It’s been a long, bumpy road since May 2013 when the city of Kent announced its intentions to possibly sell Riverbend’s Par 3 Golf Course.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Two special public meetings were held at the par 3 clubhouse to gather information from the public for suggestions on what could be done to reverse the financial loss trends.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Many suggestions were given by concerned citizens of our wonderful community. Councilmember Deborah Ranniger took notes and stated she would get back to us with a summary for discussion. To the best of our knowledge, the suggestions were given to the director of Parks and Recreation but never returned to the concerned citizens.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
A small group of concerned citizens formed a committee to evaluate the financial reports provided by the city of Kent. The summary of these reports \u2013 together with recommendations for solving the financial woes \u2013\u00a0was presented to the director as well as several members of the City Council.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Council President Dennis Higgins seemed quite interested and stated he would provide us with a list of 10-15 questions to discuss with the director. No questions came forth, even after further attempts to call him. The director seemed more interested in finding fault with some of the minute parts of the report rather than encompass the spirit of mutual respect and working together to solve the problems.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Then, on Sept. 19, the director presented his report to the Parks and Human Services Committee. None of the recommendations or concerns expressed by our committee was addressed. Rather, he focused on outsourcing, debt repayment, resizing and using general funds to support the enterprise operation. We presented operational cost reduction and revenue enhancement suggestions and other means for bringing about a break-even operating budget.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
From the city’s financial reports we determined that the enterprise golf fund had actually showed a profit for the years 2008 and 2009. Then in 2010, internal charges from departments within the city jumped a whopping $133,000. And these charges continued to grow to nearly $400,000 in the 2013 budget. Operating revenues declined a little over $300,000 in 2009 to 2010. Why? We’re not sure. Partially due to a reduction in rounds of golf on the par 3 of nearly 4,400; revenue only dropped by $28,000 for the par 3. But the 18-hole course revenue dropped by a whopping $300,000 with the rounds of golf remaining rather constant. Why?<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
In summary, it is evident that the management of the golf complex and the director of Parks and Recreation have had a minimum of three years to recognize and take corrective action, making the enterprise operation at least break even. They have not.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
It is also clear that the council is nothing more than a rubber stamp for those who have managed to bankrupt the enterprise. It is now coming up with a quick fix that will provide them the capital to continue to support the 18-hole course without righting the ship in operational costs and revenues. You must first get your operational costs and revenues in order or 5-to-10 years down the pike we will be looking at selling the 18-hole course as well.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
If you have comments or questions regarding the course, please call 253-650-8324 or 253-859-3019.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\u2013\u00a0R.C. Sample, Save the Par 3 Committee<\/strong><\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It’s been a long, bumpy road since May 2013 when the city of Kent announced its intentions to possibly sell Riverbend’s Par 3 Golf Course.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":106,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-4600","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-letters"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4600"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/106"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4600"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4600\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4600"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4600"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4600"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=4600"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}