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California budget battle
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As if the failing health of the nation’s economy hasn’t taken enough wind out of the sails of the golf industry, now superintendents in the state of California face the prospect of absorbing one more blow to their bottom lines.
A broad new tax increase that is a part of the state’s proposed 2009 budget — a budget with designs on closing the state’s massive budget shortfall that estimates say will be more than $11 billion by the end of the fiscal year in June — has pulled the state’s golf industry into the fray and has left course owners, operators and superintendents all crying foul.
“I think it’s a cheap shot,” Rex Cole, the general manager and director of golf at Cottonwood Country Club in El Cajon, Calif., told the San Diego Union-Tribune recently. “It’s the wrong time right now. Golf courses are really struggling.”
The segment of the proposed increases that has drawn the ire of the golf industry is a plan to broaden the sales tax to numerous services that had previously been exempt from such taxes, including such things as vehicle repairs, appliance and furniture repairs, veterinarian services, admission to amusement parks and sporting events and (drum roll please) golf fees. Those cover everything from daily greens fees to membership and initiation fees at private clubs.
Coupled with a proposed statewide sales tax increase of 1.5 percent, some courses could be facing as much as a 10 percent increase in what they charge their customers for a day on the links.
“It is patently unfair to single out California golfers, who already pay a fair share of taxes, and expect them to assume a disproportionate share of the revenue needed to close the state’s budget deficit,” said Bob Bouchier, the executive director of the California Alliance for Golf.
The state’s golf industry, including the members of the California GCSA, isn’t taking the proposed new taxes sitting down. A broad coalition of the state’s various golf associations, under the banner of the California Alliance for Golf, has met with consultants and lobbyists to form a cohesive strategy to challenge the legislation.
In a letter sent to California GCSA members about the industry’s efforts, Bruce Williams, CGCS at Los Angeles Country Club and a board member for the California Alliance for Golf, wrote, “Everyone is concerned that a tax on golf will dramatically impact the golf economy by adding additional costs for the player, which adversely affects rounds played and diminishes incremental revenue at golf facilities.”
He later wrote, “We must show determination and that we are willing to engage as a unified industry to combat the proposed tax.”
The state’s budget process should wrap up by the middle of this year. For more information, visit the California Alliance for Golf Web site at http://cagolf.org.
As of Jan. 7, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services had received enough H-2B worker petitions to reach the limit mandated by Congress for the final six months of the fiscal year 2009, from April 1 through Sept. 30. The USCIS also announced it is rejecting petitions received after Jan. 7, 2009, for new H-2B workers seeking employment start dates prior to Oct. 1, 2009. For more information, view the document online at www.uscis.gov/files/article/h2b_8jan09.pdf. Marriott Golf’s 2008 Marriott Golf Grounds Scholarship, which goes to an outstanding student in a turf management-related program at the University of Arizona, Tucson, was awarded recently to Jaime Banuelos, who’s working toward his master’s degree in soil, water and environmental science at the school. He received his undergraduate degree in crop production in December 2008. As part of the scholarship requirement, Banuelos completed an internship at Marriott Golf’s Starr Pass Country Club in Tucson, and still serves on the maintenance staff at the facility. Banuelos also received a certificate in turfgrass management from the University of California, Riverside, and is a Certified Pesticide Applicator from the Structural Pest Control Commission. Mark Salisbury, CGCS, is the superintendent of grounds at Starr Pass Resort. |
