During the city council’s last budget meeting they elected to close operations of the public golf course for winder months, which will likely be November through February.This would cut the salary of the PGA professional and the golf superintendent at Wildwood by 25 percent.

The reason they made the cut is because in addition to regular operating expenditures, the city had $206,000 to fund requests from city departments. The problem was the city had $1.6 million worth of requests.

“We looked line by line at how much are you asking for office supplies and insurance and ultimately our big issue was our large purchases,” says City Administrator Grayson Path.

So after several meetings and hours of discussion the city decided to cut three month of it’s gold budget, which saves the city $33.192. Money that can now be spent on a new patcher for the street department and to update the new zoning codes.

PGA pro at Wildwood Jon Casey understands why the city made it’s decision.

“Is taking less salary and taking things out of your service pleasant always? Not at all, but at the end of the day you hope to fill that need and at the same time be as cost effective as possible,” says Casey.

Details are still not clear as to how the city will go about closing the golf course for three months. The chance remains that that the course may stay open at times for season pass holders that want to come out when the weather is warmer.

As for how many golfers actually come out in the winter, Casey says it depends on the weather.

“It just depends, some years we’ve had 40 golfers a day versus others years in January and it’s 10-11 below we’ll have nobody,zero,” says Casey.

The three-month golf shutdown is not yet official as there will be a public hearing at the next Nebraska City city council meeting on September 6th.

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However, golf course aeration helps to keep golf courses in good shape, even when the weather turns against the superintendents.

Aeration is designed to let golf course grass breathe and stretch out. It’s designed to control what’s known as “organic matter,” dying grass and grass parts, while loosening compacted soil and allowing water to flow better underground. By having compacted, poor-performing or dead grass parts in the soil, the healthy turf can struggle to grow and develop strong roots. Compacted soil, created from foot traffic, weather and other factors, reduces oxygen levels in the soil and can inhibit water from getting to turf roots. All of this compacting and organic matter can also make for a softer golf course because it’s unable to drain water and push new turf to the surface.

So, golf courses are aerated to provide a better golfcourse. There are a variety of methods to aerate, but the general idea is to either make punch marks in the soil with rolling spikes or using equipment to create varying size soil cores that are pulled out of the ground. These holes allow excess moisture to evaporate and better chemistry in the soil to promote healthy turf growth.

Superintendents don’t always aerate the same areas or by a fixed schedule. Sometimes they do tees, others greens and then fairways. Aeration can even be done of a combination of these areas. Approaches can be staggered, too. That is left to the superintendent, whose job it is to figure out which areas, when and how they will be aerated.

Aeration schedules and timing can vary around the country, as well as course to course, depending on the soil, traffic, cost, type of grass, weather and many more. Many golf courses will aerate two to three times in a year. However, aeration is only done when the turf is healthy and actively growing, to ensure a speedy recovery.

For grasses like bentgrass and Poa annua, core aeration is best done in the spring and fall. For heat-tolerant grasses such as bermudagrass and paspalum, core aeration is best performed in late spring and throughout the summer. However, superintendents tend to fertilize the turf before aerating, adding to an unpleasant game because the greens are often a little soggy or spongy until the tines come in to punch holes.

The aeration holes are then filled with topdressing – typically sand – and usually hit with the sand a second time after the first filling settles into the core holes. A properly done aeration would usually take a golf course about two weeks to recover.

Once the grass grows back through the aeration holes to a healthy level, the course is mowed and rolled again, with greens as good as new afterwards.

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Over the past 12 years, there has been a decline by more than half of the rounds played at the corse, from 95,000 in 2003 to about 44,000 last year, city officials said.

Doug Eddow, the city’s property manager said, that it seems to be part of a larger trend in the game of gold.

“We’re doing as much as anybody else, there’s just a limited number of golfers,” Eddow said.

During the City Council’s annual budget workshop held last month, City Manager Michelle Lawrence said the city should earmark about $97,000 in the 2016-17 fiscal year to subsidize the golf course.

Eddow said, the facility has been operating at a deficit the last two years and using reserves from previous years to get by.

For example, in fiscal year 2013-14 the golf course had $1.7 million in revenues but $1.72 million in expenses, for a loss of about $24,000. In the 2014-15 fiscal year, the loss grew to about $150,000. The city didn’t say whether the course is expected to see another shortfall when the current fiscal year ends June 30.

Eddow said he requested the $97,000 for the coming fiscal year in case revenues don’t improve. If play picks up and revenues recover, the golf course may not need to spend the money, he said.

The costs to run the golf course are relatively fixed but revenues can fluctuate significantly. Officials anticipate the number of rounds played will drop by about 1,000 based on recent year trends, Eddow said. Rounds at the course range on average about $30 to $35.

“It’s like flying an airplane,” Eddow said. “There are fixed costs to fly the plane whether there’s two people on board or 200.”

Councilman Chuck lowery said he was concerned about the falling revenues and is looking into the situation. He said one possible remedy is to raise rates.

“Last weekend, I talked with people who are golfers at the municipal course,” Lowery said. “They told me that compared to the prices that private courses charge, the city could raise the rates by about $5 per round and it would not impact the player’s ability to play.”

On the other hand, Eddow also said golf has become a very competitive market because people are using computers and smartphones to compare prices.

Councilman Jerry Kern said the municipal golf course should be seen as a city amenity, like a park or the municipal pier, which cost money to maintain and provide to the public. But if the golf course continues to lose money year after year, it will be up to the council to decide whether to continue to subsidize it, Kern said.

“We’ll have to see what happens,” Kern said. “I don’t know what our options are. If we closed the golf course and turned it into a park, we’d still have to pay for water (or) the decision may be that it’s a public benefit and we keep it.”

Golf courses all over the county have struggled to attract new players in recent years. Since 2012, numerous courses in Bonsall, Fallbrook, Escondido and Rancho Peñasquitos have shut down, and others could soon foflow.

In March, the Fallbrook Golf Course closed after being in business for 56 years. The owner said earlier this years that course revenue sunk to about $500 a day, which barely covers the cost of its ground crew.

San Diego city-owned golf courses are financially different, according to a report from the city’s audit committee. The report found the Balboa Park and Mission Bay golf course lose a combined total of $2 million annually, while the third city-owned course, Torrey Pines, turns a $6 million profit because of its popularity with tourists.

Three years ago, Oceanside brought in new managers to run its second municipal golf course, the former Center City Golf Course near Oceanside Boulevard that had become blighted and rundown.

The new company — run by longtime North County businessman John Ashworth and his partners David Emerick and Geoff Cunningham — quickly started on $3.6 million in improvements including a revamped clubhouse and new golf carts.

The name of the venue — which most locals years ago dubbed “Goat Hill” — was officially changed to Goat Hill Park, with a motto of “world class, working class.”

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