News & Events

Golf in the Time of Budget Crunch / Rec-Park Proposes a 1/3 CUT in its 2026-27 Golf Budget

Mar 7, 2025by - San Francisco Public Golf Alliance

TAKE ACTION: WRITE LETTERS, SIGN THE PETITION, TELL YOUR FRIENDS!

On February 21, 2025 the San Francisco Rec & Park Department submitted a Proposed Budget for Fiscal Years 2025-26 and 26-27 to the Mayor’s Office which, among other things, provides:

“Golf Courses. The Department will initiate a request for qualifications and/or proposals process for golf course operations and maintenance, including leases. In FY 26-27, Rec Park assumes additional cost efficiencies and savings will be generated through this process and could provide capital improvements. This budget proposal eliminates the general fund subsidy of roughly $6M.”

The proposed $6 Million “elimination of general fund subsidy” would effectively be a 1/3 CUT in Rec-Park’s 2026-27 Golf Budget.The proposal and its potentially devastating effect on the golf courses is the subject of a February 28 SF Chronicle article by Sam Whiting headlined "Golfers Grumble About S.F. Plan...":

"The golfers are mobilizing to fight back through the Public Golf Alliance, a nonprofit that formed in 2007 with the mission to keep golf accessible in the city. With 6,500 members, the group will be heard as the proposal moves through the budget process."

We vigorously object to this proposed slashing of support for public golf. Golf has been a Rec-Park core service since the first decades of the 20th Century when Rec-Park founding father John McLaren personally hired the architects, planted the trees, oversaw construction of the Lincoln, Harding, and Sharp Park courses, and turned San Francisco into a national beacon of PUBLIC golf. San Francisco public course golfers today include more women, more children, and a far more diverse racial mix than ever before – a direct result of the City’s historically inclusive golf culture. Sharp Park played an early and important role in the racial integration of golf when, in 1955, Sharp hosted the inaugural tournament gathering of the Western States Golf Association, one of the nation’s oldest and largest African-American golf organizations.

In its mismanagement of golf over the 20-plus years since the 2002-2003 renovation of the Harding-Fleming complex, Rec-Park has disregarded key requirements of the San Francisco City Services Ordinance, Golf Fees provisions of the Administrative Code, and the recommendations of a 2006 San Francisco Budget Analyst Office Management Audit of Rec-Park. The result is the deterioration of clubhouses and golf courses and their drainage, irrigation and other essential infrastructure, all as detailed in our letters to the Rec-Park Commission dated February 5, February15, and February 20, 2025, and February 15, 2022.

While the Department has now finally professed its intent to “initiate a request for qualifications and/or proposals process” to end its problematic practice of rolling-over decades-old month-to-month operating agreements at Sharp and Lincoln, and while we support the idea of new extended-term operating agreements, Rec-Park’s “process” will likely be difficult and slow, with as-yet-unknown results. So while we join in hoping for “cost efficiencies and savings” via new operating agreements with qualified golf operators, these are not done deals, not spelled out, and therefore we cannot join the RPD’s “assumption” that its “process” will offset the slashing of $6 Million – essentially a 1/3 CUT from Rec-Park’s 2026-2027 golf budget. So it appears to us that the City’s public courses – and San Francisco public golf itself – are endangered.

Between now and June 30, the Rec-Park and other City Departments will engage with the Mayor’s Office, the Board of Supervisors and the Public in budget negotiations, hearings, and deliberations before a Final FY 2025-26-27 Budget is adopted. So we have written the Open Letter, below, and ask you to add your name [Click Here].

Open Letter to Mayor Lurie and the Supervisors:

We are San Francisco public golfers, diverse in every way – of all ages, genders, persuasions, races, neighborhoods, jobs, and economic strata. We love our beautiful public golf courses – Harding, Sharp, Lincoln, Fleming, Gleneagles and Golden Gate -- where we play and socialize with old friends and meet new ones. As a big and diverse community, we are dismayed that Rec & Park has proposed a Budget that would eliminate the Department’s subsidy for the municipal golf courses in Fiscal Year 2026-27—effectively a 1/3 CUT in the Golf Budget. This is extreme and unfair to golfers and unwise for Rec & Park and the City. We urge that you do not defund the golf subsidy in the Fiscal Year 26-27 Budget. Golf is physically and mentally healthful outdoor activity, a Rec-Park core service, and historically popular in the City since John McLaren hired the architects, planted the trees, and oversaw construction of Lincoln, Harding and Sharp in the first decades of the 20th Century. San Francisco, the Peninsula and Greater Bay Area are very high-profile golf areas and frequent hosts of major U.S. and international golf events -- including in 2025, when San Francisco will host the United States Amateur Golf Championship in August, and the Monterey Peninsula will this Fall host both the international men’s Walker Cup competition and the United States Women’s Mid-Amateur Championship. We know these are times of budget crunch at Rec-Park and the City. And we will carry a fair share. But this is NOT FAIR and not a reason or excuse to single-out public golf as Rec -Park’s only recreational service to be completely cut off from its General Fund subsidy. We respectfully object. Rec-Park and San Francisco can – and must – do better.

We offer these Action Items for golfers, their families and friends:

Sign-on to our Open Letter Petition when you see our petitioners at local courses and ranges or add your name here.
Write a Letter to Mayor Lurie and the Supervisors [Click Here]
Pass this on to your golfing and non-golfing foursomes, friends, families, and clubs
Volunteer by e-mailing us at info@sfpublicgolf.org
Join the SF Public Golf Alliance [Click Here]
Chip in to the nonprofit SF Public Golf Alliance [Click Here]