I've been criticized a number of times for my tendency to inject politics into this site. Perhaps I see tangents of politics to golf like Don Quijote saw windmills as castles and dragons, though I think not.
This thread is a great example of how pervasive government is in our everyday lives. Don M.'s satire on municipal lobster is really not that far fetched.
Upscale municipal courses give the hard-working government employees the opportunity to act as private developers with public money. It is very sexy to get out of the office and rub shoulders with David Graham, Pete Dye, D.A. Weibring, and other celebrity players and designers. How many of us would not want to do that instead of listening to citizen complaints about strewn garbage, bumpy roads, noisy neighbors, bully policeman, and ineffective code enforcement?
To top it all, you can be a hero in city hall and among those hoodwinked in the community. You can demonstrate, at least on paper, that the cash flows from your proposed project will fund much if not all of the parks and recreation budget. Then you preach to the choir what an economic engine the course can be, and, Hallelujah, instant support (and a blind eye to all the counter arguments).
No longer do cities have to justify building a course because the private sector won't do it. They can now point to any number of other municipalities who have done so, and that by itself is sufficient reason (a form of keeping up with the Joneses).
Arlington, Texas where I live built an $8MM CCFAD on land that I and a partner had tried to acquire for a more modest $5 to $5.5MM daily fee facility. I won't bother this group with the details (my experience and that of Archie Struthers (sp) on another project with government and golf is in the archives).
Suffice it to say, that my home city of nearly 20 years at that time undermined my efforts to acquire the land by telling the owner that I would not be able to complete the purchase nearly as fast as the city could. Further, than even if the money had been raised to acquire the land (it was), that my group would not get through due dilligence because the zoning would not be granted.
Somehow the city's Park & Recreation Department had no difficulty navigating through the Planning & Zoning Department's regulatory labyrinth and secured the needed zoning and permits without incident. Amazing how that works.
Arlington now has a wonderful course, Tierra Verde (TV), (
http://www.arlingtongolf.com/default.aspx). The original intention was to hire a name chef to prepare fine cuisine for quaint senior managment corporate outings with their top customers. Unfortunately, the location and demographics didn't quite match the city's private developer with public money ambitions, so it is having difficulty making debt payments out of the course's revenues.
I played there yesterday and it really is quite nice. Couple of my acquaintances who are members at Colonial and at Horseshoe Bay play TV 20+ times each year because of its quality and relatively low price (under $40 including carts during the week; under $30 with coupons).
In a way, I should be thankful to the non-golfing taxpayers for subsidizing my pleasures. Then, I think about the multitude of things I am paying for through taxes that have little to do with what government was intended to do.
Anyways, TV was envisioned as doing 42,000+ rounds annualy at well over $50 per round. Some seven to eight years after it was built, it is doing 32,000 rounds at a rate that probably doesn't average much more than $35.
The manager there tells me that my model would not have worked. My wife is thankful for unanswered prayers. I still believe that my group's plans for a more modest, less expensive, but every bit as enjoyable and challenging facility, would have performed. I'll never know, but it does hurt a tad every time I go out there to see what could have been.
Isn't it a bit ironinc that as citizens and taxpayers in a community we are at times put in situations where we are competing against ourselves? Few really bother to ponder the issue. In the meantime, more land is being taken out of the tax base, "improved" under highly ineffective regulations, and managed to perform financially at very marginal levels.
My apologies for the rant and for whatever generalities I might have used that riles those who seek only facts, numbers, and statistics.