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Golfers at Bentwood Golf Course will soon have sweet new rides thanks to the Ulysses city council. The council on Oct. 8 approved a lease for 15 new golf carts - three more carts than the city has presently - at a cost of $14,895 per year for five years with the carts arriving in January.
“We budgeted @12,000 a year for the golf cart lease, but with prices going up it’s going to be a little above that $12,000,” said city administrator Luke Grimes, adding that the pro shop had a $75,000 profit which is going back to the general fund, minus the amount over budget for the golf carts.
The carts are similar to what the city already has but are a more premium model, white in color with more comfortable seats, a soft-touch steering wheel, USB charger and a screen on the front. The three additional carts will max out shelter space at the golf course.
“I think with all of the attention we’ve been giving the golf course and its large increase in usage, it will be good to go with some nicer carts and adding a couple more because there’s probably at least a dozen or more days this season that we ran out and had people scrambling around during tournaments,” Grimes said. “We had non-tournament days where we ran out of carts. It was a busy summer.”
•The city heard from Chris Binney during public comment, who asked what he would need to do to have his property zoned commercial. The property at 950 South Stubbs Road (just north of Frazier Park Road) is zoned residential but Binney keeps truck trailers and pallets on the property and received a violation notice from city code enforcement.
“I do realize that there are a few things out there that could be cleaned up and I do realize that that is kind of the richer part of town and we want to make it look a little bit presentable,” Binney said, adding that a lot of the items on the property from the two businesses he operates. “We have a lot of equipment out there like our trailers, there’s a few vehicles and stuff.”
Binney said he was unclear on the zoning of the property but said he originally purchased the property to build his home and business there. He said that if it was strictly residential he would like to rezone to commercial.
“We have some plans and some ideas as far as what we want to do,” Binney said. “We’d like to put a shop up out there and there’s a possibility of making a little bit of money out there, too, so I’m not for sure if it really needs to be residential and commercial or if it should be just commercial.”
Binney said he would like to work with the city but he doesn’t have anywhere else to put his equipment.
The letter Binney’s business partner Martin Hernandez received from the city gave them five days to come into compliance.
“I do feel like that we’re kind of being picked on as far as getting all that cleaned up out there because there could be some neighbors that are maybe complaining about it,” Binney said. “I know that I can go around town and I can take photographs and mark down things that everybody needs to be taking care of on their property, but I really don’t have the time to do that and I really don’t want to do that “
Binney said he would need at least a year to clean the property, but would like to keep the trailers there because he has a commercial business.
“I appreciate your tone, very respectful, I certainly think we can have a conversation this,” Grimes said. “I can assure you you’re not being picked on. There’s lots of violations all over town (and) we’ve got one person, sometimes two, that has to take care of all of those things.”
The council voted to defer the penalty until the property could meet with code enforcement and bring it up to the zoning board. The zoning board would make a recommendation to the council after the zoning change was advertised and surrounding property owner had a chance to respond.
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