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“That’s a hard pill for a lot of people — who are struggling right now — to swallow . . . Their property taxes are going up and part of the reason why is because the city’s losing money while subsidizing people to golf. It’s time for the city to take some definitive action on these money-losing golf courses.”

Craig said he wasn’t surprised by the response to his FOIP request.

“It’s something we’ve seen in many other parts of the country when governments get into running business activities,” he said.

Coun. Jeromy Farkas said he’s been pushing staff on “what sort of businesses should we be in or be out of as a city.”

“I think that it really should be just the core services,” he said. “Let’s focus on the need-to-haves from the city’s perspective, and let other businesses, non-profits and so on, operate more of these nice-to-haves.”

He added the city shouldn’t be in businesses that “continually run in the red.”

Diane Colley-Urquhart said the city should “absolutely” be in the golf course business, but wants to see a different operating model and the involvement of the private sector.

“We need to do all we can to sustain our city-owned golf courses,” she said. “In fact, I brought forward a notice of motion about 18 months ago because Toronto had outsourced the operation of a lot of these golf courses.”

She said Calgary should seriously look at the Toronto model.

“Bring in private operators, get the amenities involved in there to make them sustainable,” she said.