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Commissioners call for Golf Club investigation

[dropcap]W[/dropcap]ith too many questions still surrounding the Rye Golf Club, fed up clubgoers have turned to the City Council for answers.

In a recent letter obtained by The Rye Sound Shore Review, members of the Rye Golf Commission are calling on the City Council to investigate the far-reaching allegations that have been leveled on the club’s management. There have been claims of excessive overtime charges and questions about Club Manager Scott Yandrasevich’s relationship with an outside staffing company that were all unearthed within the past month. It has also now been revealed that credit card tips collected at the restaurant were withheld from servers and instead used to offset labor costs.

The unnamed commission members behind the letter are turning to the City Council to help restore confidence in the management and improve oversight of the club. The group asks that an independent counsel be retained to see if the club’s finances “have been managed in the best interest of the members.”

On Tuesday night, the continued outcry over the club’s operations even halted approval of its 2013 golf budget–already more than a week late–at a meeting solely intended for the budget’s approval.

“We have to go back to the city manager, we have to delay this,” said Frank Adimari, vice chair of the Golf Club Commission, after he was unable to carry a motion to even bring the budget to a vote.

The commission, which has been under fire in recent weeks, refused again to address concerns over labor costs and an agreement in place with RM Staffing and Events Inc., a Rye-based staffing company that has supplied employees to the golf club dating back to 2007. Yandrasevich’s wife works for the company, which he also consults for. RM Staffing has provided the bulk of the club’s labor.

Commissioner Patrick Dooley said the issues would likely be taken up at the commission’s next meeting on Oct. 26. In the mean- time, those issues were expected to be addressed at Wednesday’s City Council meeting, after press time.

The commission did alter this week’s budget from the previously proposed one last month. Member dues, which were initially proposed to increase by 2 percent next year, now remain flat over the current year. The increase in dues was initially proposed to offset what was expected to be a deficit. The latest 2013 proposal offers a balanced budget, although calculated with the assumption that the club holds the line on membership—something that is at risk considering the employment scandal brewing within the club’s confines.

Additional expenses were reduced in the proposed budget by cutting operating hours at Whitby Castle throughout the year, including closing it during January and February.

But the biggest cost shift to the budget, of roughly $900,000, was in the area of outside contracted labor costs. The commission said the club plans to move toward a seasonal employee model in place of outside staffing. Therefore, the proposed expense for the controversial outside staffing contracts was cut from $1.6 million to $713,000. But the $800,000 increase in seasonal workers nearly offset any savings.

Outside staffing will continue to be used at the 126-acre club for weddings, catered events and Sunday brunches, according to Commissioner Dooley. “This is possible due to the move to the 10-month season,” he said.

Republican Councilman Joe Sack, a liaison to the golf commission, was concerned with what he called the tectonic shift in labor costs.
“From the last time this budget was presented to tonight, there is an $800,000 and a $900,000 difference in the two line items,” said the coun- cilman. “What was the thought process behind this proposal?”

Commissioner Adimari said the reason for moving toward seasonal workers was the City Council’s endorsement of the commission’s plan to close the restaurant for the first two months of the year. Under the traditional club 12-month operating schedule, management couldn’t hire seasonal workers and also didn’t want the burden of bringing on city employees that would be collecting pensions and benefits.

“In the past we didn’t have that option,” Adimari said. “It was more about working a 12- month year. That was why we went to the [outside staffing] model to avoid hiring CSEA.”

Councilman Sack questioned the commission’s decision that contracting out staffing wasn’t the way to go. “My question would be is this just a knee-jerk reaction to what is being talked about?” he said regarding the brewing controversy.

At Tuesday’s meeting, Commissioner Adimari said the club management would provide a more detailed breakdown of the finances at its next meeting. Commissioner John Duffy asked why such numbers weren’t made available prior to the night the budget was to be voted on.

“I know what my vote is,” he said. “How can I vote on a budget? I don’t know anything.”

Tony Piscionere, a former club member, said the commission shouldn’t be voting on a budget with so many unanswered questions related to RM Staffing and its contract with the club.

“One would have to make at least an assumption that you folks have a budget in front of you that’s prepared based on at least historical data from 2012, 2011 when RM staffing was utilized,” said Piscionere, a practicing attorney and chair of the city GOP. “If you’re not utilizing that then you are making the budget up out of thin air because you have no other things to go on. How can you vote on a budget when you don’t have data that is reliable?”

At the meeting, further questionable management practices may have also been exposed when the commission revealed that member gratuity strictly from credit charges at the restaurant was not being reimbursed to restaurant servers but instead being used to draw down the club’s labor costs, which could potentially violate labor laws.

Yandrasevich said gratuity service charges are not mandatory at the club nor are they solicited. The club manager also said that gratuity, if left, goes to the club’s outside contracting costs because the club pays a higher wage rate for outside staffing than it would if covered in-house. When asked how much the tips collected totaled–and how much that is helping a club that continually runs in the red–the commissioners nor club management could not provide any answer.