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SALT LAKE CITY — After a testy 4-3 vote, the Salt Lake City Council agreed to spend $65,000 to indulge Mayor Jackie Biskupski's attempt to bring Wingpointe Golf Course back from the grave.
It's an expense to maintain Wingpointe's greens for the next six months while city officials study the long-term feasibility of reopening the course.
The mayor has also proposed spending another $60,000 from the 2017 budget to maintain the course through next year, an expense the council is still considering before it adopts the budget June 22.
Council members Erin Mendenhall, Stan Penfold and Derek Kitchen stood firm against the $65,000 budget amendment, unwilling to pump thousands of dollars into a course that city officials already concluded would be in the city's best interest to close. The city's golf fund had been operating at an $800,000 annual deficit.
"This allocation is in no way going to get us to a fix," Mendenhall said. "(Closing Wingpointe) is a decision we made after 18 months of hard deliberation and real facts from all over the place, from community advisory groups to national consultants. This is not consistent with that decision."
City Council Chairman James Rogers said he supported the proposal to "preserve the assets we already have before it's too late and we lose everything completely."
Council members Lisa Adams, Charlie Luke and Andrew Johnston agreed.
"I'm not particularly thrilled with this, but every day we're not taking care of what we own now, it's getting worse," Adams said. "If the administration wants to take another bite of this apple, I think it's worth the $65,000 even if that's a lot of money to buy us more time."
Penfold said he was "disturbed" that the proposal was voted on Tuesday when the council hadn't yet discussed the city's golf fund for next year. Mendenhall, too, said she felt the proposal was being "rushed through."
"I can't see how this is a good financial decision at the moment to spend this kind of money out of context," Kitchen said.
But Luke said the expenditure was worth preserving the city's options.
"It's not going to fix the course or reopen the course, but what it does do is allow time for the administration to work on a final solution," he said. "It's important to keep those options open."
