Department to use budgeted money to replace 6
By DAVE RANK Daily News
The Washington County Golf Course will get six new golf carts this year while county officials decide how best to replace the fleet of 60 and what to do with $500,000 it received from the DuPont Imprelis herbicide lawsuit settlement.
At a January meeting of the County Board’s Planning, Conservation and Parks Committee, Golf and Parks Division Assistant Administrator Mike Kactro suggested some DuPont money could pay for 33 new golf carts and a beverage service cart at the county course, replacing 11-year-old vehicles.
On Wednesday, the PCPC took a different approach suggested by County Manager Joshua Schoemann. He proposed the Planning and Parks Department use $27,500 from its budgeted funds to buy six carts.
That option, Schoemann said, “has the least negative impact on previously approved citizen services, yet still requires fiscal responsibility by the golf course and the department living within the means of the approved budget.”
Replacing the entire golf cart fleet “should be considered both as an outlay and as a capital expense, potentially qualifying it for alternative funding sources as part of the 2015 considerations.”
Kactro said adding six carts this year would satisfy customer demand this season. He said the current fleet has 27 golf carts purchased in 2003, six purchased in 2007 and 27 purchased in 2010. “The normal rotation for golf carts is every four or five years,” Kactro said.
“I wish we could do more,” PCPC Chairman Michael Miller said. He is a county supervisor from West Bend. “I’ve been disappointed that they’ve kept removing the carts from the budget for years.”
Schoemann said the PCPC will need to decide how the DuPont settlement money will be used. Additional money will be coming from DuPont this year because more trees are dying, Kactro said. How much money has not yet been determined.