Sunday, October 1, 2023
Port Townsend City Council, enough already. The debate over the future of the golf course has gotten uglier and you, council members, have a responsibility and duty to temper the rhetoric and end a …
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Port Townsend City Council, enough already. The debate over the future of the golf course has gotten uglier and you, council members, have a responsibility and duty to temper the rhetoric and end a process that has gone on long enough.
This is what your constituents are saying:
“...is there a ‘sport’ more representative of patriarchial [sic] affluence?”
“I equate the golfers to the slave owners in the south when the civil war started.”
“...the contingent of entitled people who buy up the town...”
From the beginning, class warfare has run through this debate. Maybe not as blatant as those racist and sexist quotes, but starting when housing was the goal. Take from the (wealthy) golfers and give to the (salt of the earth) workers. The golf course was seen as easy pickings and fed a mindset of class warfare.
The golf course charges $1,275 for an annual family pass. The swimming pool charges $960 for a family (two adults plus kids) annual pass plus a $50 membership fee. That’s $22.08 a month difference. Is that the line between the “entitled people” and everyone else in Port Townsend? The price of lunch? Municipal courses are affordable courses. They are family courses. They are generational courses.
The alternatives to not preserving the golf course as is seem driven by a desire to take something, almost anything, from the course. Cleaving it for a dog park and nature trail makes little sense. How many miles of trails do we have in town already? How well are they maintained? At what cost? How many more miles at Fort Worden and Fort Townsend?
A golf course is more than a collection of greens. It has a flow and tempo. Changing it is not as simple as rearranging the furniture and will diminish it. A driving range is where new golfers get their first lessons. It’s essential for lessons, practice, and generates revenue. Revenue lost if it’s turned into a dog park.
The Central Park plan? Show the budget for maintaining it. We have more park land than most cities our size already, so adding more seems like a good idea? And one has to wonder if that would bring the same issues as Kah Tai with it.
We have a crown jewel in the golf course. We are lucky to have it, and we have it because it’s a golf course. A dog park and nature trail are not a higher and better use of the land. And take a stand against the online vitriol and bigotry toward those who enjoy “a good walk spoiled.”
Erik Poulsen
PORT TOWNSEND
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Whit Porter
Golf as viewed on TV is light years from what occurs at the Port Townsend Golf Course. On TV, you see elite athletes (mostly millionaires many times over) competing for obscene amounts of corporate loot. At PTGC and any municipal golf course across the country, you find mostly working class amateurs playing a game they honor and love. The two worlds couldn't be more different.
Tuesday, May 23 Report this
TomT
A 9-hole course can hardly be considered a "crown jewel".
Agreed, another park would be superfluous.
But a golf course is not the highest and best use of _this_ publicly-owned property.
Any golf course is a poor use of land, creating pollution from fertilizer and wasting groundwater.
Thursday, May 25 Report this
MargeS
Should we also get rid of the swimming pool?
The electricity consumption from operating swimming pools adds to greenhouse gas emissions and energy costs. In addition to water and energy usage, the maintenance of swimming pools can also lead to pollution.
Water in swimming pools and spas is treated with various chemicals (such as chlorine and algaecides) to keep organisms from living in it. These chemicals are harmful to the environment and can create fish kills and other impacts.
Traces of fecal matter in pools can also introduce harmful strains of E. coli into the water, which chlorine is unable to fight back. E. Coli infections can cause stomach cramps, diarrhea, nausea, and vomiting, and its contaminants are usually ingested by accident among swimmers in public pools.Aug
And just how many people use the Port Townsend Swimming Pool?
Monday, June 5 Report this