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Golf Task Force

OCTOBER 2008 UPDATE
The final Golf Task Force meeting has been scheduled for Wednesday, October 29th at 6 PM at City Hall, room 263 (click here for the agenda.)  We encourage anyone and everyone who has recreational interests in San Francisco (soccer players, off-road bikers, trails advocates, dog walkers, skateboarders, etc.) to attend and urge Rec and Park to conduct a full study of land available for recreational use.

To date, no effort has been made by the Rec and Park Department to redress the shortfall of sports fields indicated by a 2004 Recreation Assessment study.  If you are outraged by the City's lack of implementation for any improvements in this area, we urge you to attend the 10/29 Task Force Meeting, and also to sign a petition at http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/pitch-in-sf. 

At the September 29th meeting of the Golf Task Force, there was a presentation and discussion of Leon Younger's 2008 Recreational Opportunities Study (click here to read the report.) An 8th meeting of the Task Force will be scheduled within the month. It appears that we will end up with a 'gradient' of agreements from full agreement to none on various points and recommendations made in the report. The bottom line as far as NPC is concerned is that it is a status quo report, in terms of retaining 72 holes of golf now, instead of 81.

SEPTEMBER 2008 UPDATE
The final meeting of the San Francisco Golf Course Task Force is scheduled for Monday, September 29th, at 6:30pm at McLaren Lodge, Fell & Stanyan Sts.  At the meeting, there will be a discussion of the Recreational Opportunities study (read it below).  We encourage everyone to turn out for the meeting and urge the extension of the Task Force to allow adequate time for public discussion and consideration of the report's recommendations.

AUGUST 2008 UPDATE
On August 15th a draft copy of Leon Younger's Recreational Opportunities Study was released to the Golf Task Force.  However, we were surprised to find that much of his data had been edited out of the draft report. A full copy, after protest, was finally received on August 28th.

Final report 8/26/08  |  Redacted draft 8/15/08 |  For all documents from the Task Force, click here.

We are highly concerned that the mission of the Task Force is compromised when members are not given full access to critical data. It has become clear that the Task Force is not intended by RPD to have any decision-making role in what happens with regards to management of the courses, or the future of hundreds of acres of our city’s recreational space.  It is crucial that the Commission and perhaps the Board of Supervisors ensure that the Department does not just make public involvement merely a token gesture.  Click here to read an article about the Task Force and here for another article about how SF golf courses are losing money, and players.

MAY 2008 UPDATE
RPD has held 2 meetings of the Golf Task Force to present the goals and objectives and two site visits to the golf courses (Lincoln, Harding and Sharp Park).

The mission of the Golf Task Force is to "advise the City and County of San Francisco on options for the most publicly beneficial and fiscally responsible use of existing golf course lands." Leon Younger/PROS Consulting has been hired to conduct an independent study of the best uses and management practices for the courses (to read Scope of Work document, click here). The study was funded in the 2007-08 city budget and was launched in March 2008.

According to a May 6th article in the Chronicle, RPD released a Request For Information (RFI) from private companies who are interested in managing 3 of the city's golf courses (for list of companies that received the RFI, click here.) However, the RFI was sent out without notifying the Task Force. NPC Executive Director Isabel Wade and other members of the Task Force suggested that an RFI is normally a prerequesite to the formal bidding process, which makes them wary that RPD may be trying to proceed with privatizing the courses before the Task Force makes its recommendation in June.

TASK FORCE DOCUMENTS