Montgomery County Executive Ike Leggett may have a tough time convincing the County Council to shell out big money to keep an inside-the-Beltway golf course open another year.
That’s because the county is facing a $370 million budget shortfall next fiscal year and Leggett has said the county needs to make midyear cuts to the current budget that may include layoffs and furloughs of county employees.
“I think it makes it more difficult to justify,” said Council President Phil Andrews, D-Rockville/Gaithersburg.
Sligo Creek Golf Course is a nine-hole course just minutes away from downtown Silver Spring that is popular with new golfers, seniors, women, minorities and others who shy away from the country club set. It’s scheduled to close Oct. 1 because the county has said it can’t afford to keep it open in its current form.
The Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission, which was set to take control of the park in October, is looking at cheaper new uses for the course, like a nature area. But residents and golfers have been outspoken in their support to keep the course open for golf.
Leggett waded into the fray last week when he told County Council members he was in favor of spending county money to keep it open for no longer than two years while a task force worked to find a way to keep the course open in a self-sustaining way.
Leggett’s spokesman, Patrick Lacefield, said the move was designed to create “breathing” space and cost about $150,000 a year.
But Councilwoman Valerie Ervin, D-Silver Spring, said County Council staff put the figure of keeping the course open at a minimum of $300,000 a year.
Ervin said she thought the County Council would balk at spending that kind of money on a golf course while county employees’ jobs were on the line. Instead, she said the county’s Revenue Authority, which operates the county’s golf courses, could afford to keep running Sligo until the county figured out the course’s long-term future.
The Revenue Authority tried to wash its hands of the course after the course’s neighbors defeated a plan to add a driving range and miniature golf, additions the Revenue Authority said were necessary to make the course profitable. Supporters of the course have questioned the Revenue Authority’s financial assumptions about the course’s profitability, and Ervin said the agency could handle running the course for another year “without too much trouble.”
