Town will not honour gift cards from former Golf Course regime

“This is a problem we inherited,” Councilor of St. Paul, Edna Gervais said of the Golf Course at last night’s Council meeting, after requests came forward for the Town to honour passes and gift certificates that were given out prior to when the Town took over the course in January of 2016. Council decided that they simply cannot honour promissory notes, passes for green fees, or gift cards from the old regime.

The request for some sort of restitution for money that people had lent the golf course prior to its closure and the Town reopening is not new. In fact, the Town had dealt with that matter earlier in the year and decided not to honour the promissory notes that were held by eight people. Following that decision, a suggestion came forward to offer these persons with a 5 year membership at the value of $3500 per person. “We weren’t in charge of the club when this occurred.” Norm Noel felt it would set a poor precedence. “We’d be accepting their debt by doing this.” Other Councilors, Gervais, Dwight Weibe and Ken Kwiatkowski felt this matter was already dealt with when the town voted not to pay out these notes.  A motion to offer 3 year adult single memberships to the persons who hold personal promissory notes from the former golf course board at a cost of $2100 each was made by Councillor Judy Bogdan and supported by Don Padlesky; however the remaining Council and Mayor Glenn Andersen voted to defeat the motion.

Since the Town took over the course, members of the community have come forward with green fee passes and gift cards. When the old management left the course they took with them the hard drive for the computer, which included the program used to input gift cards. In each case there was no accounting record of these passes or gift cards. With no record the Town would have to assume that they are valid, a precedence Council was not willing to set.

“Golf memberships for terms that were honoured, some people had ten year memberships those were honoured,” explained Mayor Andersen. The difference being that the green fee passes and gift certificates have no accounting record attached to them.  “Who knows how many of these are out there?” Councillor Padlesky pointed out to Council that this could become a never-ending issue and that the Town should vote on what to do, once and for all so Council does not need to come back to this issue again.   “We have no idea how many gift cards are out there.” Glenn Andersen who also has a gift card with a zero balance.

“No recorded totals and no record, we’d be crazy to honour them,” said Councillor Norm Noel.  With that in consideration, the Town decided not to honour any gift cards that were issued prior to January 2016 when the Town took over.