Tough times for West Pubnico Golf and Country Club

The club’s cumulative deficit is about $107,000 and its long-term debt $411,000, while the club’s membership has dropped by nearly half over the past half-dozen years, according to a letter from the club to government officials, including the Municipality of Argyle.

The club recently applied for and was granted a $30,000 line of credit – necessary to meet its current payables – secured with the help of personal guarantees from some of the club’s shareholders and members, according to the letter, which came up during a meeting of Argyle municipal councillors last week.

The letter notes that membership in the club has fallen from nearly 600 six years ago to “a little more than 300 members.”

The club’s plight was among the agenda items for Argyle council’s committee-of-the-whole session of Jan. 29.

The letter, also destined for Argyle MLA Chris d’Entremont and Frank Anderson of the South West Shore Development Authority, refers to a meeting of club shareholders last fall, where the board of directors was asked to look at ways of keeping the club operational.

The result of that session was the establishment of a five-person reorganizing committee, which, as the letter explains, has since recommended to the board that the club’s assets be turned over to a society and that the club be run as a “non-profit, community-based enterprise,” a recommendation the board has accepted in principle.

The committee also has recommended that the club’s debt be retired and so would not have to be borne by the proposed new society.

The recommendations were to be analyzed before a proposal was brought to the club’s shareholders.

The West Pubnico Golf and Country Club – frequently cited as the first in the region to open each year – is over 40 years old and its course was expanded to an 18-hole layout in the early 1990s.

Efforts to reorganize the club’s operation have just begun, Argyle council has been informed, and club officials are interested in working with various governments and agencies “in securing the continued existence of this vital recreational facility by a community-based association.”