- May 2, 2024
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Just a few weeks after agreeing to lease golf carts, city officials on Tuesday tentatively agreed to purchase golf carts for Palm Harbor Golf Club — a move that city officials say will immediately save the city money.
The city will spend about $303,761 from its fleet fund to pay for the purchase.
In 2009, the city and Kemper Sports entered into an agreement to operate the golf course. The city then approved a lease on golf carts with EZ Go for four years. That lease expires Nov. 1, and so earlier in October, the city agreed to enter a lease agreement with Club Car LLC to lease the golf carts.
But upon further review, Chris Quinn, the city’s finance director, figured out he could save both the city and the golf course money if the City Council went a different route. In addition, a complication with insurance made the old deal unappealing.
So, Quinn presented his idea to the council at Tuesday’s meeting: Purchase the golf carts and then lease them to Kemper Sports.
Essentially, he was recommending that the city handle golf carts just like it handles all other city vehicles — under the fleet management fund. The golf carts at Palm Harbor were the only vehicles that were treated differently in the past.
And so, the city will purchase 70 electric golf carts, one turf grass cart, one beverage cart and two golf gas carts.
Then, the city will lease the carts to Kemper Sports under a four-year lease. The current lease costs $5,451 a month. The approved lease with Club Car would have cost $5,385 a month.
If the city formally approves the purchase and lease agreement with Kemper, it will cost $4,631 a month. In total, the golf course will save more than $9,000, Quinn said.
“We do this every day,” Quinn said. “Fleet owns all of the vehicles under the city’s umbrella and leases it to all the departments. ... We can do this. We don’t need an external company, and we don’t need to pay somebody else interest.”
After four years, the city will then decide what it wants to do with the carts: sell them or re-lease them back to Kemper Sports — depending on their condition.
The city has the money to purchase the carts in its fleet fund, Quinn said.
“During this period of time, we’ll get to know how this works a lot better,” he said. “If it still makes a lot of sense, then it makes sense. If not, we’ll look at something different. In any event, the fleet fund isn’t going to lose any money, and the golf course will pay a little bit less than it’s paying now.”
