A Lowndes County member of the East Mississippi Community College’s Board of Trustees said he would have raised the idea of selling Lion Hills Center and Golf Course in an executive session of the board’s meeting Monday night, had the board not voted down his motion to enter closed determination for the second month in a row.
LINK CEO Joe Max Higgins, emphasizing he was speaking for himself and not on behalf of the board, told The Dispatch Tuesday he felt it was in the college’s financial interest to at least discuss the possibility of selling the Military Road country club. Lion Hills, which currently houses the college’s culinary arts, hotel restaurant management, golf and recreational turf management and landscape management programs, has lost the college a total of just more than $8 million, including acquisition costs, since purchasing the property in 2012, according to an operational analysis EMCC Chief Financial Officer Tammie Holmes presented to the board Monday.
Higgins told The Dispatch Lion Hills has been “a money pit since Day 1.”
“As a tax-paying citizen serving as appointed by the Lowndes County Board of Supervisors, I don’t think that we’ve got any business running a country club,” Higgins said.
However, the board voted 6-5 — Oktibbeha County board member Frank Nichols was not present — not to enter closed determination, where Higgins had said earlier in the meeting that he planned to raise both a personnel issue and a real estate issue.
The board is made up of 12 members, two each from Lowndes, Oktibbeha, Clay, Noxubee, Lauderdale and Kemper counties. Higgins, Greg Stewart of Lowndes County, Spencer Broocks of Oktibbeha County, board chair Kathy Dyess and W.T. Davis, both of Clay County, all voted to enter closed determination. Noxubee County members Hazel Johnson and Evelyn Murray, Kemper County members Linda Jackson and Robert McDade, and Lauderdale County members Jimmie Moore and Ed Mosley voted against the motion.
Moore declined to comment when reached by The Dispatch. The Dispatch emailed the other board members who voted no, along with Nichols, and did not receive any replies by press time. Dyess also did not return a call from The Dispatch by press time.
EMCC President Scott Alsobrooks told The Dispatch in an email that he might consider selling Lion Hills.
“I would entertain the idea if the EMCC Board of Trustees is interested and agreeable to the proposal,” he wrote, adding Mississippi law dictates the college could not sell the property for less than its appraised value.
Higgins said he was frustrated that the board would not even discuss the issue, particularly given the COVID-19 pandemic is negatively affecting the economy and could forecast an even grimmer financial future for the college and Lion Hills. At the very least, he said, he’d like to see if there are interested buyers.
“Just see what kind of suitors are out there,” he said. “… What if somebody came in and made a decent bid on this?”
Higgins said he had also planned to discuss four Lion Hills employees who were terminated from their positions in March. Though EMCC officials said at the time the employees had been let go as a cost cutting measure, two of the employees provided The Dispatch with letters signed by Alsobrooks saying they had been fired due to misconduct. Higgins told The Dispatch last month he had tried to raise the same issue in the April board meeting and that his motion to enter executive session was voted down then too.
While Higgins said it’s possible he could raise the issue in open session, board chairs of any public body tend to close down discussions of personnel quickly.
“I’m going to continue to bring this up,” he said. “The question is, how much can you run off at the mouth before the chairman shuts you up.”
He added that in three months, if he doesn’t see an improvement, he plans to go to Lowndes County supervisors with his complaints.
“I told them (Monday) night, ‘Gentlemen and ladies, understand this,'” Higgins said. “I’m going to call for executive session on this issue every g****** time we have a board meeting until it gets heard. If we never get the votes, I said, I’m building a case. I said I’m going to the board of supervisors at my six-month anniversary (three months from now) and I’m going to give the people that asked me to serve as their representative a report on the cluster that is EMCC.”
Lion Hills finances
Lion Hills’ general fund has lost more than $1 million since Fiscal Year 2013, operating at a loss every year since its purchase. The center has received a total of $590,000 in general fund revenue since then, while incurring nearly $1.7 million in expenses, Holmes said. The general fund includes finances related to instruction, such as tuition and curriculum.
Additionally, the center’s auxiliary operations have received nearly $7.9 million in revenue while incurring just more than $11 million in expenses, resulting in a net loss of more than $3 million. Funds in the auxiliary operations include finances related to the running of the country club, including restaurant and golf course.
Alsobrooks said at the meeting that with improved tuition revenue, he hopes to see the funds balance over the next few years. “We want to grow the culinary program, we want to grow the golf program, growth management,” he said. “Those programs have done very well. … I think there’s hope for Lion Hills to come close to breaking even as we go from an operation standpoint. I really do believe that. We’ve just got to continue to try to grow the numbers of students.”
At least among general funds, the finances have been improving over the last three fiscal years, with tuition revenue growing from just more than $50,000 in Fiscal Year 2017 to $114,000 in 2019. Additionally for the last three years, the center has received $106,000 ($318,000 total) in state appropriations. The center ran a deficit of more than $300,000 in Fiscal Year 2017, but cut that to roughly $150,000 in Fiscal Year 2019.
However, Higgins did not appear convinced, pointing out the COVID-19 pandemic could result in a lower enrollment over the next few years.
“The fact of the matter is, we’re losing between $300,000 to 500,000 on that thing on a good year,” he told The Dispatch Tuesday. ” … I think I could give you the deed today for free and walk away and it would positively affect our cash flow.”
Much of the $8 million loss referenced in the analysis comes from acquisition of the country club, which cost $3.2 million, Holmes said. That includes the land purchase at about $1.2 million, the building at nearly $376,000 and additional costs for equipment and renovation over the last several years.
The classroom building cost another $624,000, including the building’s actual purchase for $287,000 and additional renovation and equipment costs in the years since.
The college’s own finances have been rocky the past few years, with EMCC’s general operating fund balance falling more than $10 million between Fiscal Year 2010 and 2019, according to previous reporting by The Dispatch. The board is scheduled to approve a budget for Fiscal Year 2021 in June.
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