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By Grant Bosse | New Hampshire Watchdog
ON COURSE: The state allows the Pease Golf Course to run like a business and doesn’t need taxpayer help.
NEWINGTON, N.H. — While municipally owned golf courses in Concord and Manchester are leaning on taxpayers to cover for losses, the state-owned Pease Golf Course continues to turn a profit.
When the Air Force left Pease in 1991, New Hampshire took over the property, managing it through the Pease Development Authority. The Pease Golf Course has been run as a self-sufficient business within the PDA ever since, said PDA Executive Director Irving Canner.
“We treat it as a business that has to stand alone,” Canner said. “But it’s all one pot.”
Pease has avoided having to ask taxpayers to subsidize its operations in part by avoiding debt.
Manchester’s Derryfield Country Club brings in more revenue each year than it spends for operations, but debt service for a recent round of capital improvements has forced taxpayers to chip in $1.1 million in recent years.
The Concord City Council recently approved $141,000 to help the city-owned Beaver Meadow Golf Course pay its bill this year.
Read the complete story at NewHampshireWatchdog.org.
