In our last post we wrote about how MUCH MCA Homeowners are subsidizing The Meadows Country Club. In this post we’ll write about how MANY benefit from this. The best way to view this is by household (not number of members) because:
1. We pay MCA assessments by household, not by person,
2. Family members pay a trivial amount as secondary members (only 25% of full membership as stipulated by TMCC bylaws)
We’re going to focus on “Full” golf memberships (Platinum, Gold and Silver) who pay from $7,000 to $11,000 for a full year membership. These ARE substantial golf membership fees and these members also pay a cart fee of $20-30 per round. This type of membership is the “core” of a private club and it would take a LOT of other restricted memberships to provide equal revenue to a full golf member (which is not feasible). This is consistent with how TMCC leadership has referred to these memberships and views them. These are the primary beneficiaries of MCA Homeowners’ subsidy of TMCC.
(See footnotes 1 to 4 for all the details supporting this approach)
So how many Full Golf member households are there in The Meadows?
4% of MCA Households
(Chart labels show membership category, households in that category, and % of 3,500 MCA households in that category)
36% of Full golf TMCC households that MCA Homeowners subsidize live outside The Meadows and don’t even pay MCA assessments.
(these are just “slices” because they aren’t part of the MCA Household “pie” so no % of MCA Households is applicable)
We cannot continue having so many MCA Homeowners
pay so much to subsidize so few. Action must be taken to save the golf courses from TMCC’s continuing failure as a private golf club.
Please share this and our website with your friends and neighbors.
And encourage them to vote for MCA Board members
who will focus on MCA Homeowner interests in the upcoming election.
Contact us at ForTheMeadows@SarasotaMeadows.com
Footnotes (for the details)
(1) Link to all TMCC Membership #’s and fees. These are as of Feb 2024. As of Nov 30, 2024 there are the same number of total Platinum, Gold, Silver full members (annual memberships run Jan-Dec so resignations will show up in January (although oddly, annual members can resign during the year)). There is significant amount of work to figure out who is an MCA resident and who is not and we have not re-performed that work on the current member list (many have membership addresses outside of Sarasota so we used Sarasota County Property Tax database to search for each of those members to determine if they had a Meadows address or other address in Sarasota).
(2) “Other Golf” categories are: Young Professional (3 age categories: <40, 40-44, & 45-49), and Seasonal golf membership of 1-3 months that pay lower fees.
(3) “Other Tennis” categories are: Young Professional (up to age 49), Evening & Weekend + Pickleball, and Seasonal golf memberships.
(4) Why it makes sense to focus on Full/Core Golf Members – Tennis member fees are about $800,000/year in total and we believe this far exceeds the cost to run the tennis facility. So the tennis club appears to be self-sustaining and viable as a standalone club. As the tennis club appears to be profitable, Tennis players are subsidizing golf. 46% of Tennis member households are in the MCA, 54% are outside the MCA.
Social members pay about $600,000/year in fees in total (estimated). They cost nothing incremental for the dining, golf and tennis access they receive (they have very limited access to golf and tennis facilities). It is also a subsidy of golf.
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