Elephant Butte gives Spirit Golf a five-year management contract with easy-out termination

by Kathleen Sloan | February 20, 2020
3 min read
​It took about six months, but the City of Elephant Butte has signed a deal with a firm specializing in golf course management and marketing to revive Sierra Del Rio Golf Course. 

The City will retain ownership, giving management to Spirit Golf, LLC. The City was given the golf course about three years ago. It staved off financial losses the first year by selling the liquor license for $300,000, but lost about that much in the second and third years. 

Spirit Golf LLC partners Todd Barranger and Richard Holcomb were the only respondents to a request for proposals in September. They purchased Las Cruces golf facility Picacho Hills Country Club during the six-month negotiation with the City. It will share membership benefits with the City’s public facility, sweetening the scope of play and sociability between the clubs. 

The Elephant Butte City Council and Spirt Golf signed a 19-page management contract sometime between Feb. 12—when the parties came to an agreement, and Feb. 19—when the contract was made public.  

According to City Councilman Michael Williams, the contract wasn’t signed until inventory and other matters were completed. 

Spirit Golf will be on a fairly short string, being responsible for all operating costs laid out in an “operating plan and budget,” to be approved by the City Council. 

The initial version of the budget/plan has been accepted and a final version is due a week before the contract takes effect on March 15. Spirit Golf needed the City’s inventory before presenting a final budget/plan. 

Spirit Golf can’t expend more than $2,500 on anything not in the budget/plan without owner approval, according to the contract.  

Spirit Golf specializes in running and marketing golf courses and the marketing plan is an important component of the operating plan/budget. The City will receive a license for use of the “Point of Service” marketing computer system upon termination of the agreement. 

Because of their expertise in maintaining and repairing golf-course land forms, marketing and management, “key employees” are named in the contract who are collectively to spend 40 hours a week at Sierra Del Rio. They are Spirit Golf partners Todd Barranger and Richard Holcomb, as well as Janine Sjostrom, Bob Crane, Ron MacHaffey and Mike Dixon. 

Spirit Golf’s operating costs are offset by management fees over the five-year contract, which may be renewed one time for another five years. The first year Spirt Golf will get $243,333, the second year $219,000, the third year $182,500, the fourth year $146,000 and the fifth year $121,666 in management fees and $121,666 every year thereafter if a second term is renewed. 

The management’s operating costs are also lessened by acquiring the use of the City’s Governmental Liquor License as well as use of the City’s water rights to irrigate the grounds. Spirit Golf will use the liquor license for free for the first three years and then begin paying license “operating costs” up to $1,000 a month. Electricity and other utility costs incurred to water the grounds will be paid by Spirit Golf. 

The City doesn’t expect any part of the profits in the first two years, but in the third year it gets 5 percent, the fourth year 7 percent, the fifth year 10 percent and in subsequent years 20 percent of the profits. 

The City employees working at Sierra Del Rio will be terminated by March 18, and must be hired by Spirit Golf to keep their jobs. Spirit Golf must have the facility staffed by March 18. 

The facility includes the golf course, club house, restaurant, bar and maintenance facility. 

The City can terminate the contract in the first three months without cause, in writing, giving 30-days’ notice, but must pay Spirit Golf a $9,000 termination fee. After the first three months no termination fee is required and the “owner at any time, with reasonable notice,” may terminate the agreement if it decides to sell the facility. 

Spirit Golf can terminate the agreement if the City applies for or consents to the appointment of a receiver, or admits to insolvency. 

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Kathleen Sloan is the Sun’s founder and chief reporter. She can be reached at kathleen.sloan@gmail.com or 575-297-4146.
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Understanding New Mexico's proposed new social studies standards for K-12 students

“The primary purpose of social studies is to help young people develop the ability to make informed and reasoned decisions for the public good as citizens of a culturally diverse, democratic society in an interdependent world.”
—National Council for the Social Studies 

Reader Michael L. Hayes of Las Cruces commented: What impresses me is that both the proposed standards and some of the criticisms of them are equally grotesque. I make this bold statement on the basis of my experience as a peripatetic high school and college English teacher for 45 years in many states with many students differing in race, religion, gender and socioeconomic background, and as a civic activist (PTA) in public education (My career, however, was as an independent consultant mainly in defense, energy and the environment.)

The proposed social studies standards are conceptually and instructionally flawed. For starters, a “performance standard” is not a standard at all; it is a task. Asking someone to explain something is not unlike asking someone to water the lawn. Nothing measures the performance, but without a measure, there is no standard. The teacher’s subjective judgment will be all that matters, and almost anything will count as satisfying a “performance standard,” even just trying. Students will be left to wonder “what is on the teacher’s mind?” or “have I sucked up enough.”

Four other quick criticisms of the performance standards. One, they are nearly unintelligible because they are written in jargon. PED’s use of jargon in a document intended for the public is worrisome. Bureaucrats often use jargon to confuse or conceal something uninformed, wrong or unworthy. As a result, most parents, some school board members and more than a few teachers do not understand them.

Two, the performance standards are so vague that they fail to define the education which teachers are supposed to teach, students are supposed to learn, and parents are supposed to understand. PED does not define words like “explain” or “describe” so that teachers can apply “standards” consistently and fairly. The standards do not indicate what teachers are supposed to know in order to teach or specify what students are supposed to learn. Supervisors cannot know whether teachers are teaching social studies well or poorly. The standards are so vague that the public, especially parents or guardians, cannot know the content of public education.

Three, many performance standards are simply unrealistic, especially at grade level. Under “Ethnic, Cultural and Identity Performance Standards”; then under “Diversity and Identity”; then under “Kindergarten,” one such standard is: “Identify how their family does things both the same as and different from how other people do things.” Do six-year-olds know how other people do things? Do they know whether these things are relevant to diversity and identity? Or another standard: “Describe their family history, culture, and past to current contributions of people in their main identity groups.” (A proficient writer would have hyphenated the compound adjective to avoid confusing the reader.) Do six-year-olds know so much about these things in relation to their “identity group”? Since teachers obviously do not teach them about these other people and have not taught them about these groups, why are these and similar items in the curriculum; or do teachers assign them to go home and collect this information?

Point four follows from “three”; some information relevant to some performance measures requires a disclosure of personal or family matters. The younger the students, the easier it is for teachers to invade their privacy and not only their privacy, but also the privacy of their parents or guardians, or neighbors, who may never be aware of these disclosures or not become aware of them until afterward. PED has no right to design a curriculum which requires teachers to ask students for information about themselves, parents or guardians, or neighbors, or puts teachers on the spot if the disclosures reveal criminal conduct. (Bill says Jeff’s father plays games in bed with his daughter. Lila says Angelo’s mother gives herself shots in the arm.) Since teacher-student communications have no legal protection to ensure privacy, those disclosures may become public accidentally or deliberately. The effect of these proposal standards is to turn New Mexico schools and teachers into investigative agents of the state and students into little informants or spies.

This PED proposal for social studies standards is a travesty of education despite its appeals to purportedly enlightened principles. It constitutes a clear and present danger to individual liberty and civil liberties. It should be repudiated; its development, investigated; its PED perpetrators, dismissed. No state curriculum should encourage or require the disclosure of private personal information.

I am equally outraged by the comments of some of T or C’s school board members: Christine LaFont and Julianne Stroup, two white Christian women, who belong to one of the larger minorities in America and assume white and Christian privileges. In different terms but for essentially the same reason, both oppose an education which includes lessons about historical events and trends, and social movements and developments, of other minorities. They object to the proposal for the new social studies standards because of its emphasis on individual and group identities not white or Christian. I am not going to reply with specific objections; they are too numerous and too pointed.

Ms. LaFont urges: “It’s better to address what’s similar with all Americans. It’s not good to differentiate.” Ms. Stroup adds: “Our country is not a racist country. We have to teach to respect each other. We have civil rights laws that protect everyone from discrimination. We need to teach civics, love and respect. We need to teach how to be color blind.”

Their desires for unity and homogeneity, and for mutual respect, are a contradiction and an impossibility. Aside from a shared citizenship, which implies acceptance of the Constitution, the rule of law and equality under the law, little else defines Americans. We are additionally defined by our race, religion, national origin, etc. So mutual respect requires individuals to respect others different from themselves. Disrespect desires blacks, Jews or Palestinians to assimilate or to suppress or conceal racial, religious or national origin aspects of their identity. The only people who want erasure of nonwhite, non-Christian, non-American origin aspects of identity are bigots. Ms. LaFont and Ms. Stroud want standards which, by stressing similarities and eliding differences, desire the erasure of such aspects. What they want will result in a social studies curriculum that enables white, Christian, native-born children to grow up to be bigots and all others to be their victims. This would be the academic equivalent of ethnic cleansing.

H.E.L.P.

This postmortem of a case involving a 75-year-old women who went missing from her home in Hillsboro last September sheds light on the bounds of law enforcement’s capacity to respond, especially in large rural jurisdictions such as Sierra County, and underscores the critical role the public, as well as concerned family and friends, can play in assisting a missing person’s search.

Reader Jane Debrott of Hillsboro commented: Thank you for your article on the tragic loss of Betsey. I am a resident of Hillsboro, a friend of Rick and Betsey, and a member of H.E.L.P. The thing that most distresses me now, is the emphasis on Rick’s mis-naming of the color of their car. I fear that this fact will cause Rick to feel that if he had only gotten the facts right, Betsey may have been rescued before it was too late. The incident was a series of unavoidable events, out of everyone’s control, and we will never know what place the correct color of her car may have had in the outcome. It breaks my heart to think that Rick has had one more thing added to his “what ifs” concerning this incident.

Diana Tittle responded: Dear Jane, the Sun undertook this investigation at the request of a Hillsboro resident concerned about the town’s inability to mount a prompt, coordinated response to the disappearance of a neighbor. From the beginning, I shared your concern about how our findings might affect Betsy’s family and friends. After I completed my research and began writing, I weighed each detail I eventually chose to include against my desire to cause no pain and the public’s right to know about the strengths and limitations of law enforcement’s response and the public’s need to know about how to be of meaningful assistance.

There was information I withheld about the state police investigation and the recovery. But I decided to include the issue of the car’s color because the individuals who spotted Betsy’s car emphasized how its color had been key to their identification of it as the vehicle described in Betsy’s Silver Alert. Because the misinformation was corrected within a couple of hours, I also included in this story the following editorial comment meant to put the error in perspective: “The fact that law enforcement throughout the state was on the lookout in the crucial early hours after Betsy’s disappearance for an elderly woman driving a “light blue” instead of a “silver” Accord would, in retrospect, likely not have changed the outcome of the search” [emphasis added].

I would also point to the story’s overarching conclusion about the inadvisability of assigning blame for what happened: “In this case, a perfect storm of unfortunate circumstances, many of them beyond human control, hindered the search that it would fall to Hamilton’s department to lead.”

It is my hope that any pain caused by my reporting will eventually be outweighed by its contribution to a better community understanding of what it will take in the future to mount a successful missing person’s search in rural Sierra County.

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