WATERTOWN, New York (WWNY) – Year 3 in the books at the Thompson Park Golf Course and Watertown lost $102,593. The losses in 2023 and 2024 were three times higher.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe weren\u2019t paying a full-time manager throughout the entire season. That contributed to the decrease in the losses. Certainly, losing $100,000 a year is better than losing $300,000 a year. It\u2019s still a loss, though,\u201d said Mayor Sarah Pierce.<\/p>\n
Business this past season was better than other years. Golf course fees increased by $70,000 to almost half a million dollars in revenue. Lawmakers are learning, though, that there are investments that\u2019ll need to be made soon, including new golf carts, and replacing windows, doors and the roof on the clubhouse.<\/p>\n
City council members will take a look at the figures from the 2025 season, as well as four proposed plans on how to move forward in the years to come.<\/p>\n
One plan is to keep running it as it is now, but it would require re-hiring a full-time manager.<\/p>\n
The second plan is to run it as a municipal course – bare bones on staff and have no tournaments, which a report council will see Monday night states tournaments \u201care not a significant profit generator.\u201d<\/p>\n
The third option is a mix of plans 1 and 2 and includes hosting small tournaments, although finding a food vendor could be tough.<\/p>\n
The final option is to lease it out to a private operator.<\/p>\n
Council members for 2026 are warm to the idea of leasing it out.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think if we do, we\u2019ll be able to shed those reoccurring operational costs and it won\u2019t be as much of a burden on the budget as it has been,\u201d said Doug Osborne, city council member-elect.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat would be an option for me if the only other alternative was to close it or to lose an exorbitant amount of money every year. I wouldn\u2019t want to put that on the taxpayers and make them pay for something that\u2019s losing money constantly,\u201d said Benjamin Shoen, city council member.<\/p>\n
City council is learning more Monday night, but is not expected to make any decision.<\/p>\n
We sat down with Mayor Sarah Pierce on Monday. You can watch the full interview, a 7News Extra, below.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Copyright 2025 WWNY. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WATERTOWN, New York (WWNY) – Year 3 in the books at the Thompson Park Golf Course and Watertown…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":286926,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[71],"tags":[26188,151072,427,5190,99,140066,74583],"class_list":{"0":"post-286925","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-golf","8":"tag-city-council","9":"tag-fiancial-loss","10":"tag-golf","11":"tag-season","12":"tag-sports","13":"tag-thompson-park-golf-course","14":"tag-watertown"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286925","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=286925"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286925\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/286926"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=286925"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=286925"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=286925"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}