Parks has to pay that huge administrative overhead too.

I think it is more likely that a golf course could be run at a profit more than a park like Almendinger (how many rentals would it take AP to be profitable). But, the overhead the city charges the golf courses is way out of line. There are very few permanent staff associated with the courses and the city’s support (via website, etc.) of the courses is abysmal.

At some point, we may decide we can’t afford to run golf courses, but I would mothball the course for a few years and make sure of it. The Miles of Golf proposal would have ruined the golf course so that when that idea failed, the only choice would be to sell that very choice, expensive land.

The broader question of the way our parks are being pushed into a similar categorization because of the parks maintenance millage needs some vigilance. After the millage was passed, many task were pushed into the millage-based fund and some attempt to make a zero sum operation out of the parks in general was made by the former administrators Roger Fraser and Jayne Miller. I am still bitter about how this push eliminated the funding for Project Grow. I don’t recall exactly when and where, but I think the Chronicle recently alluded to this general fund/millage fund issue, where council had passed a resolution that the same amount would be spent from the general fund as before on parks, but that has been subject to a lot of “jiggering” (my interpretation, not the Chronicle’s).

Ironically, recent writing across the nation has been making it clear that parks not only enhance quality of life, but are characteristic of economically viable cities and have a direct impact on attracting desirable (entrepreneurial, young, etc.) persons to a city. This was cited by one of our major voices for economic development: see [link]

“In late 2010, the city ended an RFP process that had asked outside entities to handle golf operations at Huron Hills, ultimately deciding that the proposal selected as a finalist, from Miles of Golf, not be pursued further. In broad strokes, the city’s two golf courses have been performing somewhat better than projected over the last couple of years, based on implementation of a range of recommendations made by the golf consultant dating back to 2007. According to the city, the courses are not self-sustaining at this point.”

1. Could you please point to the Council resolution or portion of the Charter where it is required that parks will be self-sustaining? Your acceptance of this load of malarky as fact is somewhat disappointing. If parks are to be self-sustaining, I’m sure the new Police-Court building will be self-sustaining, as well, right along with the City Attorney and IT departments, right?

This notion that the parks are sucking money out of the GF has been used as a disingenuous reason to “repurpose” or privatize parkland. That the media accept and repeat the idea that parks are supposed to be self-sustaining (in your case by pointing out that HH is NOT self-sustaining), is repeating political propaganda as fact.

2. Rapundalo chaired the Golf Advisory Task Force to which the owner of Miles of Golf was appointed. Well before the RFP was issued, the owner of Miles of Golf went privately to city staff to present his own plan to privatize the operations of the course. This was a serious conflict of interest, and when the conflict was pointed out to Rapundalo by another member of the committee at a February 2010 meeting, the member who brought the conflict to the committee’s attention was rebuked. It was a nauseating display of Rapundalo’s “leadership” abilities. I wrote about the meeting, which I attended, here: [link].