Status of the Cranbury Swim Club?

[Guest]

Does anyone know what is going on with the swim club?

We cancelled our membership over 3 months ago and went through the formal process to request our bond back. Since then we have heard nothing. We have tried following-up both by email and phone calls to a couple board members and to the management company and no one returns any of our communication. The management company says its out of their hands. I appreciate it may take some time but to have all our calls and emails ignored and to have it go 3+ months seems excessive.

[iamawino]

Hello, if you email at swimclub@cranburyswimclub.com ALL emails are replayed to on a regular basis. Keith A. Shaw Board Member

[Guest]

I'm not the OP, but I've heard from a couple people in the Town in a position to know that the Swim Club is close to running out of money. Keith can you comment on that? Is there enough money to finish the season and pay off all outstanding bond refunds? Why is it taking so long for bond refunds to be paid out?

[Guest]

I am the first poster. I heard from the treasurer today after a follow up email. He said the swim board has decided not to process any of the bond refund requests until this fall and that he inherited a mess from the person who had been handling the records and people may need to produce canceled checks to prove their original bond payments.

Not what I wanted to hear since I requested my refund in the spring and I will have to go to my bank to track down proof of a canceled check from years ago, but at least I know the status now.

[Guest]

I would like to hear this too. I am an active member but should I be concerned about my bond?

[Guest]

From what I was able to learn from a couple old board members some of the record keeping has been sloppy. The problem they have is that over the years there have been instances where many years after a family let their membership lapse they realized they were due a refund of the bond $$$. There were some instances where they had been refunded and some times due to poor records no one knew for sure if they were truly due a refund. A big concern is double refunding. It seems to be a record keeping problem more than a liquidity problem.

[Guest]

Thanks for the info. I would still feel better hearing from Mr. Shaw or another board member that they don't expect to have a liquidity problem post season. I keep hearing more and more rumors about them running on fumes and it would be nice to have the record corrected if there's no merit to them.

[former member]

After submitting my written request using the form on the Swim Club website, I heard nothing from the Swim Club. On 8/14 I sent an email to the address Mr Shaw listed above. I just tried to send another email to that same address and it is no longer a valid address.

I too have been trying for 2 months to get my bond refunded and haven't heard from anyone.

Is there a Board contact list available? There are no contacts, other than pool management, on the website.


Any help is much appreciated.

[Guest]

That is not true, the website and email are all working fine and have been. You may have sent an email out over the last two weeks and not have gotten an answer since I have been on vacation but all emails are responded to. Best regards, Keith

[Guest]

[former member]

I received a response from the swim club email address last night (no name attached to the email). It stated that refunds will be sent out after the club closes in September. Why is that? Why can't refunds be made upon request? This makes no sense.

[Guest]

Since you have now been in contact with "Keith" why don't your privately resolve your issues. I would advise Keith not to discuss specific issues with anonymous posters. You have no way of knowing if the are telling the truth or blowing smoke. I would suggest the unhappy former members get in touch with Keith and talk to him about your specific cases.

[Guest]

The swim club board is a volunteer group. We all have jobs, families as well as many of us also help other organizations. We are not paid for being a board member and we pay the same dues as everyone else. We do what we can with the time that we can. The fact that an anonymous poster "says" they received a message saying, "I just tried to send another email to that same address and it is no longer a valid address." shows anyone can post anything that is not true. There simply was no answer because I was on vacation with my family.

As for the reason why we are waiting until after September to look at the bonds. Book keeping in the past has not been done well by some previous boards and we need to go back to the records that we have to verify if a bond has been paid. This takes time and during the swim season we concentrate on running the club.

As a board member I think this board does an excellent job of running this club. The Cranbury Swim club is an excellent run facility with nearly 250 family's that would agree!

[Guest]

Not every poster is "in private contact with Keith" or anyone else yet. My emails have still never been answered.

What is the harm in directly answering the straight forward question? Nothing about the question is in any way being rude or unkind to the volunteer board members.

Does the club have enough funds to process all the outstanding bond refund requests? It seems like the answer is a definitive yes, no or "honestly with all the former bookkeeping problems we don't know." The bond money should have been protected and therefore be available. Either that happened or it didn't. Can't someone just answer the question directly?

[Guest]

If the rumors that they are almost out of money are false and if they will be able to process all the refunds next week in September then just say it. But if there is any doubt about that it is a terrible idea to stall and tell people their refunds will come if you are not absolutely certain they will. Everyone can sympathize this is a volunteer Board to a point, but not if they are deceived. If they later say they can't cover all the refunds it would not meet the standard of good faith since there would be a record they continued paying the operations through the season while delaying outstanding refunds and it would open the Club and the members of the litigation and bad blood in a small town. Much better to just admit we have a problem up-front or dispel the persistent murmurs that there is a problem if it isn't true.

[Guest]