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Column omits golf's benefits to citizens

Ah, March is here, thoughts turn to spring, and the Daily Herald tax Grinch has celebrated the coming of warm weather and sunshine by bashing park district and municipal golf courses in the suburbs as "tax losers."

How? By talking about moderately priced recreational activities like golf as if they were huge drains on our tax dollars without any tangible benefit. And not referring to golf course revenues and expenditures as such, but unfairly spinning the numbers into business-model terms like profits or losses, as if governmental units are true businesses.

His recent golf-bashing Suburban Tax Watchdog column suggests that Jake Griffin simply hates golf, and perhaps any other tax-supported activities that give community residents hours of exercise and recreation at non-private-country club costs.

He gives no mention of the number of golf rounds played per year at any of the local courses where anyone can play. He supplies no data about the number of hours of fresh air and exercise enjoyed by golfers playing these courses each year.

Quantifiable benefits to senior citizens who have been paying taxes their whole lives? Silence.

If he didn't hate golf, Griffin would have done some cost-benefit analysis to show how taxpayers are winning at golf, not losing. Maybe being a tax Grinch is supposed to be about ignoring the benefits of tax-supported golf courses and unfairly asserting that taxpayers aren't getting value for their tax dollars. But Griffin's recent column deliberately omits any mention of quantifiable benefits, and is hateful and misleading about an activity that taxpayers like me love and appreciate.

George Peternel

Arlington Heights

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