San Francisco’s endangered species-killing Sharp Park Golf Course cost San Francisco taxpayers $177,000 more than it earned during the 2011-12 fiscal year, according to a new analysis by the Wild Equity Institute.

The analysis also demonstrates that the Recreation and Park Department will save money if it closes the course even if RPD is incapable of reducing its overhead costs. If only 20% of current Sharp Park golfers, 70% of which are San Francisco residents, reinvest their golf rounds into one of the City’s five other municipal courses, any legacy overhead costs would be completely offset by the increase in revenue at San Francisco’s other courses.

Golf industry developers—seeking a government bailout for Sharp Park Golf Course—and the Pacifica Chamber of Commerce—seeking “a new hotel and restaurant right on the ocean, right next door to Sharp Park Golf Course”—have denied that Sharp Park Golf Course loses money, hoping to convince public officials to pour more taxpayer dollars into their development proposals.

But their analyses counts taxpayer monies from San Francisco’s General Fund as part of the golf course’s revenue stream. This money is, of course, not income from the golf course’s operation: it is a taxpayer bailout. Wild Equity’s calculations remove this taxpayer bailout from the revenue stream for Sharp Park Golf Course to get a more accurate picture of how the course’s finances impact San Francisco’s limited recreation funding.

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March 21, 2013

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contacts:

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Sunday, March 24, 11:00 am – 1:00 pm: Join Brent Plater of the Wild Equity Institute to search for two of the most imperiled vertebrate species on the San Francisco peninsula: the California red-legged frog and the San Francisco garter snake.

This will be a leisurely walk to enjoy the restoration work being conducted at Mori Point and to learn about the bold steps being taken to save the frogs and the snakes from the brink of extinction.

Meet at the Mori Point Entrance Gate, at the intersection of Bradford Way and Mori Point Road, Pacifica, CA, 94044.

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January 7, 2013

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contacts:

Neal Desai, National Parks Conservation Association, (415) 989-9925
Jeff Miller, Center for Biological Diversity, (415) 669-7357

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A restoration vision for Sharp Park.

Some of you may have read an article recently saying that Wild Equity’s lawsuit over Sharp Park Golf Course was dismissed, case closed. This article was spawned by a misleading press release by a golf industry front group. Here’s what really happened:

After our lawsuit was filed claiming that the golf course was killing endangered species without a permit, the golf course applied for the very permits our lawsuit claimed it needed.

In October a permit was issued: and it is a doozy. It contains over 50 pages of terms and conditions that burden the golf course with hiring biological monitors to walk in front of mowers, building new breeding and feeding ponds for endangered species, and restoring habitat to create a biological corridor connecting Laguna Salada to the national park next door, Mori Point.

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Wild Equity Institute is receiving its first branded products soon, and the buzz is building. For example, a focus group participant at San Francisco State University had this to say about our new “I Bird San Francisco” T-shirt:

“This shirt has value far more important than its price. How much is it worth to promote environmental protection in your community? How much is it worth to use organic clothes? The shirt is worth our entire future as a civilization.”

I Bird SF 100% organic cotton T-shirt. Comes in natural color, sizes S, M, L, & XL.

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I’m starting this note with two short stories that inspired our work this year. After reading them, I believe you’ll be inspired to become a Wild Equity Institute member, so we can continue our extraordinary work.

Recently I returned from a weekend workshop where I discussed the future of the conservation movement with giants in our field—people like Dr. Michael Soulé, the founder of the field of conservation biology; Dr. Holmes Ralston III, a luminary in the field of environmental ethics; and Terry Tempest Williams, one of our great contemporary environmental writers.

It was an honor to simply be in a room with these incredible people. But as the meeting progressed, I was humbled to see that they found inspiration in the Wild Equity Institute’s work, and are incorporating our theory of change into a new era of environmental protection and conservation.

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On Monday, November 19, at 1:00 p.m. in San Francisco’s City Hall Room 250, the Board of Supervisors will vote to remove a plan to redevelop Sharp Park Golf Course from the Significant Natural Resource Areas Management Plan, so that these two different projects with very different purposes can stand or fall on their own merits.

We need you to be there to support this resolution: attend the hearing and tell the supervisors to vote YES on the resolution!

Background.

Sharp Park is a wetland owned by San Francisco but located in San Mateo County. The City drains Sharp Park year-round so people can play golf on the land. The golf course loses money, harms two endangered species, and puts the surrounding community at risk when the course floods. The Wild Equity Institute is working to build a better public park at Sharp Park, a park that saves San Francisco money, protects the environment, sustainably adapts to sea level rise and climate change, and provides recreational opportunities that everyone can enjoy.

A restoration vision for Sharp Park.

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Our work always seems to heat up in the Fall, and this year is no different. Supervisor Christina Olague has brought new legislation to City Hall, legislation that will defend San Francisco’s Natural Areas Program from anti-wild forces in San Francisco.

In 2005, San Francisco submitted its Significant Natural Resource Areas Management plan for environmental review—a plan that contains modest restoration goals for lands at Sharp Park managed by the City’s Natural Areas Program, but left all other Sharp Park lands, including the endangered species-killing and money-losing golf course found there, unchanged.

At the time, Wild Equity staff and others requested that the City consider a more ambitious restoration opportunity: to restore Sharp Park Golf Course, the money-losing, endangered species-killing golf course in suburban San Mateo County that San Francisco has been subsidizing with taxpayer dollars for years.

But San Francisco’s Recreation and Park Department responded—in writing—in no uncertain terms: any changes to Sharp Park Golf Course proper could only be considered through a separate planning process.

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San Francisco voters: the Wild Equity Institute urges you to vote NO on Proposition B.

Proposition B is a bond measure that puts the financial position of the park system at risk while implementing anti-environmental infrastructure projects in San Francisco’s last open spaces.

For years the Recreation and Park Department, particularly under the leadership of Phil Ginsburg, has pursued anti-environmental projects that lose money while mismanaging our parks:

• RPD loses up to $300,000 a year subsidizing an endangered species-killing golf course in San Mateo County.
• RPD is replacing large portions of San Francisco’s grass fields with astroturf in Golden Gate Park.
• Meanwhile, RPD doled-out thousands in overtime based on race, then settled lawsuits for $250,000 without department-wide overtime pay reform.

Because of RPD’s mismanagement, it does not have adequate funds to maintain its existing infrastructure. When operating deficits become too large to ignore, RPD tries to transform our recreation properties into revenue generating assets by proposing even more environmentally harmful development in our parks.

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