Haag: more than volunteers needed at local golf course

Candy burglar hits golf course

Roger S Lucas

A burglar at the Banks Lake Golf Course office apparently has a sweet tooth.

An unknown party used a crowbar to gain access to the golf course office last Tuesday night and got away with about $150 of candy bars.

Grant County Port District 7 officials, who manage the course, said it appeared that just the candy bars were taken.

The golf course has been burglarized before, twice in 2014, where unknown parties stole entire safes.

Damage was done to the front door and the intruder cut the phone lines inside, apparently thinking the lines went to a security camera.

A CenturyLink phone service representative, Greg Carpenter, told police that he arrived to do service work and found the front door ajar, and the phone lines cut.

Golf course Manager Mike Parisian told police that everything was fine when he left the clubhouse on Feb. 20.

The break-in was discussed at the Port District’s meeting Thursday night and it was agreed that some type of alarm system needed to be installed.

The police report stated that a partial palm print was taken from the kitchen area.

course.

Last golf season the port literally ran the course with volunteers, a small number of golfers who did the watering, mowing and maintenance.

Port Commissioner Gary Haag told fellow commissioners last week that many volunteers are getting “burned out” from spending too much time at the course.

He recommended that the port hire at least a part-time and hopefully a full-time person to pick up a large amount of the workload this year.

Haag reported that he had a person in mind for the position, but that person wanted 40 hours a week.

The plan would be to have that person come on in April and work through October.

Commissioners felt that they needed more time to decide and that any decision to hire a person would have to wait until the port found out how many memberships would come in.

The course officially opened March 1.