Robert C. Washburn lives in Concord.
The outgoing Concord mayor shrewdly shifted the burden of Beaver Meadow to the new mayor and new council after the anticipated pig pile of the public hearing materialized. Unfortunately, for the new mayor, the word no historically is not in his wheelhouse.
The other factor that came into play was that even if the council wanted to, there is a required time delay between public hearings and bond approval votes so even if there was support for the bond issue, it couldn’t be voted.
All of the food groups showed up for the hearing; a John Kerry apostle wanted Beaver Meadow to have a zero-carbon footprint. Really? The DEI forces were out to suggest that golf was an aging white male’s game. Tell that to Tiger Woods and Annika Sorenstam. A South End engineer suggested the cost per square foot of the proposed clubhouse was the equivalent of a 5-star hotel.
The proposed 15,000-square-foot clubhouse construction cost was pegged at $4.8 million which suggests that the cost per square foot was $370 per square and the cost charged for a newly constructed single-family home and not that of a 5-star hotel. If I ever need an engineer, it won’t be him.
And then there were the usual bleeding hearts who don’t know the difference between an operating budget and a capital bonded improvement. Where was all the gnashing of knuckles over the school board’s siting decision on the new middle school that makes the Beaver Meadow bond look like chump change?
The difference between the $4.8 clubhouse and the $10.3 million bond issue is self-inflicted deferred maintenance or in this case ignored maintenance and some other needed improvements.
So how did we get into this mess? And more importantly, how do we get out of it? As a former treasurer and board member of a private local golf course, I was a lone voice in the wilderness as the club mismanaged itself into oblivion. The current Beaver Meadow course superintendent has done an outstanding job of maintaining a crown jewel of a golf course. The bureaucrats in charge of managing the course couldn’t find their rear ends in a phone booth using both hands.
The proforma presented at the meeting perpetuated the continued mismanagement in perpetuity and is as useful as mammary glands on a bull. With proper management and an appropriate clubhouse design Beaver Meadow can reach full financial sustainability including servicing debt service requirements.
The total lack of transparency on this matter is appalling but is par for the course for Concord. When will the petition to release of the report on Beaver Meadow be finally made public is a good question. When Charlie Russell’s Freedom of Information Act request is fully and honestly complied with? Highly doubtful.
Selling Beaver Meadow would be beyond foolish. Properly managing a valuable community asset is a worthwhile goal and should be the driving force behind the ultimate decision.