The Greene County Conservation Board was recently approached about taking over operation of a golf course.

Conservation Director Dan Towers says the Lakeside Golf Course Board approached the County Conservation Board with a proposal to take ownership of the golf course. Towers tells Raccoon Valley Radio the proposal would include the entire 50-acres of land, along with all of the facilities and equipment. Towers adds one of the criteria from the Lakeside Board is that they would like to see the land continue to be maintained as a golf course for a time period and then the county could do with it what they want.

Lakeside Board President Mike Semke says there are two reasons why they wanted to make the move. The first is because they can’t compete with another government entity that also owns a golf course and the second is much of the labor costs are offset by their volunteers. Due to the age and number of volunteers, it is becoming difficult to keep up the demands of operating a golf course.

Towers says the Conservation Board is continuing to review the proposal and he adds that some of the board members are also City of Jefferson employees who are familiar with the City owning their golf course.

“They’re real familiar with what expenses there are and if that’s panning out. We’ll look pretty hard at that to see if that situation is working out because it would be similar to what we would be looking at.”

Semke adds that the land is assessed at close to $250,000 and they will gift the property at a price of $1 to the county. He says the Lakeside Board’s charter stipulates that should the golf course be sold to another entity or group, that other party should be a “like-minded” entity, meaning that the buyer should have an outdoorsy sense of purpose.

Towers notes that only six of Iowa’s 99 counties own a golf course.