Seasons in the sun

Cherry Hill Golf course, too late to benefit the bottom line, is on a PR role (with the crusty Gazette anyway): yesterday’s puff piece about Frisbee golf--a sparsely attended non-revenue event--and today’s “back in the black” advertisement, errrr, I mean article.

With all the figurative lying cheating and stealing, the best town officials can conjure up is $26,500 over last year's Fall closing? Let’s see, they ignore over $20,000 in hidden costs like employee benefits and insurance, $15,000 in capital expenditures for a new fence and underground gasoline storage tank, and try to suggest the course can be managed by only one-quarter of one person when two years ago it required two full-time people.

No wonder operations are down. In FY06 they had purchased $6,200 of fertilizer/insecticide in the first half of the year but this year delayed that purchase until the second half of the season (this coming Spring), probably to make the mid-season report look good.

And of course the most important calculation the crusty Gazette failed to acknowledge: had the Town Manager accepted Niblik’s privatization bid last year the town would be GUARANTEED $30,000 profit thus freeing up the Recreation honcho and Town Manager to attend to more important matters.