Golf Course Update: The Work Session

Report on City Council Work Session, Tuesday, 18 March 08

By Curmudgeon

[Prelude]: During the public comments time at the Council meeting that preceded the work session, Mr. Bill C., speaking on behalf of the Mt. Ogden Golf Course Mens' Association, told the Council that the hastily called public meeting for Wednesday night had not given his group enough time to prepare statements and alternative plans for the golf course. He and his group did not understand the perceived “urgency” [as Mayor Godfrey put it] of the situation. He told the Council that the Mt. Ogden Golf Course Men’s Association was preparing alternatives to the four outlined by the Mayor, alternatives that would not leave winners and losers in their wake, but would make everyone involved with the golf course a winner. He urged the Council not to rush to judgment but to wait for the Men’s Association to complete its recommendations, which he said would be done within a week. He said he did not intend to challenge the Mayor’s figures regarding the golf course’s income and costs — “They are what they are” he said. But the Association would be talking about how original mistakes that were made in funding the course, about the origins of the current debt, as well as how to deal with it. He insisted the recommendations the Association would make would “not divide” the community but would unite it.

The Work Session convened following the close of the Council Meeting. Mayor Godfrey began by congratulating the management of Mt. Ogden Golf Course [MOGC] for all they had done over the previous four years to turn things around, to increase the number of rounds played so that the course at least broke even. But, he said, it hadn’t worked, and the course was still losing in the area of a quarter of a million dollars a year. Rounds played would have to increase by about 30K a year over what they were not before that would change, he said. [...]

Read Curmudgeon's full article here.

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