Local News

Redmond Pumps More Funds Into Juniper

REDMOND, OR -- The city of Redmond will once again bail out its municipal golf course, after another year of declining revenue. Jason Neff, Deputy Director of Central Services for Redmond, says for the second consecutive year, Juniper Golf Course has has not made enough to cover operating costs and debt repayment.

 

Since 2009, the city has covered the cost of repaying debt incurred when the course was built in 2005. "We’ll be looking at this very closely with Council in July. Our management contract is up at the end of December with CourseCo. So, it’s a good time to look at the last couple of years. It’s obviously not where we want to be. The ideal situation is that the golf course contributes some to the debt service on an annual basis."

 

Updated projections show Juniper could be short up to $57,000 this year – that’s about 3% of its total operating costs. "We didn’t anticipate having to put more than debt service in. But, if you look at their projections versus their budget, a lot of it is on the revenue side," Neff says. "Public play, their memberships are a little bit down, those are the types of things that if they were going to make up the difference, that’s where they’d get it. They’ve been awesome on the expense side, managing expenses." City Councilors agreed to send an additional $134,000 from the general fund to cover losses and debt payments.
 
Neff tells KBND News the financial struggles highlight the region's competitive market. "We recognize that the golf course industry in Central Oregon is a situation where we have a lot of courses for not a ton of people. It’s definitely a challenging environment, but we feel like we can continue to make it a better asset out there. It’s already a great asset, but we think we can keep improving on that."

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