Soaring debts drown club

‘‘All calls to [the] committee to find an investor or secure an overdraft facility or [get] any help whatsoever have fallen on deaf ears.’’ Michael Beazley, club financial officer

The long embattled Rangitikei Club has finally buckled under the weight of unpaid bills.

About 175 members voted to close the club at a meeting on Saturday having been advised by its financial officer Michael Beazley that it was tens of thousands of dollars in debt.

Club manager Shar Atkin said Thursday would likely be its last day. The club first opened in 1897.

In a letter to members, Beazely said the club faced outstanding debt of $59,000, including $18,720 owed to IRD and $11,045 of payments to staff.

On top of that, almost $25,932 worth of taxes, wages and bills was due by the end of March.

The club’s accounts contained $5114 on Friday. Other financial statements showed it made a loss of $109,811 in the year to January.

‘‘All calls to [the] committee to find an investor or secure an overdraft facility or [get] any help whatsoever have fallen on deaf ears,’’ Beazley said in the letter.

‘‘I am of the opinion [the committee] are personally liable for the club operations should receivers be called in. The club president has been informed many times on the financial situation facing the club, but I have never received a response.’’

President Rose Shearer did not respond to the Manawatu Standard’s requests for comment, but in a letter to club members in January last year said the club was ‘‘in deep doo-doo financially ... so deep we are almost too scared to open our mouths’’.

She had taken on the role in August 2015, and wanted see all efforts to save the club ‘‘with the resources left to us’’.

Efforts to save it included reducing operating losses and selling the group’s Feilding club rooms for $520,000 in April last year. The club then leased the ground floor back from the new owner.

Members also gave it a temporary cash injection of about $25,000 while the sale was being finalised, Shearer said.

The club’s financial woes go back at least as far as 2012, when the premises and land were put up for sale.

Colin Waller said he’d been a member for 38 years, as had several people with him on Saturday night playing billiards.

There would be nowhere left in Feilding to play after the closure.

Waller and a number of patrons said the closure was not due to any one single issue, but was the inevitable result of changing times.

It had fallen victim to the same social changes and shift in drinking patterns that brought about the end of many other clubs about the country, he said.

‘‘It’s very sad, but we have more than 1000 members, where were they tonight?’’