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Castor Golf Club President presents funding request to County of Paintearth Council

‘Water is the life-source of any club.’
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Image courtesy Creative Outlet

A delegation from the Castor Community Golf Club appeared before the County of Paintearth council on Nov. 2, 2021, asking for their consideration in capital funding.

The board-run golf course currently has around $100,000 worth of projects it would like to see completed over the next few years; however, as a not-for-profit, revenues are not what they need to be to completely self-fund the work.

With the brutally hot and dry conditions the region faced during this past summer, one issue that became immediately apparent for the club is the need to upgrade the golf course’s irrigation system and find another water source.

Currently, the course draws water from the Castor Creek to the east of the site, however, with the summer the region faced, the club found that if it draws too much water from that location it begins to affect the well water of the adjacent landowner.

“Water is the life-source of any club,” said Castor Golf Club President Todd Pawsey.

“We were able to maintain our course fairly green (this year), but there were some dead spots. There are some sprinkler heads that weren’t working.”

The golf course water project comes in at a cost of approximately $32,000, and would have the water drawn from a different, and more distant, part of the Castor Creek in order to lessen the impact on the adjacent landowner.

Unfortunately, with limited revenues, the club will need help with the project.

“In 2019, we lost $9,000. In 2020, we made $9,000,” said Pawsey.

“We don’t get a lot of support on the public recreation side. We don’t come for a lot of capital requests. We try to do things in-house, but we’ve lost two annual fundraisers.”

The Castor Community Golf Club hosts an annual Christmas fundraiser every fall, which helps with revenues for the club, but with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic the club was forced to cancel the 2020 event, and recently made the decision to cancel this year’s event as well.

“Your projects, these are spring projects?” asked County of Paintearth Chief Administrative Office Michael Simpson.

Pawsey replied that the initial work had been started this fall for the irrigation project, but that the bulk of the work would be completed in the spring.

“We’d take funding, if you funded it now,” said Pawsey.

“Or in the spring, we can order materials. We’re good with whatever comes up.”

Coun. Diane Elliot asked how the work would be completed, whether it would be paid work or completed by volunteers.

“It would be some (volunteer work), and some industry partners,” said Pawsey.

Apart from the irrigation project, the club would also like to start replacing golf carts on a regular rotation, work on updating and maintaining the exterior of the golf cart and maintenance sheds, and completing the driving the driving range.

With budget deliberations coming up before the end of the year, council accepted the delegation as information.



Kevin Sabo

About the Author: Kevin Sabo

I’m Kevin Sabo. I’ve been a resident of the Castor area for the last 12 years and counting, first coming out here in my previous career as an EMT.
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