Motueka’s Returned and Services Association (RSA) building is set to be sold after debt levels have reached a level where the club can no longer service them.
However, president Ric Odom says the committee is determined the club will continue, likely from a different location.
Ric says Motueka’s RSA, like many around New Zealand, is struggling to generate the income needed to pay its bills. The establishment owes well in excess of $100,000 and he estimates it is going backwards by about $60,000 a year.
Money is owed to what Ric describes as “a broad church” of people and organisations, including Inland Revenue, the RSA’s national body and local tradespeople, all of whom have been very understanding.
“This town, there’s such a generosity of spirit,” Ric says.
He shares that staff wages, rates, insurance and increasingly urgent maintenance have all been deferred.
The RSA has secured a bank loan to clear these debts, which Ric describes as “essentially a reset”, on the condition the building is sold to provide security. The property is freehold and is currently owned outright by the RSA.
The club has 860 financial members, although Ric says far fewer are regular patrons.
Those regulars keep the club ticking over from week to week, with income coming through the restaurant and bar. However, aside from occasional special events, Ric says the RSA would be lucky to attract 50 to 100 people on a night, which is not enough to sustain it financially.
“It does go to the heart of this RSA, where we’ve got this core membership group who come together… it’s a really important part of their life, and as much as we can, we want to preserve that.”
Ric says the RSA serves two key functions. The first is as a social hub for veterans and the wider community. The second is the provision of veteran’s support.
“It’s the latter which is, to my mind, the DNA of the Returned and Services Association.”
That support is often delivered quietly in whatever form is needed, whether physical, mental, or financial. While some of the club’s other services have been pared back over time, Ric believes no veteran or their family has been denied this assistance.
He embraces the fact that Motueka’s club has a “fairly broad definition” of what it considers a veteran. Fire, police and ambulance officers, as well as military personnel, gather around the RSA’s veteran’s table.
“That’s where people who have served and their families gather... and we just talk about nothing in particular, and between all of that is that you are with a group of people who kind of understand what serving in the military or police is like,” he says.
“For me, it’s akin to putting on a warm blanket – there’s a welfare element to that.”
Ric served in the military for more than 20 years and has also worked at a senior level in the non-profit sector, including as national chief executive of both RNZSPCA and YMCA, as well as chief executive of Franklin Hospice.
He moved to Motueka from Pōkeno with his wife Jenny about two years and the couple immediately joined the town’s RSA, with Ric saying it is the friendliest that he has encountered.
“We were so struck with the welcoming nature of the people here.”
He joined the committee about 18 months ago and was co-opted as president earlier this year.
After reviewing about six years of the association’s financial records, Ric says the committee concluded the RSA could not trade its way out of debt and that the problem could not be solved long term through community generosity alone.
“We came to the conclusion that we’d run out of runway.”
He stresses there has been no fraud or underhand dealing. Instead, increasing costs, declining membership and the cost-of-living crisis combined to create the situation.
“Every one of [the past committee members] had a vested interest and a keen desire to see the club succeed, and I think it just got overwhelming.”
Ric says its central location and size mean it should attract interest and will not be a fire sale.
“We don’t have to do it immediately, but having made the decision, we want the wheels to start turning.”
He says the news has hit some members hard and many are going through a grieving process.
“We are currently looking at options to find a new home, and there are some promising options there,” he says.
“What we have to do is make sure the Motueka RSA, in whatever form, is still around in 10 or 20 years or more.”
