Eaglecrest Golf Course - How Much and From Where?

How much did it cost and where did the money come from? Those were the questions that I asked at a Town Hall meeting on November 17, 2025. The questions were not answered. The response from the Mayor at that meeting was that the Town was committed to full transparency and the information would be disclosed. Notwithstanding the Mayor's commitment, and despite a number of announcements from the Town about the golf course, there has been no public disclosure of the cost or the source of the funds. After numerous enquiries, and after making a formal Freedom of Information Request, I now have some numbers.

The costs disclosed below are only for the actual purchase of the golf course. They do not include any costs associated with the "revisioning" such as renovations to the clubhouse, servicing/subdivision of the properties that will subsequently be put up for sale, reconfiguring the golf course, habitat restoration and the interim maintenance of the golf course prior to handing it over to its operator. These are yet to come. Hopefully, the Town will be more transparent with these costs than it has been with the costs associated with the purchase.

The purchase price, as initially disclosed by the Town, was $8,500,000. Added to this are the following acquisition costs:

$3798.65 (net adjustment for property taxes/water/sewer)

$28,118.00 (paid to NGL Nordicity Group)

$14,265.00 (paid to Koers and Associates)

$80,112.00 (paid to Modus)

$28,148.05 (paid to Young Anderson)

$3,556.56 (paid to PQ News)

$120.90 (paid to Quality Foods)

$5216.50 (paid to Grassroots Drilling Inc.)

$5,500.00 (paid to Keso Turf Supplies)

$1,087.50 (paid to K. Evans)

$169,923.16 Total of ancillary costs

Thus, the total cost to purchase the golf course was $8,669,923.16.

No information was provided by the Town as to the actual goods or services provided by the recipients for the payments listed above. As a result, one can only guess as to the services provided to the Town by the various recipients. Further, no Requests for Proposals appear to have been issued by the Town for any of the ancillary work so it is unknown if the amounts paid were the result of a competitive process of any sort.

NGL Nordicity was paid $28,118.00 by the Town in the purchase of the golf course. NGL Nordicity is described on their website as a leading international consulting firm providing private and public sector clients with solutions for economic analysis, strategy and business. They have been retained by the Town in the past and, unconnected to the work done on the golf course, were awarded a $112,470 contract on March 12, 2025 for a project entitled "Pathways to Economic Development in Qualicum Beach". The report for this project has yet to be presented to Council. The actual work conducted by NGL Nordicity for the purchase of the golf course is not known.

Koers and Associates was paid $14,265.00. Koers and Associates are a locally based engineering firm that does a large amount of work for the Town. The most recent Statement of Financial Information released by the Town indicates that Koers and Associates were paid $956,843 by the Town in 2024 and $628,374 in 2023. The actual work conducted by Koers for the golf course purchase is not known.

Modus is another consulting firm that has also done work for the Town in the past. On June 18, 2025 Modus was awarded a $54,663 contract for the initiative "Ways to Achieve Attainable Market Housing". The final report for this project is yet to come. With respect to the golf course, in August 2025, the Town announced that public consultation to seek feedback from the public on the purchase would be led by Modus at the September 2025 public meeting. Presumably, this is the work for which they were paid $80,112.

Young and Anderson is a law firm with offices in Vancouver and Kelowna. Their clients are primarily local governments. The Town has retained them in the past. The Statements of Financial Information show that the Town paid Young Anderson $106,732 in 2024 and $92,178 in 2023. Presumably, they provided legal advice to the Town relating to the purchase of the golf course and did the actual conveyance of the property, for which they were paid $28,148.05.

$3556.56 paid to the PQ News is most likely for advertising related to the purchase while the $120.90 paid to QF Foods is probably for the refreshments served at the September public meeting.

Little information is available on the remaining recipients. As a result, it is not possible to determine the specific goods or services provided by them.

Now that the amount paid to purchase the golf course is known, the next question is the source of the funds. As with the price paid for the golf course, the source of the funds has also not been released to the public. Information obtained from the FOI request revealed the source of funds as follows:

$2,125,000 The Christopher Foundation Donation

$275,000 Parkland Reserve

$1,200,000 Property Reserve

$541,842 Strategic Initiatives Reserve

$1,275,000 Accumulated Surplus

$450,000 Community Amenity Contributions

$2,100,000 Community Growth Fund

$700,000 DCC Open Spaces

$8,666,842 Total

With the exception of The Christopher Foundation, the foregoing are funds and reserves held by the Town in the form of cash or cash equivalents that, presumably, are or were earmarked for specific Town uses. In other words, none were being held for the purchase of a golf course.

From the outset, the Town has consistently stated that the purchase of the golf course (and revisioning) was to be self-funded through the sale of some of the purchased lands and that no taxpayer money would be spent. If that is the case, it stands to reason that all of the money "borrowed" from the various funds and reserves listed above will be repaid from those land sales. This does not appear to be the case. The schedule of Reserve Balances set out in the Town's 2026 to 2030 Financial Plan shows the repayment only of the Property Reserve Fund, the Parkland Reserve Fund and the Strategic Initiatives Reserve. Payments to each of these is proposed to be made by two equal payments in 2027 and 2028 ($137,500 being repaid to the Parkland Reserve Fund in 2027, with the remaining $137,500 being repaid in 2028; $600,000 to the Property Reserve Fund in 2027, with the remaining $600,000 being repaid in 2028; $270,900 being repaid to the Strategic Initiatives Reserve in 2027, with the remaining $270,900 being repaid in 2028). The repayments are, of course, dependent upon the successful sales of land.

A review of the Financial Plan provided no evidence of the repayment of money to the Community Amenity Contribution Reserve, the Community Growth Fund, the DCC Open Spaces Reserve or the replacement of money taken from Accumulated Surplus. This does not match the claim that the purchase will be self-funded.

The Growing Communities Fund was a one time grant from the province distributed among all local governments to support the delivery of infrastructure projects necessary to enable community growth. Given that this fund is not being repaid, a question that must be asked is whether the purchase of a second golf course by the Town was "necessary to enable community growth" and whether the money in this fund could, or should, have been used for other purposes. By way of background, the Town received $3,346,000 under this program in March 2023. Interest was earned on the fund and its balance increased. However, according to the Town's audited 2025 Financial Statements, the fund is now virtually depleted ($41,597 remaining), having been spent on the purchase of the golf course ($2,100,000), Saahtlam Park washrooms, playground and food truck services ($166,307), Seacrest Road replacement/slope stabilization ($700,000) and the Skatepark project ($700,000). The question to be asked is whether any of these uses of the fund (in particular, the purchase of the golf course) was necessary to enable community growth contemplated by the provincial grant.

With respect to the use of the funds in the Community Amenity Contribution Reserve, it could be argued that the money in this reserve is not, strictly speaking, collected from property taxes but rather is paid by developers. In any event, the Reserve Balances schedule in the 2026 to 2030 Financial Plan refers to a "repayment of Eaglecrest" to the Community Amenity Contribution Reserve, however, no amount has been inserted. This may, however, be a posting error as the listing of the Affordable Housing Reserve in the same schedule shows a "repayment of Eaglecrest" of $225,000 in 2027 and $225,000 in 2028. This repayment is assumed to be an error as there is no reference in any of the documents showing money from this reserve being used for the purchase of the golf course. Presumably, the Town's finance department will correct this error and the proper fund will be repaid.

Development Cost Charges are one-time fees imposed by the Town on developers to pay for infrastructure to support new growth, including water, sewer, drainage, roads and parkland. Presumably, the DCC Open Spaces Reserve refers to funds set aside for parkland. The Town does not segregate the amounts for each of the components (ie. water, sewer, etc.) in its financial statements so the actual amount available for "open spaces" cannot be determined. As with Community Amenity Charges, DCCs are not paid by taxpayers. If the money borrowed from this Reserve is not repaid, the questions to be asked are whether the purchase of the golf course is an appropriate use of the funds and whether money destined for roads, drainage and water is being depleted by the purchase of parkland.

$1,275,000 was taken from Accumulated Surplus to pay for the golf course. Basically, this is money that, for various reasons, has not been spent. The primary source of this money is property taxes. For example, the Town's budget for the upcoming year may include salary for a municipal job that has not been filled. Money is collected via property taxes in anticipation. However, if the job does not get filled, the money allocated to the salary does not get spent and ends up in accumulated surplus at the end of the year. Another example is a project that comes in under budget. Some municipalities use this "unspent" money to reduce the property tax increase in the ensuing year. Based on the most recent budget, this amount is the equivalent of an almost 10% increase in property taxes and could have been used to reduce or eliminate the 6.5% property tax increase. It will be interesting to see if this amount is repaid from Eaglecrest property sales. If it is not repaid, it will be difficult to accept Council's claims that the purchase of the golf course is self-funded.

In my mind, the claim that the purchase of the golf course will be self-funded by way of property sales (presumably of lands surplus to the promised golf course and parkland) implies that no money from the reserves and accumulated surplus will be spent. In order to meet this claim, all of the money "borrowed" from all of the sources must be repaid.

Hopefully, the sale of land will produce sufficient money to replace money borrowed from the various funds and reserves such that the purchase of the golf course is, in fact, self-funded. And further, that the land sales are also sufficient to cover the additional costs contemplated in the revisioning. Whether the public will know if the whole of the project has been self-funded, without cost to the taxpayer, will be entirely dependent on the transparency and disclosure provided by the Town.

James Noel

June 8, 2026

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