CYC Financial Situation (Remmert Wolters, Treasurer)

Those, who attended the membership meeting, did get an overview of the club’s finances. For those, who did not, I can make a long story short by stating that we held our own. Our income dropped substantially but we were able to cut expenses to a point that we will have a break-even year or slightly better. Considering the current times, that is a good result.

We do need to cover the clubhouse project and the fact that we had to take on some debt to do it. The rebuild is a one in twenty-five-year event that was unavoidable. It started out as a barge project but expanded to include windows and siding. The windows were in danger of falling out and the siding was toast. There were some other issues that needed to be taken care of and, what started out as a $200K project turned into a $600K project. We will get our clubhouse back later this month and, although we will be installing new carpet and re-finishing the floors in January, it will be as good as new by the time we can use it again.

Our membership was amazingly generous, and we can fund 85% of the project with donations. The last 15%, we had to borrow from the bank ($50K) and members ($50K). No-one was comfortable with the decision to borrow money, but the board had no choice to approve it and the project could not be completed without it. We take these financial obligations very seriously and we are committed to pay down these loans at the earliest opportunity.

To keep capital and operational activity separated, we have stand-alone accounts for “The Heart of CYC” and “The Jr. Capital Fund”. We will create a similar account for debt service. It will function as a reserve account to make sure that we can service our debts for the immediate future. Once enough reserves have been accumulated, we will start pre-paying back these loans as the funds allow. We are basically looking at five-year commitments but, if possible, we would like to see these loans go away in the next two years.

If you are in a position and inclined to help us with that, a donation would be appreciated. Mark the donation “Debt Service Relief” and Cindy (CYC's business manager) will make sure that it gets posted accordingly.