Real architects vs. people who call themselves architects

[les_claytor]

Harding Park Science:

Drainage is at the heart of all issues at Harding Park.  The site is essentially an elevated sand bluff surrounded on three sides by Lake Merced.  All runoff drains in five watersheds directly across unstable slopes down into the lake which is monitored by several overlapping environmental agencies.

The original site drainage system at Harding was quite simple and somewhat effective.  Literally, the site average 1% fall which minimized run-off coefficinents, but made golf in the rainy season unpleasant.  Funny, that most of the fairways adjacent to lake slopes were sloped away from the slopes in a very subtle fashion, see #18 & 16.  Throw in the tightly planted golf hole corridors of Cypress and Pines, and you are faced with doing internal drainage within the golf holes.

Releasing the water into the lake turned out to be an interesting engineering solution.  There are literally thousands of feet of gravel drains that allow captured water to infiltrate before being dicharged into velocity disipators at the edge of wetland filters.  As you can see, a little more complicated that simple surface drainage.

Classic Drainage:  I am always amazed at how much subsurface drainage is underneath what we call classic surface drained courses.  Just read the books and bend some pin flags sometime on old courses to find thousands of feet of clay tile with cinders laid by hand.

Bunkers:  We followed the existing bunkering pretty consistently at Harding.  Added some FWB's and eliminated a few bunkers.  Bunkering is always under the critical eye.

Shaping:  Shaping is always a subjective issue.  News flash: most modern architects utilize bulldozers for shaping, especially after striping 6" off with scrapers to remove Kikuya.

Back to Harding:  I'm most proud that after all the efforts by all who contributed to the renovation, at the end of the day Hardng Park showed up and stole the show.  The course played for the best in the world as it has for all of us over the years, a demanding task master.  I guarentee you that people are out there this morning going round and round on the Harding and Flemming.  I would venture to guess that a few of them will have fun.  

[Jeff_Brauer]

Les,

Good to hear from you again! And thanks for your description of the inner workings of a golf course redevelopment.

To start with, the newspapers of any stripe will always find a way to make public spending seem fraudulent or wasteful. Hell, thats the national pastime.  As another example, I saved the local clippings for the Quarry for a while, while it was being considered. Every week, the paper inflated the cost of the project, from 6, to 9, 10, and even $11 MIL, while the budget never changed.

In the new movie about Ed Murrow, there was pre movie hype about how he ALWAYS had two sources before reporting anything.  In the case of Geoff's web site (and to be fair, many, many others) there is nothing but Geoff guessing how the money was spent!  

He throws out phrases like "Rather standard these days when the cost of mateirals is anything but, "Too much" on a few occaisions, without knowing what was done,  "blessed by a priest " (actually thats kind of funny, but does insinuate wrongdoing without really saying so), "silly-but-likely", and the possibly slanderous "kick-backs and any other bureaucratic waste you'd like to throw in."

At least he avoided using his all time favorite, "bizarre" which is usually used to describe any newish looking bunker he doesn't like.  Then, when the gca puts them back the way they were, they are "character free."

I can think of a few items, like the cost of floating bonds from a major bond house, interest for lost revenue going forward in addition to paying the city, should the course not open on time, or be able to hold the tournament and a few other things that might be in the "leftover" funds. For that matter, the cost of working in an inner city area always seems higher, whether union labor, prevailing wages, etc. etc. etc.  Even in just construction costs, the cost of trucking sand to the site, with huge trucks going down narrow city streets in traffic doubles.  And finding housing for the laborers is a bit more difficult and expensive in a place like SF, vs a rural area.  You get the point, but none of that gets considered when writing an op/ed piece, whereas a "real architect" (to bring it back on topic) would know that.

I often find myself asking why Geoff' hasn't backed his opinions up with facts of some type.  This piece certainly doesn't live up to the Murrow standard, but maybe opinion pieces don't have to by modern journalistic standards.  I do know that I occaisionally get calls to double check certain facts/opinions I have written before they are published, even on internet sites I write for.  And yet, internet sites (including this one) are a force in the world today, certainly allowing "opinions" to circulate faster than ever before.  

The one thing that hasn't changed with technology is the human mind, which could always jump to conclusions at the speed of DSL!

[Joel_Stewart]

Les:
I'll give you extra credit for your reply and respect that you have replied which is far more than Chris Gray has done.  I could counter many of your responses but in the end whats done is done.  I am a little surprised that neither you or Jeff Brauer will admit that $16 million (or whatever the exact number is) was an enormous amount of money to redo an existing golf course.  

Jeff:
Does anyone at the ASGCA consider the PGA tour design team to be threats to your livelihood?  Maybe its just business, but if the USGA and the PGA wanted to control who gets what jobs based on future events, guys like you could be out of a job fairly quick.

[Tom_Doak]

Joel:

I'll be curious to see Jeff's answer to your post, but really, the PGA Tour is not a large factor in the golf course design business.  Yes, they have always controlled tournament site selection, but there are only so many tournaments to go around, and until recently anyway, they only picked the same handful of big names to design their courses that every big-$ developer picks.  

And if every project they do is swaddled in millions of dollars of bureaucratic red tape, as you allege, that leaves me and Jeff and others plenty of business.  We haven't been starving anyway ... I must have gained 20 pounds in the past five years!

P.S.  I think Chris Gray has gone into private practice and is not with the Tour anymore, which Les could confirm or correct.

[Tommy_Naccarato]

Les,
It would be great if you could provide the scope of the work at Harding Park, as well as what was spent on what. Labor, permitting and material costs and all. It might help dispel some of the criticism and shed some light on further renovations of courses just like it.

I'll be curious to see Jeff's answer to your post

I'm curious too.

[Tom_Doak]

TN:  That might be putting Les on the spot.  Some clients consider cost figures privileged information; I know I've offended one or two when I start breaking down what it cost them to build their courses.

On the other hand, it may well be public information in this case, if someone wants to do their homework.

[David_Tepper]

At the risk of repeating myself, I find all this obessing about the amount of money spent to renovate/restore Harding some what puzzling. If the SF Mayor's office, the Park & Rec Department and the Board of Supervisors feel that the finances of the project are in order, isn't that all that matters? I do not see where any participants on this board are entitled to an accounting of the project, especially in this public forum. To ask or expect Les Clayton to itemize the expenses and costs of the project here is very unfair to him.

As I said in an earlier post, construction projects of any type in San Francisco are ridicuously expensive. If you gentlemen knew what a famous club is now spending to renovate its downtown clubhouse, it would absolutely boggle your minds.  
 


 

[Jeff_Brauer]

I am sure that some individual members in ASGCA worry about it, just as we worry about any new entity in the biz splitting the pie that much further.  On the other hand, I think we officially answered the question when we voted Bobby Weed, then working with the PGA Tour Design services into membership.

David,

I doubt the numbers are a secret, but as Tom says, generally, its bad form for a gca to post too much about it.  I have thought of some other things that might raise the price, including cabling the course for television, running electric and utilities to corporate tent sites, and adding other amenties required soley for the tournament.  I can also imagine, if it was a standard city contract, with strict clauses, that a contractor might bid more than is typical, (in addition to factors in my first post) as well as the contractor bidding more knowing that many, many, gca types from the tour might stop in at unadvertised schedules to request changes, and the bid may have been a lump sum.  

David, what profession are you in?  How would you like someone throwing out numbers willy nilly and calling you irresponsible based on those?  There may be absolutely nothing wrong with the article from a journalistic point of view, but I am naturally inclined to stick up for the gca.  There is the old saying about "walking in a man's shoes before you criticize."  

Les was nice enough to show one flaw in Jeff's logic, such as forgetting about the huge required drainage budget altogether. Nothing wrong with either of our responses, either, IMHO.

[Tommy_Naccarato]

David Tepper,
This in no way is attacking Les in anyway, even though it is commonly known what Chris Gray thinks of Golf Club Atlas. Les has always been one of the good guys we value here, but I do have some questions. After all, given the current modern day situation of government waste, questioning the City and its power would be Good Government at work. Making sure that the process of checks and balances is at work. If not, well then you have the Bush Administration! (Relax Lou)

This was a public project wasn't it?

Shouldn't contractors or design firms be accountable for public projects as such? Personally, I have worked on some HUGE, and I mean HUGE public projects as an electrician. HUGE David, HUGE, and each and every penny, each and every man hour was ultimately accountable to the public.

Some of those jobs (Not to promote my involvment, but to explain further the size and the accountability of those projects)

--Hyperion Waste Treatment Facility in El Segundo for the City of Los Angeles--a $200 Million Capital Project. It lasted two whole years.

--Los Angeles International Airport Runway Light & Signal Project
$55 Million. A project that was scheduled for 1 1/2 years work that we finished in less then 6 months. The overtime money I made from that job paid for my trip to Scotland in 1996!

--Port of Los Angeles Terminal Island Expansion. David, this project was so big that I still don't know what the total cost of expanding the biggest port in the United States--if not the world--totaled out to.

Just those three there, each one of them was accountable for every dollar spent on material and labor. That's the LAW.

I'm also interested in knowing how PGA Tour Design Services even circumvented the bid process in becoming the architect of record--literally the General or in this case, "Prime" contractor?  A Prime Contractor is the main contractor who hires all of the trades of the project and oversees their work (In the case of government local, state and federal) I would think the explanation of this would be somewhat easy to figure out--that it was an agreement with the city as a specialty contractor who utilized all of the trades in a PLA or Prevailing Wage situation. I could fully understand this, but is this the story here?

I don't doubt for one second the course is as popular as Les has portrayed it, even the 9 hole Flemming course. But frankly, I think the $16 Million dollar figure seems high considering the average amount it takes to build a brand new, say "Geoff" Brauer course (I'm going to say on the average of somewhere between 9 Million to 11 Million)

Add in the prevailing wages and, yes its more money definitely, especially if subsistence is added in for traveling shapers and such who HAVE to be paid prevailing wage and more then likely had to join the Operators and Engineers to even walk on to the property. I just don't think it's going to add another 2 Million, let alone 5-7 Million. This is where a breakout of what went where and how it goes would be helpful.

Hey, if there was some special filtration system like Les has explained to us, Yes, absolutely it adds up all of it. But even then on most projects like that, they are seperated from the cost of the golf course and moved over to another faction of government like Public Works, who maintains the sewers and other pertinent sections of the job, and in the case of that area of Daly City, near San Francisco--Lake Merced. Another thing is Kikuyu. The cost to eradicate an entire course is probably mind-boggling.

So no, this isn't meant to be mean-spirited in anyway. I think its more of seeing where $16 Million of San Francisco money went, and how it was spent. Nope, nothing wrong with that at all, and I'm sure that it is of the public record too, even if Les can't post it.

If it isn't, well then there is something rotten in Denmark!

 

[Kelly Blake Moran]

After all, given the current modern day situation of government waste, questioning the City and its power would be Good Government at work. Making sure that the process of checks and balances is at work. If not, well then you have the Bush Administration! (Relax Lou)

I knew that weasel-eyed little Nazi was involved somehow!  I mean Bush, not Lou .


A few questions Tommy:

1) Why do public projects have to pay prevailing wage when the same worker doing the same job imakes half that amount on a private project?

2) Do the taxpayers benefit by such laws?  

3) Can the quality of a contractor be surmised based upon whether they favor prevailing wage projects, meaning lower quality, change order oriented contractors like the  prevailing wage projects?

[David_Tepper]

Tommy N. -

Let me try to be clear about this.  In this case I am not questioning the public's right to know. What I am questioning is whether this is the right forum to pursue this matter and if Les Clayton should in in any way feel compelled or obliged to speak to the matter further. For you or I to ask him to possibly compromise his relations with his employer or his employer's client is most unfair.

He has already said the Geoff Shackelford's cost assumptions where way off base. What makes you assume that Shackelford's number are correct?

If you are interested, call the SF Park & Rec Department and see what they have to say. They may have even published a project budget in the public record.

San Francisco is crawling with investigative journalists. If there is a rotten smell in Denmark, it will be sniffed out. Of that, I am sure.

DT

 

 

[Jeff_Brauer]

Kelly, Kelly, Kelly,

You are trying to put logic into the law.....in my experience, that is a futile excersise!

Most public projects I do have prevailing wage clauses, and I assume that a liberal place like SF probably does, too.  For that matter, they may have an extensive "preference" program, whereby the contractor was required to (or was awarded the contract even with a higher bid because of) hire a specific amount of local subcontractors (this may be where tommy gets some of his work on these big projects) and/or local labor.

While this sounds good to the politicians, as they are pushing for local jobs, contractors often roll their eyes, and figure that they must hire the locals AND then figure their own crew will do the real work.  It's just the "entitlement" situation as well as working for an out of town contractor you will never see again that spurs so many (not all) to take advantage of the situation.  So, imagine how the cost estimate goes up when you figure twice the labor, etc.

(Kelly, I am explaining this to the rest of the crowd, not you specifically, as I am sure you run into this often)

I am sure that every dollar for this project is accountable to the public, but we just haven't looked it up.  Its well known in the construction industry that working in CA costs a lot more, because of govt. reggies, so I am just as sure that working in California for the City of SF probably doubles the the cost of a normal golf construction project.  Add in a special drainage system, total gassing and grassing to rid yourself of kikuya, and $4M for lost revenues, and I think you probably have about the correct cost, as hard as that is to believe, even to me.

Wasn't this project awarded on bid? I don't think the PGA Tour acts as a prime contractor, but may have had a project management fee equal to that of the gca fee.

[Mike_Golden]

I have no real position in this other than to compare the cost of renovating Harding ($16M) vs. the cost of redoing the Lake Merced GC clubhouse ($14.5M and growing).  At least for $16M they renovated over 100 acres plus built a clubhouse.  At Lake Merced we spent that much to rebuild a 33,000 sq ft structure where the envelope didn't change

So who got the better deal on this?

[Jeff_Brauer]

David,

I for one didn't imply that no one should question public expenditures.  You (and more importantly, the tax payers of SF) are entitled to ask such questions, and it is an important part of the American system.  

I am (as always) trying to provide a professional perspective for those here, in the name of education.  In this case, I admit I am speculating in favor of the gca, without any real knowledge, just as Geoff is speculating against them.  However, I will bet donut to dollars that many of my speculations did put upward pressure on the price. BTW, had the money been spent on other courses, they would have had the same pressures.

All I said was that there are many factors that might make the $16 Million a reasonable number, and that through a typical city competitive bid process, it both documented the price as "correct" for the scope of work involved, and provided the public info you desire.

Unless the gca has a % of construction fee, which means he makes more as the price goes up, he is not making an unethical "good living", and even then, it might be only borderline unethical, since the amount of work does usually go up with the amount of construction work.   Two more points:

What is wrong with a gca making a nice living? and,

My point to you specifically was that when muckrakers point the gun barrel site at you, it is unpleasant, especially when you know you have done nothing wrong, and you feel like they will keep digging until they find some "evidence" of wrongdoing no matter how minor, because finding wrongdoing is their goal, not finding the truth.

Also, (sorry, this is the third point) while $16Mil might have done wonders for other public courses, this is a unique project to bring a world class event to SF. We can debate the value of that (I live in a town that just voted to build a new stadium for the Dallas Cowboys, and have heard both sides) but there is some residual value to SF from the Tour Championship that might not show up on the construction books. They decided it was worth it, and they will pay (if the public decides) by being voted out of office.

Fourth point - Are you sure this is a trend? I see my budgets going down, even in the face of fuel price and plastic price explosions.  I think its an example of a unique high profile project that we are afraid is a trend, but is not a real trend....

fifth point (out of two!) - Other than the Donald, and perhaps Fazio, I doubt many architects want "pushed golf construction budgets to new all time highs" as the lead off highlight of their resume.......

Signing off now.....

[David_Tepper]

DMoriarty -

Believe me, I understand what you are saying. I very much believe in affordable public golf.

My objections to the direction this thread has gone relate to:

1) Putting Les Clayton on the spot for an accounting of the project. He has no obligation to do so and I question the propriety of asking him to do so.

2) The presumption that Geoff Shackelford's suppositions regarding constructions costs are correct and accurate. When he throws out a figure of $500,000 for tree trimming on the property, how did he arrive at that number? Did he get estimates from other contractors here in the Bay Area? Has he ever been involved with a tree-trimming project similar in size? What other research did he do? Did he talk to anyone actually involved with the project to run his numbers by them to see if they were in the ballpark?

It is hard to imagine a public golf course project that got more scrutiny and held more public hearings during its planning & approval process than the Harding project did over the last 4 years. Any assertion that a fast one was pulled behind closed doors is mistaken.

DT






 



     

[Tommy_Naccarato]

After all, given the current modern day situation of government waste, questioning the City and its power would be Good Government at work. Making sure that the process of checks and balances is at work. If not, well then you have the Bush Administration! (Relax Lou)

I knew that weasel-eyed little Nazi was involved somehow!  I mean Bush, not Lou .


A few questions Tommy:

1) Why do public projects have to pay prevailing wage when the same worker doing the same job imakes half that amount on a private project?

2) Do the taxpayers benefit by such laws?  

3) Can the quality of a contractor be surmised based upon whether they favor prevailing wage projects, meaning lower quality, change order oriented contractors like the  prevailing wage projects?

Kelly, the last thing I wanted to do is make this a political football, even though I added that little tid bit there for fun.

But for me, my thoughts on prevailing wage are 180 degrees polar opposite of yours, no doubt. I have no problem admitting my bias. "GEOFF" Brauer's thoughts of prevailing wage doubling the cost are somewhat off--this has been proven time and time again. Once again, I'm not going to turn this into a political discussion because I dont have the time nor the energy!

But to answer your questions:

1.) Quality and experience of person doing the work. The public  entity demands quality work by trained people. Would you want an Electrician to design a golf course? (Of course not!)

2.) Yes, they do, the level of quality of installation is far superior as well as the safety involved, thus better avoiding law suits from on the site work injuries. No job is susceptable from injury, but if you and I are doing Electrical work together, do you think I'm going to trust you working with me if you have no experience? Prevailing Wage work demands qualified craftsmen, and it works quite well in that regard.

3.) Kelly, The quality of a contractor is all based on how thourough they want to be as a contractor. I have worked for many contractors in my life. Some of them good, some of them great, and some of them absolutely horrible. The ones that we're good or great, always finished the job on-time, sometimes even ahead of schedule. When I was transfered to another job site, From LAX to Terminal Island, I went to a job with a Superintendent that literally almost broke a company that has been in business since 1929, because of a figured $1 Million mistake on his part. It happened when he chose not to rely on questions from the field, and then not RFI for a certain configuration of underground conduits going into underground electric vaults that we were installing. A month later, after it was all encased in slurry and concrete The City of Los Angeles DWP informed him that it was wrong and would not pass it for inspection.

The contractor was held responsible and we had to dig it all up and start all over again. The guy was fired and the company has never worked in California again. (I left the company at that time, two weeks later. I was on a plane for Scotland for three weeks and didn't want to go back there, I had enough!)

My point is that its as much as the people doing the job as it is the quality of the contractor. Same contractor, same qualified people, different management of the job. When the job was finished, the City got the job they wanted, done right--twice!

I will also have you know that I have been on many jobs that were to finish up for less qualified contractors that tried to do work that wasn't prevailing wage, because they couldn't get it done.

[Joel_Stewart]

At least for $16M they renovated over 100 acres plus built a clubhouse.

So who got the better deal on this?

Mike:
The $16 million or whatever the number is does not include the clubhouse, which cost an additional $9 million.  That money was all private donations, most of it coming from Charles Schwab.

I have no idea who Les is but would wager that since the dollars are buried deep and virtually secreat, believe Les has no idea on the actual amounts spent at Harding.  

[Jeff_Brauer]

Les works for PGA Tour Design (or possibly construction) services. I think he was the daily on site field guy, at least that was the role he played here in DFW on the TPC Craig Ranch Project.

So, I would assume, even if the bean counting was left to others, that he did know what the project cost and why.  

Joel, how do we get back to a very secretive project, when other Californians have said it did have public scrutiny, and by law, I am almost certain it had to?  Throwing out those (I presume) unfounded allegations is the type of thing I was describing earlier, and I think that it is grossly unfair to say that without proof.

Just MHO.

[Joel_Stewart]

Joel, how do we get back to a very secretive project, when other Californians have said it did have public scrutiny, and by law, I am almost certain it had to?  Throwing out those (I presume) unfounded allegations is the type of thing I was describing earlier, and I think that it is grossly unfair to say that without proof.

Jeff:

Its buried somewhere.  The former golf reporter for the SF Chronicle and now a radio anouncer for a big sports radio network named Brian Murphy tried to do some serious investagative reporting on the costs of Harding Park.  He basically came up with nothing, except for the $16 million that everyone throws around.   During the entire Amex, the press came up with nothing.  Sandy Tatum has been silent on the issue.  The PGA tour has been silent and the SF park and rec department has been silent.    This is old style Willie Brown (the former mayor who was involved in this project) finances.

[Gib_Papazian]

Huckster et al,

Sorry if this is a bit of a reprise of something posted previously on this thread, but time is short at this moment and I don't have time to read through it.

I'm impressed with Les Claytor and his skills, no doubt about it. However, I consider Harding Park to be (here goes the dreaded Ran quote) "A lost opportunity."

Some months (or is it a year?; time has sort of lost meaning to me) ago, I recall nitpicking all the little touches that Chris Gray failed to put into his design. There is no point in rehashing it. What is done is done. The hallucination that he "restored" Harding is ridiculous, given that the front nine has been changed from the *Venturi Era.*

The PGA simply took what they found, moved a couple of greens and a tee  - "creating" something no better than what was there if you don't count conditioning. Les Claytor could have done it for 3 million, leaving Nutville (read: San Francisco) enough money to pay for the Gay Pride Parade, contribute to the ACLU's defense of NAMBLA, buy every bum a new car, renovate all 72 bath houses in the Castro and still have enough left for Willie Brown's haberdashery bills at Wilkes Bashford.

But instead, they pissed more than the GNP of most small nations down the drain, leaving Lincoln, Sharp and Golden Gate to sit neglected, oozing puss from the untreated wounds of  incompetance and institutionalized stupidity.

The answer to the question of Harding Park is very simple. If any of those idiots had a brain in their heads, they would have taken a look AT THE PROPERTY AS A WHOLE INCLUDING THE FLEMING NINE AND DRIVING RANGE AS PART OF AN INTELLIGENT MASTERPLAN.

Then, once you have identified the best places to put golf holes amongst that piecemeal mess that comprises the front of Harding and the Fleming Nine, you can begin.

The back is excellent in terms of routing - but the bones were already there. The interior holes are nothing special. Three is a shitty, uphill par 3. Number 4 is awkward and poorly oriented - starting with the tee boxes.

I'm told it was originally a par 4. The dogleg is idiotic. The green complex has this funky area to the right that gives the appearance of a "side entrance" where players can go around the bunkers and feed the ball onto the green, but slope does nothing to encourage using the contours of the ground to direct the ball onto the putting surface.

Everyone ooooo's and ahhhhhh's about the placement of the tee on #18. Go stand there and see how awkward it looks. If you want to have a classic diagonal carry from the tee, get rid of those stupid scrub pines along the perimeter of the cliff. They look like crap and if the goal is to make PGA Tour guys (who comprise .0000000001% of the play) thread a tee shot, put some bunkers in the fairway landing area and make them think about how much of the corner they want to bite off.

Sorry, I am not impressed with the thought they put into it.

Nor am I impressed with Torrey South, but that is because "Gib is an opinionated twat" (or so I am told) like the rest of those "getalife's" on GCA.

Please. Don't bore me with the idea of giving the public what they want. They have no idea what they want because they have been fed brainless trash for so long they cannot tell a bottle of Ripple from a Renwood Old Vine Zin.

And isn't it interesting that a public entity like S.F. has never coughed up the true cost of that redo. In a city run by race-hustlers, fringe lunatics and slimebags, what a surprise.  

[THuckaby2]

Gib:

Many thanks.  You do tell it like it is.  

To David Tepper:  you can have Jaime Diaz and any other media shill who waxed poetic about Harding.  I'll take Gib.

TH

[Gib_Papazian]

Huckster,

As Uncle Todd Hagen is fond of saying:

"Tis' the dreaded truth defense."

[David_Tepper]

Tom H. -

Gib P.'s low regard for the opinion of the common man is a little surpising, shocking even. Here I am, thinking all along that the wisdom of the common man is what makes this country great!

Careful Gib, any more displays of elitism and you may get mistaken for a Harvard classics professor. At the very least, you run a risk of having your membership in the Rush Limbaugh fan club revoked.    

Dt

[Gib_Papazian]

David,

How dare you put me in the category of the mindless shills who worship at the shrine of that disingenuous pig, Rush Limbaugh. I am a card carrying Libertarian and take offense at even the hint of you implying that my views are somehow framed by one of those media pukes. I am ashamed for you; sadly, I have been away from this board for so long as to present an easy target for one of you "lockstep liberals.."

My thoughts are an easy target for men and women who *feel* instead of *think.*

Even worse, because I hold conservatives to a higher standard, my distain for the *president* goes far deeper than the loser who married (for convenience) that hideous creature with fat ankles and rode the Ross-Perot -Wave to the White House.

You have no concept the amount of criminality, scum and nefarious intentions endemic to that collection of slime who run the "City By The Bay."

If not for the views, history and location, S.F. would be broke. The "Governator" only looks good because of the FILTH the preceded him, and that he married a *Kennedy* (read: royalty,) gives him a pass
.
I challenge you to find any pair on this board -  NAME TWO - who would have done a poorer job of spending public funds to build that golf course.

We spent 10 million on Poplar Creek . . . . . . ask anybody who has played it who would have been dumb enough to "achieve" the same result if the same amount of funds was expended (6 million less) at Harding. We had shit land, power poles, hideous sloughs, and HORRIBLE soil.

Tell your story to the idiot Sosialists. (intentionally missssspelled)

I am sure you will find a sympathetic ear.

P.S. HARVARD? I am a Trojan. We don't subscribe to "East Coast, Pseudo Intellectual Bullshit Dogma." Just the facts, Maam.  

PSS: NAME ONE.

[David_Tepper]

Jeez Gib, I hope you aren't the only one allowed to engage in a little hyperbole here from time to time!  

On the other hand, should a true libertarian be involved with or supporting muni golf in any way, shape or form?

But seriously, if San Mateo/Poplar Creek cost 10 million, it certainly makes the amount spent at Harding slightly more realistic, if no  more believeable. Remember, Harding involved 27 holes.

DT