As a current club treasurer whose been through several fights for dues increase, I can sympathize about the cost of belonging to a club, but also I know why the costs are what they are.
There is often field rent. That depends on where the club finds a field. I've seen clubs that have to rent expensive land, clubs that have to get the money to buy their land, and clubs that have land donated or lent out for little or no charge. I've heard of at least one club that is in such an expensive location that for over $2000/year you can join and get on a schedule that tells you at what time of what day you have a reserved flightime. And with several hundred members, there is a waiting list. Our club was lucky to get a decent sized parcel on a closed privately owned flyash dump surounded by a couple sanitary land fills, one closed and one in operation. But when the owner sold out to her daughter, we had to accept a slight immediate increase and a sliding 5%/year increase for each renewal. We've been at $75/yr adults. $65/yr seniors, and $15 four juniors under 19, plus AMA.
Then there is maintenance. In previous clubs, and in fact when I first joined the current club, mowing was done by volunteer members, with the only costs being fuel, oil, and periodic maintenance, with every ten to fifteen years, a new mower. Now 30 years later, just try to get somebody to do the mowing at less than $50/cut. And in the spring here, that can be twice a week for a while. In fact, for a while it was so hard to get someone that we were looking into getting a commercial outfit to do the mowing and spring rolling. Discusion on that idea stopped when the cost of that would have been 2 or 3 times what we are paying now.
Wives and children come out, both for family outings and as flyers. On a landfill, you can't dig a hole and put up an outhouse, like one of our older fields had. Port-Potti, May through October, $77/mo. And an installation and set-up charge. This year they may even have a removal charge added to the new $2 fuel surcharge.
Field maintenance and improvements. Filling holes and grooves on runways or access roads. Safety barricades. Maybe a shelter or park bench set-up.
Park fliers sound like they have it made, and to some degree they do, at least until some bone headed idiot comes along and wrecks things and gets all flying at parks and larger schoolgrounds stopped. Thanks to some of these, there are a number of area parks within an hours drive of me where people can't even fly a kite or one of these cheap Guillow or North Pacific gliders or rubber powered planes. At least most clubs have some kind of self-policing action that can reduce the negatives, like careless or agressive flying.
Nrichardz, sounds like you folks have a handle on your situation. Hope things work out, and everybody in your area can fly what they want without getting in each other's hair. Just remember the old adage about one rotten apple spoiling a barrel.