A divisive battle is taking place at the giant Farmington Woods Condo complex in Avon where a minority of the golfers want the whole complex to pay millions of dollars to install a new irrigation system owned by the tax district, which represents the complex.

The following is written by Lee Lagasse is Chairman of FW Resident for Fiscal Responsibility and blogs about this issue at www.farmingtonwoodsinsider.blogspot.com.

Lagasse tells the tale of how this complex is much like the old fashioned company town and gives insight about how he and other condo owners are unable to learn how much money is being paid to those managing the golf course.

As a non-golfer and as someone who believes that private golf courses have no way to go but downhill, Lagasse opposed having his district taxes increased by 18 percent for the benefit of golfers, especially now that he can’t even find out where the money is going to.

He thinks there are many other maintenance priorities that the money should be used for.

Others who feel differently are welcome to state their views at CtWatchdog.

Whether you live at Farmington Woods or in any condo, or considering buying a condo, you need to read this to know what kinds of issues you might face.

When a business runs a town, it’s a company town.

When you think of company towns what usually comes to mind are dirty coal towns like Claghorn, PA, smoky steel towns like Gary, Indiana or if you you’re up on your history, a little place called Pullman, IL, where in 1880, just as the Robber Baron era began, George Pullman built 900 tidy row houses for the workers who produced his Pullman sleeping cars, luxury railroad conveyances, at the factory located in his “ideal” factory town.

Unlike some of the filthy coal mining towns owned by unscrupulous mine owners who built them for their workers with the intent of draining every last drop of capital from their labors, Pullman’s town was neat, clean and orderly. Because he was acquainted with the issues of labor unrest and poverty that other company towns, with their tenements, drunkenness and of course prostitution, Pullman built his town so that his workers would remain happy and productive. But like every other company town of its day, every home, business and amenity belonged to the Pullman Company. But I’m getting ahead of myself. This article is about Farmington Woods Condominium. I’ll get back to Pullman a little later in this column.

After reading the history of these company towns recently, it got me thinking about the “town” in which I have lived for thirteen years, Farmington Woods Condominium, in Avon, CT. In an article last week in this publication I wrote that by population it is larger than ten “real” towns in Connecticut. Even the budget is larger. But then I read the articles on company towns and it dawned on me. Not only is Farmington Woods like a town, it is like a very specific type of town. With the Farmington Woods Golf Club, a private enterprise, virtually running the show, what we really have here is a good old fashioned company town.

In this article I am going to make some comparisons between these towns and the place where I live and if you’ll bear with me for a moment and give me a little creative license I’ll show you how reading about these anachronisms gave me a whole new perspective on the “taxing” situation that at present has residents of Farmington Woods Condominium, an upscale residential community situated on an 18 hole golf course in Avon, CT fighting among themselves. The possibility of an 18% tax increase will do that to people. That, together with the lack of transparency with regard to who gets paid what here, and how and where the funds are allocated, have people outraged.

ALLOW ME TO RECAP

When I wrote about Farmington Woods last week I reported that the board had decided to float two bonds totaling $4M over 20 years, resulting in an 18% increase in residents’ district taxes, to upgrade infrastructure on the forty year old golf course and do a facelift on the adjacent clubhouse. It was a long article and if you didn’t read it, you’ll need a summary.

Farmington Woods was built in the early ‘70’s by award-winning landscape architect Otto Paparazzo surrounding a privately owned and run golf course designed by renowned architect Desmond Muirhead. It was built as a condominium with a golf course to attract folks who wanted to live on a golf course, but the course itself was owned by the developer, not the condominium association. It seemed to work pretty well because by the mid-80’s the course had 600 condominiums and 300 resident golfers with probably a like number of non-resident golfers, roughly the same ratio that exists today.

Unfortunately, in 1985 when the original developer went belly-up, the financial institution that funded the project, Fidelity Insurance of Philadelphia, decided not to stay in the golf business and sold the course to a private party. When resident golfers discovered this, they sued, claiming they had been denied “right of first refusal”. They also sued for some shoddy workmanship on the part of the original developer. The residents prevailed and were awarded a settlement in the in the million dollar range, easily enough to purchase the property in 1985.

This is where it gets interesting. Having received enough from the settlement to purchase the course and clubhouse, with money left over to build an office for its on-site management, the people in charge decided on a strategy that would give them ultimate control over the golf enterprise and at the same time giving them a bargaining chip to use with the 300 non-golfing residents living at Farmington Woods.

The group leading the charge told residents that if they floated a bond for a million bucks to purchase the course, not only would they now have a cool million in the reserve fund by virtue of the settlement money, but that this course of action would spread the cost of the purchase over twenty years,to future owners, something everyone likes to hear. Oh, and they had to promise this group of 300 non-golfing residents that there would never, ever be an assessment on the golf course or the clubhouse. Did I mention they said never?

ANOTHER LAYER OF GOVERNMENT IS NEEDED

Convincing non-golfing residents was not the only obstacle between owning and not owning the course. At the time, Farmington Woods was a condominium association with absolutely no ability to float a bond for a dime, let alone a million dollars. In order to do so they would have to form what’s known as a special tax district, entities usually created to provide services in areas that towns can’t or won’t provide them. The result was the Farmington Woods Tax District. This required them to draw up a charter with the State of Connecticut and notify the towns of Avon and Farmington of their intent.

In the end, the bond issue passed by the slimmest of margins, the tax district was formed and everyone got something for their money. The golf/clubhouse operation was now in resident golfers’ hands, there was money in the reserve fund, and Farmington Woods was not only a condominium community, but a tax district as well. Unfortunately, it didn’t take long for an economic crisis to come along to put a damper on the whole scheme.

When people finally woke up they realized they had created another level of government and with it, another entity to relieve them of their hard earned dollars. Little did they know that 20 years later and again in 2012 the creation of the tax district with its authority to tax and spend residents’ money and ability to float bonds would come back to bite them.

COLONIAL REALTY RUINS THE PLAN

Still, things went smoothly until the early 90’s when Colonial Realty decided to take the state down with the collapse of its shady real estate enterprise. Property values at Farmington Woods took a hit, as did the homes of most Connecticut residents. The golf operation was affected too, so much so that residents who had been promised no assessments ever in 1985 were now being asked to shore up the failing clubhouse operation by contributing $20 per month in monthly food minimums. The residents, having been told by leadership that this was in the interest of the community at large, were not happy but went along with it anyway. For many, it proved to be a fateful acquiescence.

This event, together with the creation of the tax district and subsequent purchase of the golf course/clubhouse operation in 1985 was to be the end of Farmington Woods as a residential community. It was now being marketed as a golf community with all residents considered “members” when in fact if they didn’t belong to the golf club their membership started and ended with keeping the golf course afloat by financially supporting a key amenity that every golf course needs, a clubhouse.

Its fate was now tied to the business of golf. When Farmington Woods, a condominium community and newly minted tax district, a quasi-municipal entity, began to require residents to use and contribute to the company store in the form of the clubhouse restaurant, it lost its identity as a condominium community and became just another company town, like Pullman, IL.

WE’RE ALL GOLFERS NOW

Wow, that’s a stretch you say. But remember I said I would need some creative license earlier in this piece and here’s where you’re going to have to have what movie critics call, the “willing suspicion of disbelief.” No, we’re not mining coal here and we’re not making steel and unlike Pullman and those other company towns I mentioned we own the units in which we live. But we don’t actually own the golf course or the clubhouse or even the common property surrounding our homes.

Don’t get me wrong, the boards are fond of reminding us that we own the golf course, but don’t try walking on it even when golfers are not present. You’ll get fined $25 each time you do it. So in other words we own the golf course like say, the residents of Pullman owned the parks that the “benevolent” George Pullman built. You play by his rules or you don’t play at all. Here, you join the golf club if you want to walk on the course otherwise, stay the hell off. To be fair the rules say we can walk on it in the winter providing it’s covered with snow. No snow this year, so not much walking took place.

Just like that other company town, Pullman, IL, things went pretty well for Farmington Woods while the economy was booming. Unfortunately for residents of Pullman, when the economy went sour after the panic of 1893 they suddenly discovered that living in this model company town had some unwelcome consequences. Hundreds were laid off. Those that weren’t were forced to work longer hours and switch from an hourly rate to a piece rate and although weekly paychecks were lower, residents of the neat row houses got no reduction in rent.

It may seem like a leap, but when you start thinking of Farmington Woods from the perspective of a company town you begin to see other, unavoidable similarities: at Farmington Woods residents own nothing by deed except the air space that inhabits their homes from the wallboard on in. Otherwise, all property, including the private golf course and clubhouse is owned either by the association or the tax district. Both these entities market Farmington Woods as a golf community and warn residents that the success and failure of the community is directly linked to the success of the business entity known here as The Farmington Woods Golf Club.

I called it a golf club, and this is an important point in my definition of Farmington Woods as a company town, because it is not a country club by definition. Golf club, yes. Country club, no. When non-residents join the golf club that’s what they pay for and get: membership to the golf course and clubhouse along with its amenities. If it were a country club these non-resident golfers would have access to the pools and tennis courts available to all residents here. But they don’t, so let’s be clear; it’s not a country club.

THE PRIORITY OF BUSINESS IS THE BUSINESS

So to extend the company town metaphor I would like to propose that the people who run Farmington Woods see it as a golf community/club first and a residential community second. In other words the business of golf determines the present and future of this community right down to deciding whether to apply mulch in any particular year based on how much money the golf and clubhouse operation is budgeted to lose in the upcoming year.

Don’t worry if you can’t readily grasp the concept. The 13^th anniversary of my closing just occurred on the 16^th of April and it wasn’t until I read the history of company towns that I started to see the reality of where I live and what really drives things here. And it may not be George Pullman’ little town, but there can be no doubt, at least to me anymore, that where I live is as much of a company town as anything George dreamed up and created for his workers.

Oh yeah, about those workers. No, the people of Farmington Woods aren’t forced to work for the golf operation, but wouldn’t that be crazy? No, they contribute things besides their labors in order to reside here: they pay a monthly minimum at the clubhouse restaurant of $30.whether they use it or not. (A recent analysis revealed that 37% of residents don’t ever use the clubhouse and their unused minimums totaled $140K last year alone.), they give up the enhancement of the aforementioned mulch so that the golf operation can continue to operate in the red for the seventh consecutive year. This past year it was budgeted for a $125K loss but in January that had to be increased by $56K to cover additional losses. Meanwhile, staff salaries for golf/clubhouse operations total $1.1M per year.

IT’S THE ECONOMY, STUPID

And here’s where I think the company town analogy really starts to make sense: when the panic of ‘93 hit and his business started to suffer, Pullman reduced his workers’ wages to cover his losses, but continued to charge them the same rent as he had when things were going well. At Farmington Woods, when the business of golf started suffering from the downturn in the economy in 2009, both golfing and non-golfing residents were forced to make concessions just as they did in the early 90’s when Colonial Realty crashed the state’s economy and the $20 per month minimum was instituted to save the club.

No, they didn’t take a reduction in pay, but they were asked to pay even more in fees and taxes to the company so that the business could continue, effectively lowering their own wages in an all too real fashion. They were no longer residents or even workers, but shareholders in two losing enterprises that were as Wall Street likes to say, too big to fail. Now, according to the board, it’s the responsibility of the residents to bail the company out and failing that, leaders warn, things will get dire indeed. Old George Pullman probably used similar tactics on his workers in the 1890’s to get them to keep working.

Unfortunately for Pullman, things didn’t turn out very well. The workers began a wildcat strike and being the paternalist that he was “he loftily declined to talk” with either them or their union representatives. The strike resulted in extreme violence by the company and only ended after President Grover Cleveland sent in federal troops; thirteen died and 57 were wounded. But it also struck the death knell for this model company town. In the end the State of Illinois stepped in and ended the experiment forever.

The whole experience proved to be too much for the proud Pullman, resulting in his death in 1897. He was buried at night in a lead-lined coffin within a reinforced steel and concrete vault. Several tons of concrete were placed on top of all this to prevent his body from being exhumed and desecrated by labor activists. The following year the Illinois Supreme Court forced his company to divest ownership of the town, which was subsequently annexed by Chicago.

THE FATE OF A COMPANY TOWN

As I enter my fourteenth year of residency at Farmington Woods, I see other similarities between Pullman’s town and the “town” in which I reside. He had great hopes for his company town as did the folks who formed the tax district and purchased the course in 1985. For his own selfish reasons he didn’t want his workers to live in tenements as did those working in other company towns. He wanted them happy and productive. And they were, until the economy went in the dumpster in 1893, cutbacks were made and workers had finally had enough. After the strike the bright future that Pullman had planned for his town and his resident workers had vanished. All that was left was anger and tears.

Farmington Woods is a pretty easy place to be happy and productive. We live in the woods surrounded by a menagerie of deer, fox, coyote, raccoons, opossum, coy dogs, skunks, Blue Heron, red tail hawks, Canada Geese, Mallard Ducks, snapping turtles, fisher cats, otters, swans and of course Black Bears. The amenities, including pools and tennis courts are available for residents to use for no additional fee and there are miles of roads to walk. There is one particular stretch by the main entrance that is tricky to navigate and could definitely use a sidewalk, but the company has decided that it’s a lower priority than improvements to the golf operation which of course is the business of the “town” and as a result, its main concern.

Farmington Woods has been through downturns in the economy before and responded to them with the implementation of restaurant minimums in the early 90’s and by shoring up the golf operation with condominium fees and golf infrastructure using district taxes since 2005. And residents continue to complain about high fees and taxes, just as they did in the 90’s. But since it has been incremental, like slowly turning up the heat on a frog in a pot of water until he’s on your plate ready to eat, the backlash from residents has been muted.

THE BOARD JUMPS THE SHARK

Now, however, the company that is Farmington Woods has jumped the shark. It decided on its own, without consulting residents to spend $43K for architects, lawyers and a bond consultant, and in a recent presentation tried to convince residents that the most pressing need for the community was upgrading the irrigation system on the golf course and making the clubhouse more aesthetically pleasing and accessible by installing an elevator and a horse shoe bar.

This expenditure and strategic decision was made after a series of focus groups in 2011, in which residents stated that they “overwhelmingly want the golf operation to be self-supporting”. The board expects residents to jump for joy at the prospect of floating two bonds totaling $6.8M including interest, resulting in an 18% increase in district taxes, to keep the golf business running, when the residents overwhelmingly want out of the golf business. They’re tired of paying for what the chairman of the Finance Committee tells us is as much an amenity as the pools and tennis courts we get to use for free. Really.

Now, since Farmington Woods residents aren’t manufacturing luxury sleeping cars for George Pullman they won’t be going on strike anytime soon. But if the company thinks that residents are going to take an 18% tax increase in stride without fighting back against the boards’ paternalistic attitude of “we know what’s best for you” they are sorely mistaken. And when the tax district decides to take your hard earned money at a much higher rate than it did the year before, they have essentially caused you a reduction in your paycheck. The approach is different, but the result is the same as Pullman reducing his worker’s pay.

YOU OWN IT, BUT IT’S NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS

And just as the owners of a company town would do, the board refuses to reveal the salaries of the top six managers here, said to be in excess of six figures per year. They can’t even cite the policy that covers their refusal or when it came into effect. Their attitude of “move along, there’s nothing to see here” is infuriatingly frustrating even to long time residents who usually accept budget increases with a grumbling, but not defiant attitude.

And speaking of attitudes, it’s no wonder we’re losing money on our businesses, especially considering that a memo to members of the Clubhouse Committee that I was provided anonymously revealed that even with the $390K yearly advance from residents in the form of restaurant minimums, the chairman of that committee took a firm stance when forced to cut his budget by $25K thereby avoiding a deficit in that division of the business. According to him “…we have always aimed for a slight loss to a break-even policy.” So, now move along now, there’s nothing to see here.

If it weren’t for the efforts of a persistent resident who demanded access to the financials for both the golf and clubhouse operation, residents would still be in the dark with regard to the mounting losses that have been piled up by these two entities: $1.2M over the last six years with next year’s budget projecting golf’s second consecutive $125K shortfall. We may be residents and shareholders in the business, but the board seems to view us as workers who have no business knowing what the business does with our money.

To be fair, there are people at Farmington Woods who don’t mind living in this company town or paying high fees and taxes so that they can reside, like their friends in Boca, on a golf course in a luxury setting. So, their needs are met simply by living near the course, which they believe raises the value of their property. There’s also the perceived status of living on what they believe to be a country club, which as I explained before it is not. And the 89 resident golfers get to enjoy use of their very own “private” golf club knowing that the company will never let them down, even if membership dwindles to a foursome.

As with the old company towns there are also enforcers of company rule here at Farmington Woods. After attending the annual budget meeting and making what I felt were honest comments about the situation we were facing and asking questions that exposed the insanity of doing the same thing over and over again with the same result, I received my first hate mail at my blog, www.farmingtonwoodsinsider.blogspot.com. At the meeting I disclosed that I was the Farmington Woods Blogger and that people might become better informed if they read some of the things I had discovered and written about.

Why, the writer wanted to know was I “wasting (my) time trying to destroy the fine community that we have at Farmington Woods?” He accused me of “passing around (unsigned) propaganda” because I didn’t “have the guts to show (my) face” and being “against any improvements that are needed in our community.”  “Didn’t you see the golf course and the clubhouse before you bought your condo?” he demanded to know. My response to him was simple: yes, I saw both of them, but I was told they were self-supporting.

On the other side of the issue are a growing number of residents who, like Pullman’s workers, are angry and frustrated enough to take action. Public hearings on both the bond issue and the annual condo/tax district budget were described by a resident of 34 years who rarely misses one, as the most rancorous she has ever witnessed.

The natives are restless, the pitchforks are at the ready and people are waking up to the fact that Farmington Woods, despite being funded by resident fees and taxes and being governed by a quasi-municipal government entity in the form of the Farmington Woods Tax District, is really nothing more than a company town where the fortunes of the company directly impact the people who live there and as resident “workers”, it is our duty to keep the business running no matter the cost.

But this is a different sort of company town. The company itself, comprised of the golf operation, the pro shop and the clubhouse with its restaurant minimums, is not just a private enterprise funded by a public entity, the tax district; the entire golf club is private and not accessible to residents or outsiders unless they become members and pay thousands to play. One day a week is reserved for residents to play paying only for green fees and use of a golf cart, but many times outside tournaments are held on those days in order to bring in badly needed revenue and residents who desire to play that day are flat out of luck.

I’D LIKE TO SUMMARIZE, BUT NOT THIS WAY

To summarize, what we have in Farmington Woods is a company town whose main enterprise is the business of golf, being supported by condo fees and district tax revenues from the residents who live here. It’s a weird amalgamation of public funding and private use. The Town of Farmington, for example, owns two golf courses which our town taxes support as well, but they are public, not private and available for anyone’s use for the price of greens fees and cart rental.

Here at Farmington Woods the residents “workers” support a course that the government calls an “amenity” that is only an amenity to residents if they pay a premium to use it. The pools and tennis courts, true amenities that residents pay for through condo fees and taxes are free to use. But the golf course, unless you’ve paid your thousands in member fees is off limits. Don’t worry though, the clubhouse, which was built originally as a place for golfers to gather, will accept your monthly minimums whether you use them or not.

Sounds like something the concrete entombed George Pullman, one of the originators of the company town concept and proud builder of his very own company town would have dreamed up. And although he and company towns are a concept that should have died for good in the 19^th century, Farmington Woods in Avon, CT is doing its best to carry on the tradition.

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