City picks up tab after resident requests mulligan on DGA loan

The Devine City Council agreed at their Regular meeting on April 16 to pay off nearly $19,000 of debt accrued by the now-defunct Devine Golf Association.
Jerry Dykowski loaned the DGA approximately $20,000 in 2017 in exchange for course membership and benefits, and requested that the City pay him back to the tune of $18, 837.83.
“It would solve a few problems with our employees, and also with the City,” Mayor Bill Herring said.
Since taking over the golf course, the City has declined to recognize lifetime memberships and sweetheart deals issued by the DGA before its bankruptcy and dissolution, but has paid off all of the known existing debt the DGA left behind.
The City was not able to find a signed contract between Dykowski and the DGA for the loan, though the DGA treated the money as such.
“All the documentation that we’ve seen is it’s a loan,” City Attorney Tom Cate said. “And that’s the way [the DGA] carried it on their books, and that was the agreement that the Association had with Jerry.”
The City’s attempts to find any DGA meeting minutes that indicated the loan had been repaid or that Dykowski declined future monetary compensation were unsuccessful.
“The good thing is that after we pay [Dykowski] off, he’s going to have to start paying for everything [at the golf course],” Interim City Administrator Dora Rodriguez said.
District 5 Councilman Cory Thompson asked if this was the last unknown DGA debt the City would have to pay. Neither Cate nor Rodriguez could guarantee that it was, though Rodriguez said no one else has come forward claiming to be owed money.
“[The DGA’s] record keeping was terrible,” Cate said, “so we’ve got people like this. Every once in a while, one of them pops up.”
Herring said that anyone else who claimed the DGA owed them money would have to have documentation.
“It seems like for every dollar that we were going to spend, we’ve had to spend two or three dollars that we weren’t aware of when we approved [taking over the course],” Thompson said.
Additionally, City Financial Advisor Mary Rodriguez said the City had been informed by the IRS that quarterly reports for March 2018 or September 2018 had not been sent in, and that Form 1120, used for Limited Liability Companies filing as Corporations, was overdue.
“Any time we get faced with something like that, we call Tom,” D. Rodriguez said, “and Tom guides us on what we need to do to make sure that we’re doing everything correctly.”
A motion by District 3 Councilman David Espinosa and District 1 Councilman David Valdez to pay Dykowski $18,837.83 passed unanimously, with Thompson, District 4 Councilwoman Jennifer Schott, and District 2 Councilman Steve Lopez all voting for the measure.
By Marly Davis
Staff Writer