The new clubhouse being built at the city-owned Beaver Meadow Golf Course doesn’t sit well with some residents who don’t want their money paying for it.
“Taxpayers are being asked to fund projects that many feel do not serve the needs of the majority of residents,” Catherine Cullity wrote in a letter to the Concord City Council as it weighed its 2027 budget. “I do not understand why a city-owned golf course is unable to charge the people who use the facility enough to properly support and maintain the facility itself, rather than continuing to rely on taxpayers to cover ongoing costs.”
Cullity isn’t alone in questioning the clubhouse approval or its price tag – both before and since the council backed it last June.
Defenders of the course describe it as profitable and self-sustaining. Critics decry tax dollars being funneled into the course to prop it up.
Reality lies in the middle: While Beaver Meadow has become more successful in recent years, taxpayer money is being used to fund the clubhouse now and likely in the future.
The golf course’s revenue growth from higher course fees this summer is helping pay for the clubhouse. Still, while no new taxes are paying for construction this year, tax money is supporting it and other course projects.
The construction of the 6,000-square-foot building carries a pricetag of a little less than $6 million, which the city bonded over the winter. The first annual payment on the debt is $494,000 and will decline a small amount each year until it’s paid off.
Golf course revenue is paying for about half of the debt on the clubhouse this year, the first year the debt is due on the new building. The other half is being covered by the city’s recreation reserve, one of its many savings accounts.
This means that the city is not raising taxes next year to pay for the clubhouse directly.
At the same time, tax dollars, in the form of leftovers from previous years, will go towards the project.
The money in the recreation reserve almost entirely came from year-end surpluses accumulated over time, per city finance records. Those surpluses, and the city’s general operating revenue, are mostly tax money – as well as parking fees, motor vehicle registrations, building permits and the city’s other revenue sources.
In January, the council moved $250,000 in unspent money from the end of the 2025 fiscal year into the recreation reserve, alongside contributions to reserves for paving, economic development, and other purposes.
The recreation reserve is set to cover $245,000 in clubhouse construction debt costs next year, a little less than half.
How this arrangement continues in future years isn’t set. Each year, the city council could adjust how much the recreation reserve or golf revenue contributes toward the debt as part of its annual budget-setting.
Plentiful reserve accounts are a fixture of Concord’s financial management strategy, helping to ensure the city can absorb both anticipated jumps in spending and surprise ones. It leans on various reserves, most prominently its large rainy day fund, more than many peer towns and cities in the state.
The recreation reserve can go towards any recreational expense – including those that otherwise are being paid for by taxpayers.
Some recreation reserve money has been going towards the parks department for years, shaving down how much in annual taxes are going toward things like staff salaries and office supplies.
Other recreational projects in the works in Concord expected to be supported by tax dollars in the coming years include the Merrimack River Greenway Trail, a $3 million mechanical overhaul at the Everett Arena, clearing plants and earth to open up the White Park pond and, most significantly, rebuilding Memorial Field.
Zooming out, it is true both that substantial tax money has gone towards supporting the course and also that its success has expanded, making it more able to pay for its own operations than many other city amenities, including the arena.
Over the last decade, the city council approved a replacement of the irrigation system at the golf course, to be covered by taxes. The total price tag for that work was a little more than $2.5 million, or on average about $280,000 in new capital debt a year over nine years.
When this piecemeal replacement began in 2018, the golf course wasn’t doing well enough to cover the costs, Deputy City Manager for Finance Brian LeBrun told councilors during the budget process. Course money has frequently covered smaller projects over the years.
“The city council at the time decided that the general fund would pay those because it was a much-needed project in order to keep the golf course functioning operationally,” LeBrun said.
In the years since, course revenue has nearly doubled.
In 2018, Beaver Meadow took in about $1.1 million in revenue, from greens fees to cart rentals to concessions.
For the 2026 budget, covering much of last year’s season and running through the end of this month, its revenue is projected to top $2 million.
The irrigation replacement, alongside tree work and adjustments to how the course is run, is believed to have helped deliver this growth. In interviews ahead of the clubhouse approval last summer, golfers at Beaver Meadow remarked on improved course conditions in recent years.
Course supporters and some city officials describe the course as “profitable” because, notably excluding its major capital projects, it has taken in more money than it spends in recent years. That isn’t true of other city amenities, from those as unique as the airport to those as quintessential as the trash pickup program.
Paying half of the course debt this coming year means the course is no longer expected to break even. The golf fund – separate from the city’s general operating fund – is projected to net a loss of $122,000 in the 2027 fiscal year, which would be absorbed by its own reserves, accumulated from course leftovers in recent years.
On Monday, the council approved more money from the recreation reserve for a water line issue at the course related to its main pond.
