City golf greens are $405,000 in the red

City golf courses finished the fiscal year with a $405,000 operating loss.

Tucson City Council discussed the golf budget Tuesday, and the council is expected to make decisions on golf at its Dec. 15 meeting.

Total revenue for the city golf courses was $7.5 million for the fiscal year ended June 30. That was nearly $1 million under budget, said city finance director Silvia Amparano. The courses cut planned spending by $450,000 to help make up the difference.

The interest-free loan from the city’s general fund to the golf enterprise grew to $8.5 million.

“I can not ignore the golf numbers,” Council Member Regina Romero said Tuesday. “It’s very concerning to me that this year we did worse in golf than we did last fiscal year.”

In a time when vital services are competing for every dollar, “golf is not an absolutely necessary service that a municipality has to provide its residents,” she said.

The city hired a private firm to manage the courses, but the contract was changed to delete incentives for financial performance, Romero said.

City Manager Michael Ortega and Amparano met with the Tucson Greens Committee Thursday with the Dell Urich putting green in the background.

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The number of rounds played is up, but revenue per round is low, said Mark Woodward, of OB Sports Golf Management.

Weather and unexpected repairs are causing problems with this year’s budget, he told the committee. “We’ll continue to watch this closely and hopefully close that gap,” Woodward said.

Ortega said he wants to see the revenue per round per course, plus figures on how much it will cost to address deferred maintenance.

Greens Committee Chair John Anttonen said the city should view golf as a “loss leader” that makes money for the city in other ways, including sales taxes and hotel bed taxes.

“To say that golf is not paying its own way, I think in many ways it is,” he said.

Committee Member Joseph Cates said golf courses are a driver for the local economy but he’s concerned about taxpayers subsidizing that plan.

Last year taxpayers paid $12 for every round of golf at the Fred Enke and El Rio courses, said Cates, who lives near El Rio and is Romero’s appointee to the committee.