Dawn Addiego's Golfing Legacy in Evesham: A Financial mess

by: Jason Springer

Thu Oct 25, 2007 at 10:50:21 PM EDT

The ballroom at the Indian Spring Country Club is called the Aurora Room, named for the Roman goddess who rises from the ocean in a chariot to bring on the dawn and is a reminder of former Councilwoman Dawn Marie Addiego's role in its construction.

She said she was proud of her efforts "to turn around what was a struggling club, rife with corruption, and set it on the course to become a well-regarded golf facility and highly sought after banquet facility that will be a revenue generator for Evesham Township's recreation programs and its residents."

When the golf course was turning a profit in the late 1990s, the township committee took $2.65 million out of it to avoid making unpopular property-tax hikes - even when it was clear its balances were shrinking, the critics say.

Between 1996 and 2000, the golf course's $1.5 million fund balance shrank to $150,000 after a succession of transfers to the general fund.

By 2002, the golf course was running at a deficit. In 2003, the township committee took $750,000 out of the township's open-space recreation fund to cover golf-course operations. A year later, they were so strapped for cash they refinanced the debt and are now trying to figure out how to pay it back.

Between 1994 and 2001, the township issued a series of bonds for the project. In 2004, it issued $6.4 million in bonds to refinance the earlier bonds.

On that refinancing deal, debt payments will escalate over time. Now, they're $385,000 a year but escalate to $800,000 in 2010 and $1 million in 2013. Golf-course revenue to cover debt service and other expenses was at $695,000 last year.

Addiego's connections to the golf course run deep.

She looked over the china and silverware for the catering hall. Her cousin worked there, her daughter's godfather had a catering contract there, and a named partner in her former law firm owned part of yet another catering contract there.

She said others on the town council looked over the china but joked, "I was most interested in it"; her cousin got the job through merit; she didn't really know her daughter's godfather when he got the catering contract; and her boss at the law firm invested in the catering contract after she left the council.

On four of five bond deals, records show, the bond counsel was Capehart & Scatchard, a firm that contributes to candidates in both parties but that is best known in political circles because former Burlington County GOP chairman Glenn Paulsen is a partner. Paulsen said that in order to expand its bond practice, the firm hired an attorney who had long been doing Evesham's bond work.