By Karen Gleason
The 830 Times
City council members have asked the city manager to investigate ways to fund resurfacing of the greens at the San Felipe Springs Golf Course.
Golf course commission member Mike Perez made recommendations about improvements needed at the golf course to the city council during its July 11 meeting. Fellow golf commission members Ernie Hernandez, Clay Taylor and Max Wilson joined Perez at the podium for his presentation.
Perez began by calling the San Felipe Springs Golf Course “the jewel of Del Rio.”
“If you haven’t been out there, it’s just beautiful,” he told the council, saying at one time, the golf course was believed to be exclusive, meant only for “the better-off people in Del Rio, and that it was kind of restricted.”
“That’s not what it is anymore. Now we have everybody playing. People from all walks of life. A lot of National Guard, because they’re here. A lot of Texas Department of Public Safety people. A lot of kids. A lot of high school people,” Perez said.
“What we’re here for today is to ask for your help and your support with a problem we’re having at the course that needs your attention. We’re not able to do this without you,” he said.
Perez first spoke about the golf course and its history.
He said the course is an 86-acre, nine-hole course built in 1921 and is historically significant because it was the first golf course built in Texas by world-famous golf course designer John Bredemus, known as “the father of Texas golf.”
Perez said the city assumed management of the golf course in 2017.
“We have an average of 6,581 rounds of golf player per year, and that came from the finance department, so those are paid rounds and don’t count the 6,000 to 10,000 rounds played by members. There’s a lot of use of the golf course,” Perez said, adding the course now has 98 active members and 57 cart sheds are rented out.
“The city hasn’t forgotten about us all the way. We’ve had some real good work done out there. New maintenance equipment, from the ground up, and you have to have that to make a good quality course. We also have 30 new golf carts, which allow us to hold tournaments, which bring in a lot of revenue,” Perez said.
He said the city also is planning to construct 60 new golf cart sheds, which will add another revenue stream.
Perez said the city has also constructed new restrooms on the golf course.
“But all of this will be for naught if the course becomes unplayable,” he warned.
In 2021, Perez said, the city contracted with Finger Dye Spann, a landscape architecture company that designs golf courses, to draft a master plan for the golf course.
“Here’s a quote from the company about the greens from back in 2021: ‘Given their age, poor turf quality, the subsurface conditions and loss of putting surface size, it is recommended that all the greens be completely rebuilt to United States Golf Association specifications’,” Perez told the council.
He said the original Del Rio golf course, built 100 years ago, had putting surfaces totaling 42,091 square feet. The current putting surfaces at the course total 39,315 square feet.
“We’ve lost 12,776 square feet, 34 percent. Why? Because of attrition of the grass around the turns of the green, grass drying out and different conditions, so we’re about half the size we were,” Perez said.
“Why do we need new greens? You know the saying, ‘You drive for show and putt for dough,’ well, that’s very true. If you don’t have good greens on your golf course, you don’t have a golf course. Fifteen or 20 years ago, we brought in 12 to 15 large tournaments a year. It took me five years to play out there, waiting on the waiting list; that’s how many people would come here to play golf. We can get back to that in the next three years or we can be another bike path in the next three years. It depends on what you and the city administration wants to do with this,” Perez said.
He said the greens at San Felipe were last resurfaced in 2003 with common Bermuda grass, and the greens have been resurfaced with other grasses over the years, resulting in a mix of different types of grass with varying textures and rates of growth.
Additionally, he said, an incorrect application of weed killer in 2018 “caused extensive and irreparable damage to the greens.”
Perez next showed the council a series of photographs he had taken of some of the greens at the golf course, depicting the conditions of the putting surfaces.
He explained that different types of grass and grass conditions can cause the golf ball to move faster or slower.
“So it’s virtually impossible to make a putt based on your skill,” he said.
He then showed photos of greens at other courses in the area, including those at Uvalde and Laughlin Air Force Base.
Perez also addressed problems with the golf course’s tee boxes.
He again read to the council from the golf course master plan, which noted the “teeing areas are generally smaller than desired and are well beyond their 20-year life expectancy.”
Perez reviewed the golf course’s revenue and expense history for the years in which it has been operated by the city.
In each of those years, expenses have exceeded revenues by just over $200,000 annually.
“We don’t break even. We’re going to be in the red, but we do cover about 50 percent of all the expenses, most of which are personnel,” Perez told the council.
“All of our really good golfers have gone. They’re either playing at the base or Brackettville or even as far as Concan, and the only way we’re going to get them back is to improve the golf course,” Perez said.
Perez said he and the commission members are not criticizing the city workers at the golf course.
“The guys out there do everything they can, but they can only do what they can do with what they’ve got,” he said.
Perez said the authors of the golf course master plan envisioned higher annual revenues from the course if improvements were made.
He presented the city with three options for making those improvements.
Perez said the first option is to completely rebuild the greens to their original size and to USGA specifications. Perez said this would be the long-term fix, but would cost at least $750,000 and require the golf course to be closed for 12 to 18 months.
The second option would be to resurface the greens in-house, which would be less expensive and the greens could be done one at a time. The problem, Perez said, the golf course does not have the equipment or the human resources to do the work. Specifically, he added, the city does not have a certified agronomist on staff to oversee the work.
The third option, Perez said, is the one recommended by the golf commission.
That recommendation is to resurface the greens with native Bermuda grass, utilizing a professional greens restoration company. This option would cost the city an estimated $100,000, with an additional cost of $50,000 if the city wanted to restore the tee boxes.
The total construction and grow-in time would only be 14 days, Perez told the council.
Perez said he and the golf commission are asking the council to approve and fund the removal and replacement of all putting surface greens at the golf course, to include the practice putting green, and to restore the greens to their original size if possible.
After his presentation, Perez fielded questions from the council.
Mayor Al Arreola wondered aloud if the city’s economic development corporation would consider footing the bill for resurfacing the greens.
Arreola asked City Manager John Sheedy to meet with Jorge Ramon, the city’s economic development director, to bring back a proposal to the council’s next meeting.
Taylor also urged the council to think about hiring a certified greenskeeper to properly care for the new greens once they are resurfaced.
“If we do this and we spend this money to get it done, if we hire somebody that’s a pro shop manager and not a certified greenskeeper or a certified agronomist, they’re going to end up back like this in a couple of years,” Taylor said.
“We can bring it back to its former glory. The San Felipe Golf Course was once one of the greatest nine-hole courses in Texas, and it can be again,” Perez added.
Councilman Jim DeReus asked City Finance Director Alberta Barrett if there was any money left from a series of certificates of obligation the city obtained for the golf course in 2016.
“That CO, just to clarify, was very specific in its wording, so, when it’s very specific, you can only use that money for that exact wording. And the exact wording for that CO was ‘to purchase and acquire approximately eight-and-a-half acres for the golf clubhouse, swimming pool, tennis courts and the golf course; also purchasing approximately 85 acres.’ To answer your question, out of that CO, that money was spent for those purposes,” Barrett replied.
She added in ongoing budget discussions, improvements at the golf course have been discussed, and are proposed to be included in next year’s capital improvement plan funding.
DeReus then said a few months ago, the city pulled about $800,000 from the 2016 CO “for stuff not related to the golf course.”
“So how does that jive with what you just said, because it talks about taking the money for buying the land and buying the clubhouse, so how can we pull $800,000 to do something parks-related?” DeReus asked.
“Because the golf course is considered a park,” Barrett replied.
“But we were using that money to improve money to improve other parks, and I objected at that meeting and I had a lot of questions about it. So, it’s under parks, I understand that, but how can we pull $800,000 for other parks nowhere near the golf course, but we can’t take $150,000 to actually fix the problems? That just doesn’t make sense to me,” DeReus pressed.
Arreola asked if that money had gone to the Field of Our Dreams sports park, and Barrett said it had.
Sheedy interjected that at the time the CO was issued, there were no major projects at the golf course, and Barrett said the city could be penalized by the IRS if a certain percentage of the funds were not spent within the first three years.
“At that time, when the lighting came up for the sport park, there was no project ready to go for the golf course, or none that was presented,” Barrett added.
“I think we need to fund this (greens and tees restoration). I think we need to fund it quickly. . . so I highly recommend we get it for the next meeting,” DeReus said.
Sheedy said he would look at the issue and come back with a recommendation.
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