Lease Them Out

By Liam Day
July 17th, 2008

From the Freedom Foundation of Minnesota: it seems that, of the 42 municipal golf courses in the land of lakes, only 5 did not lose money in 2006, the most recent year for which data is available. Collectively, the 37 courses that bled red lost a total of $2.3 million.

Of course, the easy (and I would argue obvious) solution would be to lease the courses losing money to private operators, as the Commonwealth sensibly decided to do (and our own Steve Poftak urged right here on this blog) at Ponkapoag. There is ample evidence that such solutions work.

For example, in 2006 Pioneer undertook a study of the 26 ice skating rinks in Massachusetts operated by private vendors under long-term leases from the state and determined that the rinks remained open longer, were used by more people, had benefited from significantly more capital investment and, here’s the kicker, were cheaper than the remaining rinks still operated directly by the state.