Centuple-millidruple bogey!

Unfortunately, the Sarasota City Charter does not allow for recalling city commissioners on the basis of non compos mentis. 

If there were a referendum on that basis, the vote to recall four of Sarasota’s city commissioners surely would be, not a landslide, an avalanche.

It is beyond any rational comprehension how Mayor Liz Alpert, Vice Mayor Jen Ahearn-Koch and Commissioners Willie Shaw and Shelli Freeland Eddie could vote to commit $20 million of taxpayer dollars to renovate the 45-hole, money-losing, poorly managed, declining Bobby Jones Golf Club.

Everyone knows golf is in decline. Everyone knows golf courses all over the country are struggling to make ends meet. And most rational people also know city governments are seldom good business operators. 

Just look at Bobby Jones:

• The entire 45-hole club has suffered from neglect and a lack of routine reinvestment.
• In nine of the past 10 years, it has reported operating losses.
• And next year, it will require a $650,000 subsidy.

Add to this, even the city’s staff expressed explicit doubts about the viability of this full-blown renovation. City Manager Tom Barwin wrote in a memo prior to the vote:

“Any additional and/or significant subsidies to the BJGC would require probably reductions, perhaps dramatic reductions, in other city services and/or programs, or require a tax increase.”

Apparently the four commissioners who are more than willing to spend other people’s money on a project whose return is highly unlikely also forgot a lot of other factors when they cast their vote. 

Let’s focus on just one:

For two consecutive years, Barwin has written in his budget message to commissioners that the city’s unfunded pension liabilities and costs are unsustainable. That means the city should stop digging itself into deeper holes. 

What more does it take for commissioners to understand Barwin’s explicit alarm bell in his 2018-19 budget message: “The current pension system will require payments into the system at an astounding 57.17% of the Sarasota Police Department’s payroll for fiscal year 2018-19 … Pension funding is challenging the city to maintain competitive tax rates and service levels.”

Suffice it to say the city needs cash (and better management of it). So you would think, city commissioners might do what normal business people do: explore options, least of which is to ask their customers (taxpayers) to pay more.

One of the most obvious ways to raise cash is to sell unneeded and underperforming assets.

Just imagine all of the workforce housing that could be built on those 287 acres and the cash that land would generate for the city.

Commissioners: Rescind the Bobby Jones vote. It makes no sense.                                          — M.W.