SEQUIM – This is one deep-green haven, appropriately quiet and dotted with peaceable golfers.
Not far from SunLand’s fairways, though, there’s an uprising going on.
In the wake of a proposed $300 annual fee — aka an assessment — that some 850 homeowners would pay into a golf-course survival fund, some SunLanders are questioning the premises of this place.
Take James Karr, a retired University of Washington aquatic sciences and biology professor who moved into his SunLand North home in 2006.
Or Chuck Howerton, a retired computer science professor who established a statistics-intensive Web site titled “SunLand Owners Just Say No” at drchuckgd.com.
Or Tim Paschal, the retired Silverdale schools superintendent who’s conducted copious research on the legality of paying to help the SunLand Golf & Country Club emerge from its financial crisis.
The club has suffered from plummeting membership and revenue, losing half its players, including 48 who quit just this year, general Manager Tyler Sweet said last week.
And SunLand Golf & Country Club board President Jim Ratliff asserts if the golf course is allowed to fail SunLand’s homeowners will see their property values slide and their surroundings grow unappealing.
Karr, Paschal and Howerton, while agreeing that SunLand is a lovely place to live, find that argument flawed. They want clear documentation — a business plan, to start — before they would consider paying a golf-course support fee.
Karr, for his part, wouldn’t mind having the course turned into a park or greenbelt.
And if he could see an ecologically and economically sound plan for such a change, he would be delighted to pay a fee for that kind of green space.
A SunLand park, however, is a long shot, and Karr and the others understand that.
Larger picture
Today, they’re in the midst of trying to resolve the disagreement over how much value the golf course gives their homes — and whether, in the larger picture, that matters.
Karr and his wife, Elena, didn’t buy their SunLand house for the golf course, which is in a separate part of the development. They came for the Dungeness Valley’s natural beauty: trees, wildlife, mountain views.
Yet Karr said the argument he has heard from the golf course management goes something like this: These 18 holes are a boon to your property value, so when you die, your heirs will benefit from your living in a golf-course community.
But Karr doesn’t live life based on what his heirs will inherit. He lives it according to what he values now, and that includes a healthy environment and fair treatment of all community members.
A golf course, Karr said, is one of the most harmful, wasteful land uses there is. Pesticides, herbicides and lots and lots of watering make it so, he said.
Karr would consider a return to a natural Sequim prairie ecosystem far more valuable than the putting greens, sand traps and fairways.
Tall weeds?
Meanwhile, in recent meetings with SunLand homeowners, Ratliff and the nascent SunLand Preservation Project have held up the spectre of a closed-down golf course, overrun with tall weeds and small animals.
Sweet has said that if the course goes without mowing and other maintenance, coyotes and rodents will move in.
Karr doesn’t see this as such a terrible scenario — and he calls the country club’s argument, that property values will drop for everyone in SunLand while weeds and vermin take over, “fearmongering.”
Sweet, when asked Monday to respond to Karr’s and other SunLand residents’ questioning of the property-value premise, declined to comment.
Ratliff, however, believes it would be irresponsible to not provide information about “potential risks” to property values.
“A lot of people around the country buy in golf course communities because they hold their value better,” he said. “All we have tried to do is present factually what the risks are.
“If the golf course runs out of money, if and when that occurs, then weeds start to grow. That’s not a fear tactic. It’s a statement of fact.”
And if the golf course fails, the members of the country club will still be the owners, Ratliff added. To cut expenses, the board of directors will have to lay off maintenance staff.
Revenue effort
The golf-course managers are already seeking to build up revenues, Ratliff added.
They’ve increased fees for existing members of the country club, waived the $3,000 initiation fee for new members and begun inviting the public to play at SunLand on weekends for $25 per 18-hole round.
“We’ve begun a lot of communication efforts, designed to give people accurate, factual information” about the need for added homeowners’ fees, Ratliff said.
To his mind, saving the golf course “is way beyond the golfing issue;” the central question for owners is, “Do you believe you have a risk to your property?”
Howerton, like Karr, imagines another way to add value: Turn the golf course into a spacious park for all residents to enjoy.
“It would be worth every bit as much as a park,” as it is as a golf course, he said.
The problem with that, said Ratliff, is that the land is owned by the members of the SunLand Golf & Country Club.
Paschal, meantime, is questioning the legality of having all SunLand homeowners pay a fee that would, he believes, benefit the country-club members far more than it would benefit non-members.
“The golf course may add value to some properties in SunLand. I don believe it adds value to all,” Paschal said, “nor do I believe it adds value equally to all homes in SunLand.”
Non-golfers
His home is “about as far from the golf course as you can get,” and he and his wife, Barbara, aren’t golfers.
And like others who don’t pay thousands per year to belong to the country club, they’re prohibited from walking on the course during the day.
“The argument on the street in SunLand,” Paschal added, “is our opposition means we are the problem; the golf course is going to go under because of people like me. But I didn’t create the financial crisis of the golf course.”
Paschal said he’s studied state laws and SunLand Owners Association rules, and doesn’t believe the homeowners can legally pay an assessment to boost the golf course.
“We request that the Board make a clear statement to the membership that financial assistance from SLOA is not legally available,” he wrote in a Sept. 18 letter to the SunLand Owners Association board.
“By clearing the air regarding [an] assessment, many people, us included, would move forward with voluntary donations and gifts of service in support of our neighbors,” he added.
Ratliff, for his part, said Paschal, Howerton and Karr are entitled to their opinions regarding the golf course’s effects on property value.
On the legal question, Ratliff said the SunLand Owners’ board will proceed with caution. “No one is going to do anything to violate the ownership documents,” he said.
And as Ratliff deploys a group of volunteers to “provide information” to residents across SunLand about the proposed new fees, opponents are working on a counter-effort to share their findings and views.
No vote till next year
If the fees go before the SunLand Owners Association membership for a vote, it won’t probably won’t be until early next year, Ratliff has said.
“It’s the homeowners who will make this decision,” he said.
Barbara Paschal, for her part, lamented the division that the golf course survival issue has caused across SunLand.
“It’s become ‘we’ and ‘they,'” she said. “We’re sad, but we’re hopeful that something good will come out of it.”
Something may have already: Her neighbors in SunLand North have been talking to one another more.
Most don’t golf, Barbara said, adding that they do enjoy the narrow greenbelt around the back of their homes — a greenbelt bordered by tall weeds and wildlife.
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley reporter Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com
