Public golf courses were a recent topic of the day over at the Utah blog Gazelem, wherein Travis Grant adopts the libertarian position, i.e., that "city governments should keep their hands out of areas that should be left to the private sector." It's a short article, so we'll incorporate its text in full:
While we do agree with the general proposition that public entities ought to steer clear of activities which directly compete with private business interests, we wonder whether there is any palpable distinction between an ordinary public park and a public golf course, aside from the fact that public golf courses are generally better maintained than public parks, and thus designed to return some revenue to the operating government entity. If we assume from the semi-purist libertarian position that it's OK for public entities to operate ordinary parks as a matter of principle, why not public golf courses?City Golf Courses are Big Mistakes
13 March 2008 — Travis GrantCity governments should keep their hands out of areas that should be left to the private sector. One key example of this is city owned golf courses. Private enterprise has found a lot of success by building golf courses. City governments have hoped to capitalize on the successes of others and have started to build golf course after golf course. This has over inundated the world with golf courses.
Recently Ogden has found that their Golf course is a loser in the financial world. With out some sort of change, it will be a failure. So to whom does the mayor turn to save the golf course? The citizens of citizen of Ogden get to pay the bill.
Although I am not opposed to turning it into a park as suggested in the article, The smartest move would be to sell the property. Either the new owner could turn it into a profitable golf course, or build houses on it, or something.
No matter what the decision, the tax payers lose. Property is selling low right now, so it isn’t a good time to sell, so the citizens lose on the sell. If they turn it into a park, the citizen have to pay tax, to make it so. Or the worst deal of all, would be the renovation to make it more profitable.
Cities need to keep out of the private sector. Whether it is Utopiah, golf courses, or other business. It is destined to fail.
There also appears the problem which we've discussed earlier here, i.e., taking Boss Godfrey at his word, when he asserts, without a scintilla of evidenciary support so far, that the Mt. Ogden Golf Course is losing the kind of money he says it is.
As an added bonus, we direct our readers' attention to this morning's Standard-Examiner letter, wherein Ogden's Anthony Pena chimes in on the topic.
What say our gentle readers? Anybody want to talk golf courses, and the proper role of government this morning?
