QUECHEE — With a ski hill, tennis courts, a swimming pool, 36 holes of golf, a clubhouse restaurant and its own private lake, Quechee Lakes has always been an pricey place to live. Now as a result of the July storms that flooded its golf course, the members-only community just got pricier.

And some residents are not happy about it.

The board of Quechee Lakes Landowners Association, the business entity that runs the 5,500-acre community, notified its 1,400 households last week that it is levying an “emergency special assessment” upon members to raise $3 million because the QLLA has “depleted” its $1.1 million disaster relief fund and pulled $1 million out of its operating budget to pay for repairing damage to its golf course caused by the July storms.

Signaling that Quechee Club — the name by which the multifaceted operation goes by — was facing imminent financial crisis, General Manager Brian Kelley announced that “important steps (are) required to maintain the future well-being of our community” that will entail “substantial costs.”

The news that everyone would soon to required to pay the equivalent of an extra one-third of their annual membership fee Kelley acknowledged would likely be received by many as “not a welcomed outcome” but is necessary, especially as the rising threat posed by climate change has turned once-a-century weather events into perhaps decennial occurrences, QLLA may no longer be able to get flood insurance.

“We are responsible for the compensation of our vendors, engineers and employees and we have to pay them for the purchase of supplies, such as stone, sod, seed and sand,” Kelley explained.

Kelley revealed that total cash outlay to repair storm damage is “likely to exceed $2 million” and expects to fully draw down the $1.1 million in QLLA’s disaster relief fund and is now resorting to pulling money from “club operations” — “just on the heels” of having spent $3.2 million for a new irrigation system and $2.3 million on first-phase projects under the new Campus Master Plan that, among other things, will build a dormitory to house club workers.

The unexpected costs associated with remediating flood damage means that each QLLA member is being assessed a special, one-time fee of $2,150, which they can either pay “upfront” by Oct. 31 or pay in two equal $1,300 installments over the course of a year — at a 10% interest rate (a $1,300 installment can also be paid in four equal installments of $325 each).

Contrary to the image of Quechee Lakes residents not having much to worry about financially, resident Honey Donegan said there are others who have lived there a long time who wouldn’t be able to move there today after an influx of work-from-home buyers drove up real estate prices during the pandemic.

She believes the one-size-fits-all special assessments does not take into account the different circumstances of the community’s population.

“You go over to the parking lot at the clubhouse and see Porsches and Mercedes, but there are a lot of us here who no longer working and are dependent on whatever savings we have and Social Security, but they just said, ‘Let’s divide by 1,400 members,” said Donegan, 75, who has lived at Quechee Lakes for 30 years.

($2,150 multiplied by 1,400 equals $3.01 million, or approximately the amount of money QLLA said it needs to raise).

The private QLLA Facebook group has been lighting up with comments about the special assessment, with many posters complaining about what they said was a lack of transparency by the QLLA board and the hasty way it arrived at the decision without, they said, considering other options, such as delaying projects in build-out phases of the master plan unveiled last year.

Many found particularly galling the 10% “interest rate” — two points higher than the current fixed 30-year mortgage rate — added for members who want to divide their payment into two installments.

Kelley, the general manager, did not return messages seeking comment by deadline on Monday.

In addition to paying Hartford property taxes, QLLA members must pay a $4,000 new members fee upon buying a property in Quechee Lakes and then $6,000 annually in association fees. Residents who purchase a condo are additionally subject to a separate condo association fee, which can double the cost.

The fees paid to the homeowners association go toward upkeep of the property and amenities, such as access to the pool, tennis courts and ski slope. Members must also pay $500 for the privilege of eating at the clubhouse restaurant, which they can apply to their meal purchases, but there is no ability to opt out of the fee for members who choose not to dine at the restaurant.

But golf — the main summer recreational draw — is not covered in the QLLA membership, requiring an additional $3,000 a season if they want access to the links, according to F.X. Flinn, a onetime Hartford Selectboard member who has lived at Quechee Lakes for 26 years (about 24% of QLLA’s members also pay for the additional golf membership).

“You’re looking at $8,000, $9,000, $10,000 a year if you’re a golfer,” said Flinn about the total in annual fees QLLA members pay, “and the people who live in the condo associations have a whole other layer of fees on top of that.”

Bill Mann, who has been a nonresident member of Quechee Club since 1975 and regularly plays on the golf course, said he was “obviously not happy” when he heard about the special assessment and “there should have been more transparency it was coming.”

Mann said the special assessment comes at an “inopportune time” as Hartford property taxes were due last Friday. If members don’t pay the $2,150 by the end of October and instead divided the payments in two installments then QLLA members get hit with “what essentially amounts to a 10% penalty.”

Nonetheless, Mann said, “when the roof blows off you got to find a way to pay for it. You can’t predict the future and know when disaster is going to come.”

Still, although Mann said the board should have considered a “deferred” method of payment of the special assessment that did not come with such a high a high interest rate, he said complaining QLLA members may be looking at the wrong people to blame.

“You guys voted for the board members. If you don’t like what they did, you’re the ones who voted them in,” he said, explaining that “it’s kind of like the general election.”

“You elected the board; you have to have faith in them,” he said. “If there’s a time to make a change, it’s not midstream.”

Contact John Lippman at jlippman@vnews.com.