Washburn: Sorry, No Birdie, No Bogey, But A Direct Drive Out Of Bounds

The approval of the new clubhouse at Beaver Meadow was neither a bogey or birdie but a ball deliberately hit out of bounds subject to a penalty of stroke and distance.

When the original administrative club house plan consisting of a 10,500 Sq. Ft. rendering with an estimated cost of $8 plus million, it was met with significant public pushback at a public hearing. The manager received, in late March, the new rendering and cost estimate. Rather than share this with the council and public, it was purposely withheld until the architectural rendering was revealed to the council in late May.

The cost breakdown has yet to be made public, let alone to the council, which voted to approve the bond for the project. In short, the council voted for a “pig in a poke” when 12 councilors voted for the bond. The unanswered question as to why the manager purposely withheld this information to give cover to the council to vote this way remains unanswered. But, as I have previously stated, the manager knows how to read a room.

The manager told the council the first two years of debt service payments would be funded from reserve funds and eventually “users will pay for the improvements” and that he “will meet with the advisory committee.” What is glaringly missing from the discussion is a management plan for debt service payment in the long overdue improvement in club operations.

The deputy city manager was clueless when asked about the details of the sweetheart deals cut by the former course superintendent for outings and outside tournaments. He did provide me with information suggesting sponsors of outings were gifted a 76 percent discount on golf and cart fees. What I learned later was the discount given to NHGA was nearly 100 percent.

The manager qualified for the “Whopper of the Year Award” when he suggested that the accumulated balance in the golf reserve fund was accomplished by utilizing a “Dynamic Pricing Scheme.” Actually, it was created by not doing annual maintenance and having debt service payments made on Beaver Meadow capital improvements by property taxpayers and not golf revenue. Evidence of the lack of maintenance is not just the clubhouse decline, but the driving range, which is currently a public hazard.

Bill Belichick has long advised his players to “just do your job.” The only city councilor who has done her job thus far is Ward 5 City Councilor Stacey Brown, who has led the inquiry into the mismanagement of the course. Her reward for doing her job has been to be excoriated by several fellow councilors who are content with sweeping the issues under the rug. This is a familiar council pattern against any councilor who has the audacity to question the status quo, aka, the Concord good old boys’ network or the administration.

The final council budget approval session was a prolonged, painful process with lots of sound and fury signifying nothing.

The mayor’s leadership of the meeting suggests that maybe we need a mental acuity test for anyone running for mayor. During the council’s budget deliberations, the council had ample opportunity to make budget cuts but didn’t. Normally, the final night is highlighted by additions, not by cuts. The manager highlighted the fact the reserve funds are, in reality, slush funds in that the council can transfer dollars from fund to fund and expend funds for any Earth while reason. The reserve accounts are not created by the reserve account fairy crinkling her nose. They represent taxpayer funds that were not needed to fund an approved budget and instead of being used to fund a future budget are put into a reserve account.

The New Hampshire Department of Revenue Administration recommends the amount in these accounts to be at 17 percent of the current operating budget. At latest count, they represented 22 percent in Concord. Kudos to the mayor for convincing the council to squander $150,000 from the Economic Development Reserve Account to fund more coffee fairs downtown. It is not exactly economic development since this is a city’s current commitment to economic development, which is zero.

When the discussion of postponing visiting the Garrison School pool, the conversation involving staffing for our seven pools was not working, owing to the lack of certified lifeguards.

The suggestion that opening pools to adults only might not require lifeguards, but the reality might be that these could become new bathing stations for the homeless. Not to be outdone with the foolishness of the evening, Councilor Jennifer Kretovic of Ward 3 suggested building Concord’s eighth pool at an underutilized Beaver Meadow school baseball field.

You just can make this budgetary nonsense up. Well done, Councilor Kretovic.

The late Mario Como’s favorite story involved a ship captain whose ship was on a collision course with another ship. Convinced that the other ship would change course, the captain maintained his ship’s course. The punch line of the story was the other ship was a lighthouse. The city is on an unsustainable expenditure course where only a childless couple can afford to buy a five-bedroom four-bathroom house in Concord for more than $1 million.

2025 is a municipal election year. Fresh faces with open minds are needed to address the serious budget questions at the school board and the city council. Unless and until both of these governing bodies come to the realization that rational change is needed and has the courage to make them, it will be more of the same — taxing the elderly out and precluding young families from moving in while spending $200,000 a year on cleaning up the mess created by trespassers who are allowed to continue trespassing.