And I would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren’t for you meddling kids

Tonight on the City Council’s agenda are the two proposals from the two Golf Management companies vying for the right to manage the Chuck Corica Golf Complex now that all the swap nonsense is behind us.   This is, of course, one opportunity for folks that know about golf to weigh in on who the preferred vendor should be.   Ultimately though the City Council, based on a recommendation from staff, will make the final decision, but then final negotiations have to be hammered out, yadda yadda yadda.

Anyway the two finalists are Greenway Golf and KemperSports.

Reporting on the CAFR: you’re doing it wrong

On Tuesday night, after the whole business about the Golf Complex was completed.  The decision was that the City Council would give City Staff time to review the proposal by Ron Cowan before making any definitive decisions.    KemperSports seemed sufficiently chastened by prospects that any number of alternate operators might be able to fill in for them and came in a lot more flexible than before.   Acting City Manager Lisa Goldman confirmed that our former Interim City Manager had made promises to KemperSports that the City would issue tax-exempt bonds to finance KemperSports’ capital improvements to the site (in the neighborhood of $5 million) and that KemperSports would pay the debt service on the bonds, which Lisa Goldman put the kibosh on because it wouldn’t be kosher.

The City Council asked to have City Staff work on a pinning down a few more items in the Alameda Junior Golf Association term sheet and then to bring back a lease to the Council.   I’ll talk more about the Cowan plan when I get a chance to review it, but another equally interesting conversation occurred after most people vacated the room last night that John P. hinted at in yesterday’s comments.

Promises, promises

The plot, as always, thickens when it comes to the Chuck Corica Golf Course.   The last time we left off, Kemper Sports, the current lease operator, has presented two scenarios that they were willing to entertain and only one included KemperSports investing any capital for improvements to the site, reducing the number of holes from 36 to 27.

The assumption that I believe everyone had after that meeting was the Kemper Sports was going to spend the capital upfront themselves to pay for the improvements on the site.  In fact, based on the public discussion that night with Kemper, I don’t think anyone would dispute that it certainly sounded as though when they spoke about the $5 million in improvements that this would be privately funded, here are a few compiled clips from the January 25 special meeting:

Tee totaler

Tonight, the City Council will have a Special Meeting with various legal items on its closed session agenda.   But what I want to concentrate on is the agenda item about the Golf Complex which will supposedly will reach some form of resolution after months and months of negotiations between the former Interim City Manager, Ann Marie Gallant, and Kemper Sports.

First the good news.   Even though back when negotiations were first open there were about five different scenarios that were still on the table, including having Kemper continue to run the Mif Albright, Kemper Sports has whittled their proposal down to two scenarios, both assuming that the Mif Albright will be run as a non profit.

Why you want to give me a run-around

Michele Ellson’s article about the Alameda Junior Golf Association and the whole Mif Albright situation comes at a pretty opportune time.   As a reminder here’s the nutshell, the AJG offered up an alternative to completely shuttering the Mif Albright golf course: they would run the Mif Albright as a non-profit organization.   The City Council gave direction to the Interim City Manager to negotiate with the AJG and Kemper simultaneously and , but now given that the City Council is on “recess” during August like they’re Congress, City staff doesn’t think that they will be able to complete negotiations until the “fall.”

As an aside, I’m not quite sure when the City Council or someone at the City decided that the City Council should not meet in August.   The City Council has always met, at least once, in August in the past.  Seriously, check the archives, there have always been August meetings.   I guess this is a way for the City Council to take a vacation if they want to, but personally it seems a tad silly.

Kemper Kemper

Remember when I wrote about how the City had put out an RFP for management of Chuck Corica Golf Course?   There were five options that any company could place a proposal for:

Option A: keep everything as is (two 18-hole courses, one par 3 aka Mif Albright), with the company spending the money to bring all the golf courses up to snuff.  And there would be no change to the restaurant lease — currently leased to Jim’s at the Course

Option B: Close Mif Albright, everything else the same as option A.

Option C: Close Mif Albright, buy out lease from Jim’s and open with a new restaurant

Option D: Close Mif Albright, only have one 18 hole course, split the other 18 hole into one 9-hole and one par 3 course.  Buy out lease from Jim’s and open with a new restaurant

Option E:  Doowutchyalike

Seriously though, option E was essentially a blank slate for a company to do whatever it thought was in its best interest.