By Tim Redmond
The golfers-against-snakes fight at Sharp Park has been in the headlines for a while, and KQED held an hour-long discussion on it Nov. 9th.
It gets really confusing and crazy: The city owns the park, although it’s in Pacficia. That means San Francisco taxpayers have to fork over the millions of dollars it costs to operate and maintain the place, while San Mateo County residents get the advantages of it.
It’s also a public golf course — and while San Francisco has other public courses, Northern California overall lacks places for people who aren’t rich to play the game. It costs about $30 to play at Sharp Park, and well over $100 at the private places.
The endangered San Francisco garter snake and the Califoria red-legged frog live at Sharp Park. The SF Rec-Park Department says we can save both the golf course and the critters
But Brent Plater, executive director of the Wild Equity Institute, which wants to turn the golf course into a hiking park with a major species-restoration element, says the snakes and frogs may be okay where they are right now and where the city wants to protect them — but when climate change causes a rise in sea level, the fresh-water species will need to retreat upland, and the fairways and greens are in the way.
And Rep. Jackie Speier, whose district includes Sharp Park, says what the hell — in 50 years, if we don’t slow climate change, San Francisco International Airport will be flooded, too, so let’s not go overboard about the fate of the garter snakes (although she told Forum that she got to hold a San Francisco garter snake the other day, and it was very beautiful).
There’s a point that gets too easily lost here, though. The course loses money; the taxpayers subsidize it. And fixing the seawall and doing all the things the city’s report suggests will cost millions more. “When we’re laying off a third of our rec directors, and shutting down recreation programs in the inner city, why are we spending millions of dollars subsidizing a golf course in San Mateo County?” Mirkarimi asked when I spoke to him this morning.. “If it’s a regional asset, why aren’t we getting any help?”
Well: Guess what? Now that the report is out, and now that Mirkarimi has made a fuss about this and there’s a real movement out there to get rid of the links altogether, the golfers and Rep. Speier are starting to talk about the need for someone other than the city to step up. Although Speier was awfully condescending and harsh on Forum (“San Francisco is the property owner, and property owners need to protect their property”), I thnk she’s got the message. If we’re going to keep Sharp Park for the golfers, then a city that has more than 700 acres of golf courses and about 30 acres of soccer fields, a city that can’t afford to keep rec centers open in neighborhoods where those facilities are lifelines for at-risk kids, ins’t going to be able to foot the entire tab.
And whatever the outcome, getting that on the radar of Congress and San Mateo County has been a public service.