April 13, 2009

Board of Selectman Town of Duxbury 878 Tremont St. Duxbury, Ma. Re: North Hill Country Club Dear Board Members: After listening to the hearing on the liquor license for North Hill, I feel I should contact you directly, as I am equally frustrated and uncomfortable with what has transpired at North Hill. I will be as factual and brief as possible. Johnson Golf Management, Inc. has been in the golf management business for twenty two years. In those twenty two years we have probably submitted bids or proposals on more that one hundred occasions. In this time period we have been in litigation four or five times, regarding issues of compliance with the Massachusetts bidding statutes. Our experience is that the Courts will uphold the bidding statutes and full compliance with the bidding statuettes is the only way to go. I certainly dont take pleasure in litigation, but as golf is our business and livelihood, I will attempt to make sure that the bidding process complies with the law and that everyone plays by the same rules. As you know, North Hill went out to bid by RFP in October 2008. There were five bidders, of which only one was a qualified golf management company, namely Johnson Golf. The other bidders were not qualified. I contacted the town repeatedly after a couple of weeks to ask what the hold up was in awarding the bid. After six weeks, Mr. MacDonald issued a letter saying all bids were thrown out and that the rejection of the proposals was in the best interest of the town. He gave no specific reason as to why, which we believed was required by law. We filed a lawsuit in December. We repeatedly asked the town for copies of the evaluations and proposals, which had become public record. The towns initial response was to refuse to provide my attorney with this information under the freedom of information act.

In court in late December, your town counsel, Mr. Troy stated that the reason for a re-bid was because the evaluations were not done properly. He went on to tell the court that he decided that all evaluations and proposals would be kept by him until after the re-bid. In court my attorney asked if the town had the proposals in their possession and if there was a mistake by the evaluation team, why must you re-bid? Either have the evaluators do it correctly or bring in new evaluators to do it right. What was the need for new proposals? What we have learned since the end of December casts some light on what was being done. In bid number one, CALM Golf bid $300,000.00 plus 5% of any gross over $500,000.00. This was a violation of the towns RFP as the town asked for a flat rate. By the way, the 5% would have amounted to an average of less than $5,000.00 per year based on the figures in the RFP for the last ten years. Johnson Golf Management bid $420,000 in both RFP #! and #2, as there were no substantive changes in the RFP. CALM Golf in RFP #2 raised its bid by $212,500.00 to $512,500.00 This amounted to an increase of over 70% coming during a period of the worst economic conditions in the history of our country. Common sense would cause anyone examining the facts to question what was CALMs motive for such an increase. Is it possible that a legitimate responsible, professional company could bid like this? That is not very likely. In court CALMs attorney was asked why this bid changed. The attorney answered that they gave him input. Judge Smith said it right in his decision that he found it incredible that anyone could rank CALM Golf highly advantageous. I have seen newspaper accounts that the course will go out for bid again this year for the 2010 golf season. My previous experiences tell me that this case will not go to trial for a minimum of two to three years and we will be operating it as Judge Smith says until further order of the court or until a settlement is reached. According to my attorneys I believe that we plan to deposition between fifteen and twenty witnesses, so it would be safe to say that at a minimum there will probably about seventy five to one hundred hours of depositions. As a business man I ask my attorney to outline the cost for me and I would think you would do the same. I am very confident that, if the case proceeds to a conclusion, we will prevail in this case and we would be seeking compensation for our losses and costs. Without getting into the details of the factual allegations in our case, I believe it would be in the best interest of both parties to meet and try to settle this before it becomes increasingly expensive and potentially embarrassing. Enclosed please find a letter I sent to Mr. MacDonald a few weeks ago, to which I have not received a response. I would be happy to meet with you, with or without lawyers, to begin a dialog which will hopefully resolve our differences. I hope to hear form you.

Thank you for your attention and consideration.

Respectfully,

Douglas W. Johnson Johnson Golf Management, Inc.