Brooksville's parks and recreation director blames the city's financial crisis on a practice advocated by the council member who is criticizing him.
By DAN DeWITT
Published August 29, 2003
BROOKSVILLE - Council member Ernie Wever renewed his attack on the Quarry Golf Course earlier this week, pointing out that the new city budget projects it will lose $93,000.
"How can you pass a budget with a net operating loss of $93,000 for a golf course, then tell your employees they can't get a pay raise?" Wever asked at Tuesday night's meeting.
"I can't go for a budget that has something like that in it," continued Wever, who also read off figures showing the course had lost $155,000 in the past five years.
But parks and recreation director David Pugh dismissed Wever's budget math and accused the council member of singling out the Quarry because Pugh is on extended medical leave.
"It's political," Pugh said.
He instead blamed the city's financial problems on a practice Wever advocated in 1997 and 1998: reducing the city's reserve fund, which was then about $1.7-million. Also, Pugh said, Wever never questioned repeated high payments to Coastal Engineering Associates Inc., which has received most of the city's engineering contracts.
"He has the audacity to say the Quarry is the reason people aren't getting a raise, when it's really a result of his asinine policy," Pugh said.
The losses at the course may be relatively small, but the Quarry has produced the most heated debate during the most troubled budget season in the city's recent history.
Early budget projections showed that, at current tax rates and spending levels, the city's reserve fund would dwindle to almost nothing by September of 2004, the end of the next fiscal year. Besides trimming expenses, the city's main response has been to impose or increase taxes, including the passage of a new tax on electric service at Tuesday's meeting.
Wever also identified several items that, he said, are draining unacceptable amounts of money from the city, including the Jerome Brown Community Center. The Quarry, though, was at the top of his list.
In the early 1990s, when the city agreed to support Pugh's plan to build the course - using mostly donated labor and materials - the City Council was told the Quarry would make money, Wever said. Instead, it has lost money from the start, including $32,356 in the 1998-99 fiscal year.
It was leased starting in 1999 because of these losses, Wever said. "Otherwise, we wouldn't have leased it."
After the city took it over again, in early 2000, the losses resumed, Wever said. The course cost the city more than $34,000 in the 2000-01 fiscal year, he said, $31,000 the following year, and will lose $57,000 during the current budget year, which ends next month.
"This is not a recreational facility the city should underwrite. It is something that should be making money for the city," Wever said.
Answering Pugh's contention that wasteful policies contributed to the budget problems, Wever said Brooksville badly needed to invest in its resources after years of neglect.
"Money had not been spent on what it should have, like vehicles, salaries and equipment. Tom Varn Park had a lot of work that had not been done that should have been done," Wever said. He added that the city has used several other firms besides Coastal.
Pugh has long contended the Quarry has earned money in the past - including $80,000 in the first two years of its operation - and can again.
He and Joe Tyberghein, who is temporarily filling Pugh's job, said the actual losses this year and next will be far smaller than the budget states. The prolonged widening project on U.S. 41 hurt the course's performance for the past three years, they said. Better marketing and improved course conditions will attract more customers, Tyberghein said last week.
Also, Pugh asked why the Quarry should be required to make money when other facilities are not.
Other departments, including police and fire, bring in no revenue, Pugh said. And other parks in Hernando, including the one named after Wever, do not pay for their upkeep, he said.
"Hey, let's shut down Ernie Wever Park. It's not making any money," Pugh said.
