Letter to the Editor:
The Silver City money pit, the Silver City golf course also known as the University Course at Scott Park
For the last several years the Silver City golf course was managed by the Silver Fairways company. In February 2016 the company announced that they were broke and would go out of business. The company stated that the reason they were broke was that the number of rounds of golf played at the course dropped from 22,000 to 16,000. The Town was faced with the following options: 1) Abandon the course and let the weeds grow, but there are influential people that want to play golf and the course is thought to be one of the things that draw people to Silver City; 2) The Town could take over the course, but everyone knows the course is a money loser and the taxpayers would not be happy; 3) The Town could use Lodger Tax money to cover the losses of the golf course, but the people who now get Lodger Tax money would not be happy; and 4) Find some other organization that would absorb the loss for the Town.
Enter Western New Mexico University. WNMU took over temporary management of the course on March 1, 2016 , then signed a ten-year lease on July 1, 2016. The terms of the lease are, in a few words, Western runs the golf course, and the associated café and bar, and gets to keep all the income. Western pays the Town nothing. The Town gave all the golf course equipment to Western free. The Town is not completely free of costs. The Town built a new club house with a café and bar at the course for $450,000 financed with a private bank loan. That loan still has to be repaid, but the Town receives no income from the renovated building. The town’s leaders have obtained their goal of making the deficient invisible so the citizens of Silver City will not know it exists.
Looking at the numbers, it appears that Western will lose about $200,000 a year managing the golf course. Where does Western get the money? Western takes it from student fees. In December 2016, Western transferred $100,000 from student fees to the golf course to cover the losses up to then. So the students are going to be the ones to support the golf course so the locals can play. It’s decisions like this that make Western the most expensive university in the state, more expensive than New Mexico Tech, UNM, New Mexico State, Eastern, Highlands or Northern New Mexico.
What does Western get out of it? Not much, the golf teams gets to practice on the course, but doesn’t play any matches on the course. Full-time students get to play free, but students can only play free during May, June, July, and August, if they register for summer school. Has Western taken on this burden to win favor?
For those interested, here are the numbers: Western’s budget for the golf course for July 1, 2016 to June 31, 2017 is $794,156. From March 1, 2016 to June 31, 2016 when Western had temporary control of the golf course only, Western had income of $194,069. The last financial report for Silver Fairways showed income of $530,000. From this it shows that income from the golf course can be expected to be about $400,000 a year and income from the cafe and bar might be about $150,000. At best that a total income of $550,000 or a loss of approximately $250,000 a year.
Alfred Milligan
Silver City NM