I’m on vacation this week, which this year included a weekend golf trip with seven other guys to Niagara Falls, Canada.
It was three days and two nights of proving that I can’t chip regardless of what country I’m visiting.
These three courses were gorgeous, all well watered and manicured, with rich, deep tree lines, roughs and bunkers. The clubhouses were world class, stone facades reminiscent of private clubs in Florida.
New, clean busses and shuttles moved people from course to course or from the course to other attractions like a butterfly conservatory and park space around the Falls.
Normally, it costs well over 100 dollars just to play a round at any one place, but we were able to put together a package deal that kept us within our budgets and away from full retail.
Imagine my surprise to open the booklet detailing the yardage for each hole to learn that while a company operates the courses, the Niagara Park Commission owns them.
They’re public municipal courses.
That brought my thoughts to the current struggles within the City of Erie to get the publicly owned Erie Golf Course up and running, and the deep and bitter feud over a relatively small two million-dollar renovation there.
How is Canada able to run these beautiful courses so well while we’ve been bickering all summer over three holes on one course?
That answer appeared with the first girl driving the first refreshment cart:
ME-“Hi, could I get two beers for my cart partner and me?�
HER-“Sure, that will be ten dollars, please.�
ME-“No, I’m sorry, we don’t need a six-pack. I would just like two beers.�
HER-“Sir, that is for two beers.�
Oh, yea, this is Canada, the land of maple leafs, back bacon and taxation within an inch of your life, particularly on discretionary items like alcohol.
Those huge increases, sometimes double what you’d pay for the same product in the States, provides a huge engine for public amenities.
Now, I’m not going to use this space to travel the well-worn arguments of which system is better.
Clearly, many in America prefer to keep as much money as possible in their own pockets and fund services like public parks and busses the best we can.
Given that, what can you expect from a system that requires a city to take out a loan just to fix one publicly owned course?
It has given rise to talk of just selling off Erie’s three municipal courses, something that must be considered in tight budget times.
Given that the public has just invested in the Erie course, it may turn out to be more prudent to recoup the investment first, but clearly the sell-off option must at least remain on the table.
City leaders are now promising that a fully functional Erie course will be opened by the end of August so that the public can come out a see what their seed money has sown.
But proof that it can be done in the public arena exists just two hours north of us, and from what I saw this past weekend the results can be spectacular.
But what we as Americans must ask is this:
Is the price worth the price?