The SCGA's initial targeting of club presidents/delegates along with similar targeted efforts from allied partners like the Southern California PGA Section has yielded a healthy number of organizational letters in opposition to AB 1910 (Public Golf Endangerment Act). A second broader targeting is set to go out Monday in the form of SCGA's "Club Digest."
The SCGA is collecting those letters and filing them with the two Assembly policy committees that will hear the bill in the coming weeks - Housing & Community Development and Local Government.
In addition to being encouraged by this initial response, we are encouraged that a number of golf business interests that did not weigh in the previous two times this piece of legislation was brought forward are now weighing in with formal letters of opposition. We are additionally encouraged that many of the game's national organizations are doing the same. There are roughly 3.6 million golfers in California. To the degree to which legislators understand that the organizations to which they belong and the businesses that they patronize care about this bill and are watching - this helps immensely.
One national organization that has stepped up to this plate is the National Golf Foundation, which in addition to filing a formal letter of opposition put out a national E-mail yesterday giving the reasons why it believes the fate of AB 1910 is not only epochal for California, but for golf in the other 49 states. Excerpted from it below are two paragraphs and one chart that tells all one needs to know about what is at stake in our effort to strike this bill out for a 3rd and final time.
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NGFNational Golf Foundation
From the Desk of Joe Beditz, Ph.D., President and CEO:
AB 1910
Why is this important to all of us, not just to our colleagues in the Golden State? To begin with, despite the large number of courses in California, the state is woefully undersupplied when taking into consideration the state's huge population, ranking at the bottom in per capita public golf supply. (See Graphic) The state would need 533 more public golf courses for it to pull even with the national golfers-per-public-golf-course average. Think about that. They would need to add a public golf course a day (wink) for the next year and a half just to reach the U.S. "average" level of public golf supply!
Seriously, any reduction in public golf supply in California, be it of the daily fee or municipal variety, will only exacerbate the undersupply situation there, making it even harder for existing golfers to find tee times, while at the same time increasing the barrier to entry for new golfers. This isn't how we are going to grow golf participation and rounds played. Further, this sets a very dangerous precedent, arming golf oppositionists elsewhere with a legislative example we really don't want them to have.
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Well said Joe and NGF! It's hard to grow, sustain, and diversify a game without the very facilities that have always served as the game's engines of growth, diversification, and sustenance.
The proponents of AB 1910 say that golf is underutilized in California. The facts say that the public courses are packed from dawn to dusk every day of the week and the private clubs have waiting lists, high initiation fees, and increased dues. If golf speaks in the public arena the facts can prevail over the fictions of those who would single out parkland golf courses from all other park/recreation/open space uses for commercial redevelopment - while offering publicly financed grants to do so no less.
We will repeat this as many times as we have to that this bill has nothing to do with housing, affordable or otherwise! It causes great harm to golf in the short run, great harm to all parks and open spaces in the long run and accomplishes practically nothing in terms of housing in return. Other than that, it's a great piece of public policy!
Keep those organizational letters coming, and when the time comes for individuals to again flood their legislators' E-mailboxes with their thoughts on the subject, let the waters flow.