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ST. CLAIR SHORES — City Council members passed three motions regarding the purchase of golf carts for the St. Clair Shores Golf Club at their Feb. 5 meeting.
They awarded the purchase in a 5-1 vote with Councilwoman and Mayor Pro Tem Candice Rusie opposed, designated an auction for the current carts in a 6-0 vote and approved a related budget amendment in 5-1 vote, also with Rusie opposed.
Councilman Chris Vitale was excused for the meeting.
The agenda item was the recommended purchase of 80 new 2024 Club Car Tempos and one new 2024 Club Car Café Express beverage cart. St. Clair Shores Parks and Recreation Director Rob Spinazzola said they were also seeking council approval for Rowleys Auctions to auction off the current golf carts on behalf of the city.
Right now, they have 75 golf carts. They are asking for 80 because they might need them for larger outings.
“A lot of times when we get these larger golf outings, our 70 carts aren’t sufficient enough to have the 80 players plus all the people they have volunteering,” Spinazzola said. “So we end up renting carts which costs us more money in the long run.”
Matt Crippen, the golf course manager, was also there to present the item with Spinazzola.
According to documents attached to the meeting’s agenda, the carts went out to bid in November and the city received two bids.
Spinazzola said at the meeting they also went through cart resellers, but no one got back to them with numbers or a serious offer. The documents also said they prefer purchasing over leasing, as purchasing the carts will give them some equity when they want to trade them in.
“If approved tonight for the full purchase of the 80 carts and new beverage cart (it) would be in the amount of $503,897.99 to be paid out of the general fund,” Spinazzola said.
Moving forward, the golf course is requesting to pay back the costs of the golf carts only.
“So it would be the cost of the carts minus what we would receive back from the auction,” Spinazzola said. “And if we do that over seven years it would be somewhere in the neighborhood of $47,000 to $50,000 based on how many carts are sold and what price they’re sold at.”
Spinazzola said the golf carts were originally slated to be replaced in fiscal year 2025, but they pushed it to 2024 because they’d like to sell them before the new season, and they might lose value due to use.
“If we ran them through the spring, they went out for more rounds, we lost battery life, more wear and tear, more repairs out of the budget for this year,” Spinazzola said.
Rusie asked if the purchase was listed in the 2023-2024 budget and Spinazzola said it was not listed. Rusie also asked if this was part of their replacement schedule. Spinazzola said that it is.
“I just don’t understand how we can have a half million dollar request go out to bid that wasn’t part of the budget and not get any sort of, ‘Hey, heads up, what do you guys think about this?’” Rusie said. “And now we have a half million dollar request for 80 golf carts that we didn’t talk about back in April when we approved this year’s budget.”
The carts are replaced every seven or eight years. Previously, they used to replace 25 carts at a time.
“When the economy took a downturn, we stepped away from doing that so when we had to replace the fleet last time, we had to do everything at once which is how we ended up getting on this type of schedule,” Spinazzola said.
Rusie said she isn’t a fan of this schedule.
“In seven years, we’re going to have 80 old carts we have to replace, and we’ll just always be on the schedule then,” Rusie said.
Councilman Ronald Frederick asked if any of the carts are worth keeping and Spinazzola said not for golf use.
“They’re way beyond what, I guess, their golf-useful life would be,” Spinazzola said.
Councilman John Caron said the motion needs to have a budget amendment included as well.
“If they’re going to be here before June 30, it’s definitely on this year’s budget and needs a budget amendment as well,” Caron said.
Spinazzola said he spoke to St. Clair Shores Finance Director Renae Warnke to include the amendment in the set of budget amendments she has. Caron said if they’re doing something different, he prefers to do the budget amendment the same night so Warnke doesn’t have to come back to council with the request.
“When we’re making a change to the budget, it’s got to be in the motion and in the statement that that’s what we’re doing and just to be open and honest about it,” Caron said.
