City Council votes to approve golf course purchase

The city is buying a golf course.

The City Council, in a special meeting on Tuesday, agreed to buy Chippanee Country Club on Marsh Road for $4,750,000. The vote came after the Joint Meeting of the City Council and Board of Finance and the Board of Finance met earlier in the evening and approved of a $5,500,000 appropriation for the purchase and for the issuance of bonds for $5,500,500.

At the joint meeting, Mayor Ellen Zoppo-Sassu explained $5,500,000 is being appropriated because “we’re not sure about the bond market and what those notes and financial fees might be in order to go to market.”

The mayor said if the city doesn’t need all of the money being appropriated it will not be spent. It will not go into the city’s coffers for other uses.

The council vote to purchase was unanimous with the mayor and her fellow Democrats Peter Kelly, Greg Hahn, Steven Seymour and Mark Dickau and Republicans Susan Tyler and Erich Rosengren teaming together to support the acquisition.

During the joint meeting and the Board of Finance deliberations over the appropriation and bonding, Democrats and Republicans for the most part joined together to support the effort. Republican Jane Murdoch was the sole dissenting vote. She argued she needed more information to support the effort.

Prior to voting, Zoppo-Sassu allowed councilors an opportunity to ask further questions or comment on the plan, which not only nets the city the course but most of its assets including the club house and fixtures (but leaves the previous owner with the responsibility of any possible environmental remediation that may arise at the property).

Councilor Kelly was the first to speak up. “Municipal governance can be very difficult and complicated, and this decision being made tonight is a good example. I’d like to commend people, including the mayor and many others, who have worked on this. It has been a long, involved process…”

Kelly said, “This decision reminds me of two other difficult decisions that have been made by the City Council: the first being the purchase of the (Bristol) Centre Mall property across the street…It took a while, but that is blossoming now and ended up being the right decision and one that was oft-criticized.”

Kelly continued, “The second decision faced by this board and others was the Memorial Boulevard School (now Bristol Arts and Innovation Magnet School and home to the Rockwell Theater). If anyone’s been there or been to a performance there, that appears to be the right decision as well.”

Rosengren said, “Most people know I’m a big proponent of open space and green areas and places for kids and families here to recreate. I also am not a fan of spending tax dollars. However, with all the due diligence that’s gone into this and the opportunity — we’ll never get green space back if we get rid of it — I just don’t think we can pass up this opportunity.”

“There’s two different sides to this,” noted Tyler. “One is acquiring of the property, which I have been 100% in agreement with from the minute that the real estate posting came out in November. I believe I was probably the first person to text saying this would make an awesome public golf course. I’m in favor of keeping open space. I believe Bristol has gotten over-developed in every single section of our city. Once it is gone, we will never get it back again.”

Tyler, a real estate agent, added the golf course is “just one more thing that we can add on as a reason to come to Bristol, a reason to buy a home here in Bristol, a reason to bring your business and to come and visit Bristol. So that’s like a no brainer.”

However, Tyler said she was still worried about the impact of the purchase on taxpayers. “I have gotten phone calls from people who agree with me on the first side of it, but who are struggling, who are upset that we raised their taxes this year, who don’t know how they’re going to handle going into this winter when oil could be six or $7 a gallon.”

Seymour said, “I am all for the open space and not developing new condos or developments because, like Rosengren said you’ll never get that open space back. The way I see it is we’re not going to make money right away, but the possibilities of opening up to the public could bring a great piece of revenue with the banquet hall, different activities, school leagues, stuff like that. So not only does that add to the livability of Bristol, I think it’s a great idea.”

Now that the council has voted for the purchase, Zoppo-Sassu said the city will put down a $100,000 deposit “as a show of good faith.” Then, a closing date will be selected.

The city also will be hiring a consultant to handle the transfer of operations and determine how the golf course will be managed.

“In order to operate a golf course, we’re not sure what direction we’re going in. We’re going to talk about that in the next session (of the council), but we do have a plan in terms of where that money is going to come from. A t this point, with a very cursory look at some of the expenses that will come with us maintaining a golf course, probably starting on or around Nov. 1, to take us through when the season starts in late spring. We are going to go to the Board of Finance in October with a proposed budget and we are going to ask them at that point to set aside $500,000 from our surplus funds… to put toward the Chippanee operations.”

“From that point, we have to look at what that management model is going to look like,” said Zoppo-Sassu. “You can either contract fully with a management company who takes on all costs and responsibilities, or you can do a hybrid where we retain some involvement with some core golf functions and maybe hand off food and beverage or agronomy and groundskeeping.”

The mayor added, “We’ve also determined that moving forward, this will be managed … through an enterprise fund, which means everything is separate from the city budget. The enterprise fund is an acknowledgement that there are commercial aspects of how this is going to be handled… So, everything, revenues and or expenses will be tracked out of that one enterprise fund, which is also public facing and anyone will be able to see that as well.”

As for the tax impact of the purchase on property owners, Zoppo-Sassu if you own a house that is valued at $250,000, the new golf club will cost taxpayer an addition $19 on their existing tax bill.

Editor’s note: The original article was inaccurately bylined David Fortier. Mike Chaiken is the reporter who covered this story.

City Council votes to approve golf course purchase

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