to put this all into action