In preparing for the municipal government’s 2013-2014 biennial budget, Sumner City Council has spent the better part of August and September discussing whether the government should retain ownership of the Meadowlinks golf course.

In a phone call, Councilman Steve Allsop said the golf course is a question the council will need to answer imminently due to the financial strain it places on the budget.

Councilwoman Nancy Dumas questioned, in a phone call two weeks ago, why the question has become so imminent now; why hadn’t the golf course’s budget problems come up in consistent discussion over the course of the year?

The council did not address the golf course issue at its regular meeting Monday, but a FAQ can now be found linked from the City of Sumner homepage. (Please note that the FAQ is posted on the city’s Recent News page, and thus may be subject to disappearance or relocation to a different web address in the future).

The Courier-Herald will publish a fuller story on the Sumner Meadowlinks question in its Oct. 4 issue.

A few selected city statements from the FAQ:

• “Over the last two years, citizens of Sumner have had to subsidize the golf course over $1.5 million, half of which came from the same account that funds police, parks and other essential services.”
• “Keeping the golf course would most likely mean having to raise taxes to some extent.”
• “Just like a home mortgage, at some point, you have to pay the actual amount owed. There’s no way to refinance a balance to zero.”
• “Lack of a clubhouse is definitely adding to our problem, but… it is not a solution to the full debt. When the course had a clubhouse, it only broke even once in fourteen years.”
• “This region… has an abundance of golf courses trying to draw from the same pool of golfers.”

The city definitely seems to be making the hard sell on this issue.