County to spend $3.65 million for golf course

Wednesday, Aug. 27, 2008

The county allocated $3 million to purchase the Lusby course from the Maryland Economic Development Commission, or MEDCO, which has owned and operated the property since 2001. Another $650,000 was allocated to cover drainage repairs, the removal of underground gas tanks and other expenses. One hundred thousand dollars of that sum is set aside to create a staff position to oversee the project; that person will be hired next February or March, according to Finance and Budget Director Terry Shannon. The county intends to have MEDCO continue to manage the course for the upcoming fiscal year, which ends next July.

MEDCO’s former operating agreement with the county stipulated that the county would make any debt service payments on the course if its profits did not cover its expenses. By the time the agreement expired May 30, the county had covered $1.7 million in debt in addition to $180,000 the county paid in December to keep the club open until March, according to Shannon.

Golfers turned out in force to support the purchase at a public hearing held before the 3-2 vote; no members of the public spoke against it.

‘‘I am not even a good golfer,” said Nancy Caton. ‘‘I just think we need to keep the golf course.” She asked the county to assume control over the course instead of hiring MEDCO to manage it for another year, and asked it to remove ‘‘that albatross of a building. I was thinking, in the winter, it would be a wonderful exercise for our local fire departments” because it is deteriorated.

Jack Williams, a member of local golf leagues, said seniors need a golf course. He recalled a friend who was devoted to the game: ‘‘Bill Campbell would play golf even if it was on one leg. Maybe I will, too, if it comes to that.”

Commissioner Barbara Stinnett (D) also introduced into the record a sheaf of papers that she said contained signatures of hundreds of county residents petitioning for the course.

Three of the commissioners also spoke in favor of the expenditure, saying it was an important recreational facility and that the land was cheap at the price.

‘‘I think it’s a very good decision by the Board of County Commissioners to purchase this golf course,” said commissioners’ President Wilson Parran (D).

‘‘Recreation is not just ball fields,” said Commissioner Linda Kelley (R). ‘‘We spend money on ball fields every year and nobody bats an eye. ... I’ll tell you this is a good deal. [An appraised price of] $20,000 an acre. If you can show me any place in Calvert County where you can buy land for $20,000 an acre, I’m in.”

But Commissioner Jerry Clark (R), whose district includes the course, said he would not take the path of least resistance by supporting it. According to Clark, by spending more than the appraised value of the land the county is paying too much. Instead, the county should have let a private buyer, who was interested, try to acquire the course for the same amount of money, and then the county could have bought it for less if that deal fell through, he said.

‘‘I do not believe it was right, the way those negotiations were done,” Clark said. ‘‘In the end, the bondholders are made whole, MEDCO is made whole and Calvert County, in my opinion, is paying too much.”

Parran countered that it was unrealistic to expect the county to be able to buy the course at the appraised price, something Clark acknowledged.

‘‘Waiting to see what bondholders were going to do in terms of going to foreclosure was not going to happen,” Parran said, because the bondholders’ representative personally told him that it would not go to foreclosure. But Clark was skeptical.

‘‘That was [representative] Wells Fargo talking,” he said. ‘‘If I was Wells Fargo, I would have told you the same thing. We were in negotiations. Anybody representing the bondholders who told you anything different would not be fulfilling their fiduciary responsibility.”

Commissioner Susan Shaw (R) also spoke — and voted — against the expenditure, saying she preferred that the land be managed by a private company and that covenants on the land, required to obtain state Program Open Space funding for the course, ensured that the land would remain a publically-accessible recreational facility of some sort for decades.