September 18, 2024

Article provided by SCGA Public Affairs Team

Sacramento

September is when we find out which among the thousands of bills that legislators filed at the beginning of the year are signed into law by the governor. Just as the Assembly and Senate were under a firm deadline (August 31) to approve identical versions of bills for consideration in this session, Governor Newsom is under a firm deadline (September 30) to sign or veto them, a handful of which become law immediately, most of which become law January 1, and a few of which go into effect July 1.

To summarize what we have shared voluminously over the course of this year, every bill golf opposed has not made it to the governor’s desk, every bill golf opposed unless amended in a specific way has been thus amended, one bill we strongly supported (SB 366) has made it to the governor’s desk, and one bill we merely watched for what it portends for the unraveling of long established water rights (AB 460) has also made it to the governor’s desk.

As we stated in our last update, “we should be encouraged by just how well the golf community again fared in Sacramento. The reception the allied golf community again received from Members, Staffers, and agencies made clear that the game’s stock continues to rise in Sacramento. And all told, this should give the golf community confidence that the advocacy tools it has developed in recent years can be sharpened if necessary to continue coping with whatever Mother Nature and human institutions throw its way.”

That’s a teaser for some news about the upgrading of the California Alliance for Golf (CAG) we expect to share with you in short order. Today, a “tease.” Details to follow.

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While we await those gubernatorial signatures and those CAG “details to follow,” we would like to add to the sunny optimism suffusing both with a couple of encouraging updates from the municipal realm (Ventura and San Diego) and a summary of what a golf community can achieve when it engages for a long period of time with its most important regulatory agency (Coachella Valley Water District).

In reverse order, we start with what the golf community in the Coachella Valley (home to 121 golf clubs/courses) has managed to accomplish for itself in the decade since the SCGA organized that community into an institutionalized partnership with the Coachella Valley Water District (CVWD) – an institution called the “Coachella Valley Golf & Water Task Force.”

Coachella Valley Golf & Water Task Force

The CVWD Golf & Water Task Force was organized by the SCGA 10 years ago to create a partnership between the Valley golf community and the Water District for the purposes of meeting the conservation goals of the Coachella Valley Water Management Plan and facilitating the substitution of Colorado River water for groundwater.

Composed of allied associations, golf facilities, industry experts, CVWD staff, and two of the five elected members of the CVWD Board, the Task Force meets bimonthly with additional occasional meetings to work on specific tasks.

While the overarching benefit of the institution has been the forging of collaborative and trusting relationships between the Valley golf community, CVWD staff, the Board, and local media, the key accomplishments over the 10-year life of the body have included:

• Creation of a new and lower rate for users of canal water (Colorado River) in the East Valley to eliminate the disincentive created by a widening gap between the East Valley RAC rate and the canal rate;
• Use of debt instruments to finance the extension of the mid-valley pipeline in lieu of a pay-as-you-go methodology;
• Creation of three (3) rounds of turf and other rebates, the first such rebates for golf in the Valley;
• Partnered on a $9.1 million incentive program grant with the US Bureau of Reclamation;
• Use of 5-year averaging methodology to establish compliance with conservation goals in lieu of using specific baseline years;
• Expedition of pipeline hookups to wean courses off pumping;
• A reversal of media fortune, as golf in the Valley has gone from the sector that put “the aquifer at risk” to the sector that is making a good faith effort to cooperate with all other sectors to bring the aquifer into stasis – a goal that the region did achieve in 2020;
• Significant input into the projections and underpinnings of the current Coachella Valley Water Management Plan that CVWD and its fellow water agencies in the Valley (e.g., DWA) has submitted to the state as the region’s formal Groundwater Sustainability Plan under the terms of California’s Groundwater Sustainability Act (2014) – the document that is to guide the region’s water strategy for the next two generations.
• Provided significant input into the “Salt & Nutrient Management Plan” mandated by California’s Groundwater Sustainability Act to reflect turf’s accurate Nitrogen assimilation factor (97%) to deflect what was on its way to being fodder for criticism of the sector for polluting the groundwater table.
• Collaborated on development of a massive mapping project RFP to acquire the data necessary for the water district to make effective state and federal grant applications for golf industry rebates/incentives, and to make fair and accurate budgets under California’s Groundwater Sustainability Act. 

That’s a lot of “accomplishments,” all of which have proven of incalculable value to the 100 plus golf courses in the California desert, many of which will prove indispensable as things tighten along the Colorado River and mandates from Sacramento arrive with increasing frequency.

The Task Force meets again next Wednesday to continue creating mutual benefit for the Valley golf community and CVWD. The point of sharing this story, other than what is obvious from this long list of “key accomplishments” is to hammer home the following two (2) characteristics of ALL effective advocacy efforts:

1. The effort must be organized and institutionalized.
2. The effort is all about the long-distance run, not the sprint.

The ad hoc effort is almost always the losing effort. Effective advocacy is more presence and persistence than it is genius – a version of Thomas Edison’s dictum about inventiveness being 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.

The CVWD Golf & Water Task Force is not the only such collaborative effort between a golf community and a water agency. The one in Los Angeles may meet less frequently but is arguably as impactful. And next month the SCGA Public Affairs team meets with the leadership of another large water agency to establish another major “golf & water task force.”

Buenaventura Municipal Golf Course

A mainstay of Ventura golf for 92 years, the Buenaventura Municipal Golf Course has been closed since January 2023. That is when torrential rainstorms caused the Santa Clara River to overflow, carrying massive amounts of debris and sediment onto the golf course that did not recede as it had during previous flood events. Like many municipal golf courses in Southern California, Buenaventura is in a flood plain.

In May of 2023, the city retained a golf course architect to prepare plans for full restoration of the golf course but discovered that for a variety of reasons not fully understood, full restoration alone would not be capable of preventing continued flooding. Some in the city used that discovery to advocate for the closure of the golf course. However, Ventura’s public golf community, particularly the members of the golf clubs at Buenaventura and Olivas Links, the city’s other municipal golf course, advocated strongly for finding alternative ways to restore the 92-year-old mainstay. They attended Council meetings, wrote letters, hounded the media, and engaged the assistance of the SCGA in their effort.

That “effort” came full circle last week when the Ventura City Council voted unanimously to award a contract to develop a scope of work that considers the hydraulics of the adjacent river, identifies potential flood mitigation measures, protects the integrity of the golf property, evaluates different course structures/routings/holes, vets potential new revenue streams – all in an updated golf course design consistent with the footprint available after application of whatever additional mitigation measures are revealed by the study.

In addition, the golfers asked for direct input into the process of updating that golf design per whatever constraints are discovered, or perhaps not discovered as the case may end up being upon completion of the study. That request was granted. Beyond this project, Council sanctioned the resurrection of the Citizen Golf Advisory Group that had lapsed during COVID – something many who testified before Council also requested. Whatever emerges once the needs of flood mitigation are balanced against the city’s resolve to restore normative golf on the site, it is clear that the Ventura golf community has earned a seat at the table where that balancing act will be finalized. It is equally clear that whatever sentiment there had been for simply closing the course or repurposing it as a passive park was trumped by a level of citizen golfer engagement that we have not always seen but are increasingly seeing from Azusa to Duarte to Carson to Palm Springs to La Verne to Los Angeles’ Sepulveda Basin to Brea to San Diego, the subject of our next foray into exemplary citizen golfer engagement.

Mission Bay Golf Course

To make a very long story short, after more than eight (8) years of managing to preserve the full integrity of San Diego’s Mission Bay executive golf course & practice facility in the city’s Mission Bay Master Plan, the San Diego golf community lost out to a combination of other active recreational amenities and wetland preservation in the “vision plan” that was established by the San Diego City Council as the starting point of the “General Development Plan” (GDP) that will soon get underway to determine a final plan for the De Anza Cove section of the Mission Bay Park in which the Mission Bay golf facility is located.

During those eight (8) years, a group of dedicated San Diego golfers, including many who have served and, in some cases, still serve on the San Diego City Council’s Municipal Golf Committee, attended scores of public meetings in defense of San Diego’s exemplar of affordable, accessible, junior/school centric golf. But so did devotees of camping, boating, baseball, soccer, open space, and wetland restoration. In the penultimate analysis – not the final analysis because that is yet to come during the GDP process – not all could get what they wanted nor what they were promised by members of the City Council. Given the need, a need acknowledged by all; to restore some of the wetlands, it just wasn’t possible within the remnant footprint. Bottom line: The political powers concluded that upsetting the golf community would be their least objectionable option.

Thus, was born the “Save Mission Bay Golf Course Coalition,” the details of which, according to the basic “mission” document they put together, are as follows:

WHO: A concerned group of organizations and individuals, including but not limited to:

• SD CIF Section High School Golf Teams
• San Diego Junior Golf Association
• Pro Kids Academy / First Tee of San Diego
• San Diego Municipal Golf Committee
• Southern California PGA Section (SCPGA)
• Southern California Golf Association (SCGA)

WHAT: A coalition whose sole purpose is to protect the accessible, affordable, and complete municipal golf course experience which the Mission Bay Golf Course (MBGC) has provided to generations of San Diegans of all age groups, to the greatest extent possible given competing priorities imposed by the De Anza Cove Amendment to the Mission Bay Park Master Plan (MBPMP). We seek to preserve the integral role played by the facility by continuing to create new generations of local golfers, providing San Diego schools with a golf facility indispensable to their continued ability to host junior golf teams and programs, and continuing to function as a unique and irreplaceable resource for older and working San Diego golfers.

WHY: The planning process attendant to implementing the MBPMP as recently amended requires that park stakeholders be prepared to work collaboratively and in a spirit of compromise to ensure that active recreational users are able continue to provide their sports programs and enjoy the usage of this parkland given that the City of San Diego now proposes to convert substantial acreage to wetland.   This Coalition is formed in the spirit of constructive collaboration coupled with a firm commitment to preserve the core purpose of the MBGC as a unique 18-hole executive golf facility in all of San Diego.

HOW: By working with the other active/passive recreational, environmental, and commercial stakeholders to determine the amount of acreage which might end up being available to the MBGC once other stakeholder needs and priorities are preliminarily identified and negotiated, the coalition then anticipates the city retaining necessary professional services to determine how the proposed remaining parcel might be redesigned/reimagined to maintain a fully functional 18-hole executive golf course that includes practice facilities similar to the facilities provided today.

VISION: The “Save Mission Bay Golf Course” coalition pledges to operate at all times in a spirit of compromise, shared sacrifice, and respect for the other interests and stakeholders whose recreational claims, virtues, and values are as important to the residents of San Diego as the utility, virtues and values of MBGC are to the San Diego golf community – a commitment to the preservation of as much of the MBGC’s current value as required to maintain current levels of functionality and community resonance while accommodating certain constraints imposed by the De Anza Cove Amendment to the MBPMP.

The “Coalition” put together a comprehensive “fact” sheet that explains the value this San Diego golf gem has provided generations of San Diegans. Click here to read it.

The Coalition plans to secure signatures of San Diego devotees of the heavily played facility, both in person and per a QR Code that will allow for offsite signature gathering. If you are a San Diego municipal golfer, you are sure to see it one way or the other.

What was lost at the last minute in the “vision” process can easily be recaptured in the coming GDP process – whether in whole or part. It won’t be easy, but as today’s headline makes clear, “when golf organizes and advocates, it wins.” And this effort is organized, and its advocates have already demonstrated the passion and perseverance to match if not exceed the passion and perseverance of the other interests sure to be involved in the GDP process.

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We will continue to share the myriad challenges the golf community faces, many of them critical, because it’s important to know and then face head-on what’s coming our way. But we would be remiss if we didn’t also share all the ways the golf community continues to meet and overcome them.

– SCGA Public Affairs Team