Cherry Hill: Missing the green...again!

If only cup cakes or alcohol consumed in a closet didn’t impact your waistline, dieting would be a snap. And if our ailing golf business, no longer an Enterprise Fund, didn’t have those pesky $31,612 in hidden costs, insurance and employee benefits, (beancounters call them “indirect costs”) this past fiscal year Cherry Hill would have broke even for the first time in a decade.

But as usual, in FY07 Cherry Hill trampled its operation budget of $192,385 by $20,000 coming in at $212,260 and revenues fell short of the $220,000 at $219,440. Thus the $23,000 Reserve transfer rubber stamped by the diffident Finance Committee on 7/11 should, almost, cover the actual overall losses of $24,432.

Although I still take issue with using a fund designed for “unanticipated emergencies” to cover routine losses at our sinkhole golf business.

And considering Cherry Hill generated $245,932 five years ago, when managed by that guy who mysteriously disappeared (after 20 years) on April 1’st, allowing town officials to scapegoat his mismanagement for business woes, you have to wonder about this super-manager, Barbara Bilz.

Alice Carlozzi tried to get Finance Director John Musante to declare the difference “a wash” at the 7/11 Finance Committee meeting, perhaps I’ve been running a small business too long, but I consider $24,432 a very expensive John Edwards kind of wash.

The rejected Niblik bid for private management at $30,000 per year in GUARANTEED profit instead of a minus $24-K equals a $54,000 difference…or one police officer, a teacher, a building inspector.

And the golf budget Town Meeting approved on June 12 has a $15,000 higher operations and an additional $15,000 in capital for FY08. So IF Cherry Hill intakes the same $220,000 losses will total $35,000 and then add in the guaranteed $30,000 we could have had with private management…