County should get out of the golf course business

APP Letter to the Editor:

I am writing on behalf of the New Jersey Golf Course Owners Association with regard to Monmouth County's tentative plans to decrease the golf rates for nonresidents of Monmouth County. ("Not up to par; Monmouth County Park System may drop golfing fees for outsiders because of record-low usage," Jan. 24.)

As the representative of more than 75 nongovernmental golf courses in the state, including public golf courses in Monmouth County and surrounding counties, we oppose the county's plans to reduce rates.

The drop in play that some in the county administration believe is weather-related goes far deeper than that. It has been well documented that for almost a decade, the number of golfers and the total rounds played has been stagnant, both in New Jersey and nationally.

During the same period, as new courses have opened, which in New Jersey's case has been predominantly government-owned courses — the number of golfers and rounds per course has dropped or remained flat because there are now more courses chasing the same or fewer golfers.

During this same time period, expenses have increased significantly — utilities, property taxes, fuel, fertilizer, health insurance and more. The result has been the closure or threatened development of golf courses into higher and better uses.

Recently, taxpayers funded the purchase of the Cream Ridge Golf Course in western Monmouth County to preserve open space, because the golf business was no longer tenable compared to the property's value as a real estate development. Blue Heron Pines Golf Course in Atlantic County, recent site of a U.S. Amateur Public Links Championship, closed for the same reason and now lays fallow.

What makes the county's action objectionable to our association is that the county's golf courses unfairly compete with private industry without a level playing field. The government-owned golf courses do not pay property taxes, while privately owned courses pay hundreds of thousands per course per year. And while the county courses purport to be profitable (does that include interest on the debt to build or buy them?), their lack of a free-market economic model, on which this country is built, will drive other golf courses out of business or into the arms of developers.

This is not a "weather" issue. It is a supply-and-demand imbalance. The county's lowering of the nonresident rates will worsen this imbalance.

We could debate ad nauseam the rationale or purported need for government-supported golf courses when private, taxpaying small businesses already provide the same service to the only 10 percent of the population that plays golf. Government doesn't see the need to compete for customers for bowling, movie theater, hair styling or most other businesses.

As the representative of golf course owners, who employ thousands, pay millions in property taxes and still have to make ends meet without the support of taxpayer dollars, I respectfully ask that the county not worsen the market imbalance that it has helped to create — and potentially crowd out the Monmouth County residents whose taxes have paid for and support the courses.

To address the county's financial and operational concerns, I recommend that it consider the privatization of its golf courses to realize their full economic and public service potential. This has been the best practice model throughout the United States for more than 20 years for governmental agencies, including New York City, Philadelphia, Chicago, Hartford, Charlotte, Atlanta and Cincinnati.

Matthew D. Galvin is president of the New Jersey Golf Course Owners Association.