Dear Friends,

Bruce Thompson, our Treasurer, reported that our bank accounts are now being recharged from high year-end expenses in 2007, mainly property taxes and insurance expenses. Good golf play from our winter visitors has increased our income considerably. This month’s income along with April's income should take us close to our budgeted projections.

Jeff Collier, our Operations Manager, reported the condition of the golf course continues to improve every month. The winter golfers are complimenting us on how well it looks. His crew has been busy cutting dead pines near to the Desoto-Landing area and generally cleaning debris still left over from the storms of past years.

Phil Baldwin and his Greens-Committee volunteers have been busy with numerous projects around the Club grounds. Phil’s wife Regina has overseen painting of the office and locker rooms. The new paint looks great. We are waiting on estimates for re-doing the floors in the office, grill, and locker rooms. The carpet is old and really needs replacement. With the able help of AmeriCorp volunteers, the greens committee has repaired the cart-barn, repaired and installed more sand fencing on the beach areas, and the AmeriCorp young people planted pine seedlings on the beach, courtesy of the Sea Lab, to restore our maritime forest on the beach-side of our property. We will repair the tennis courts in the weeks to come.

The concrete repairs to the Club building, funded by a grant from the US Department of Interior, are in high gear. The contract for the concrete work has been signed and is progressing. Part of the contract involves painting repaired surfaces, but after this is complete we will have a big volunteer project to complete painting the entire exterior of the Club. We want it to sparkle this Spring and Summer.

We have applied to the Exxon/Mobil Community Summer Jobs Program for funding two youth employees to work around the Club this summer. Hopefully we can expand our weekend beach cleaning and management project to a full time one this year.

On the legal front, we are awaiting some action on the Corp settlement this week. If this happens our attorney's in the West Surf Beach lawsuit, will move immediately to ask for a ruling from Judge Graddick on this lingering lawsuit. The covenant appeal we won is now being appealed to the Alabama Supreme Court, but our attorney feels that because of the specific instructions given the local court on it's reversal, based on Alabama law, the ASC will probably decline to hear it.

We discussed our Scholarship Fund, some $30,000+. It hasn't been used in a number of years, and after a lively discussion, I now realize why. Lot's of opinions on how to disburse these funds, but the main issues revolve around merit and/or need, island kids or member kids, etc.. So we did what you do when it gets complicated, we formed a committee to look into past criteria and develop new criteria if necessary. I am sure we will come up with a balance that will serve all relevant concerns.

William (Bill) Harper

President

DIPOA