EDITORIAL: Smoke and mirror plan

The selling of Municipal Golf Course makes for great optics.

Unfortunately, that’s about all it does for city coffers. On Monday city council voted 8-3 in favour of divesting itself of the 88-year-old course, saving taxpayers a whopping $94,000 and change each year.

Yes, it could help private courses survive a little longer, if the senior and junior golfers who made up the bulk of Municipal’s clientele gravitate their way.

What council seems to forget is several of the private operators entered the market knowing full-well the economic conditions in the marketplace when they entered it.

Yet now, unable to make a go of it, they blame the city for their inability to make a profit.

Council, at least eight members, fell for  it hook, line and sinker.

If this was about anything other than optics – and a one-time cash injection from the sale – council would have made a different move, if closing a course was a must.

Selling Strathcona would have made much more sense.

Turning it into a new subdivision would create a new municipal tax pool that could ultimately add more than $1 million a year to city coffers.

But that wasn’t what this was about.

This was smoke and mirrors, designed to make the public think council was doing something to alleviate tax pain.