Our story today is about Rolling Hills Golf Course in East Bremerton. The county owns it. A private company has been running it under a lease that ends next year. The course needs millions of dollars in upgrades — irrigation, greens, clubhouse, the works — and the county is now deciding what comes next.

Some people want the county to stay involved, maybe even take a more active role. Others say it’s time for government to step aside and let private investors take full responsibility. We’re going to look at both sides, but I want to be clear about the bigger principle at stake: government has no business owning and operating a commercial golf course.

First, the scale of golf in Kitsap County, because the numbers matter.

According to a detailed 2024 study by the National Golf Foundation prepared for the county, there are roughly 26,000 golfers living in Kitsap County. Those resident golfers have the potential to generate more than 400,000 rounds of golf a year. Looking at actual play at the major public courses, Gold Mountain alone — the city’s two 18-hole tracks — hosted nearly 92,000 rounds in 2023. McCormick Woods did about 37,000. White Horse around 42,000. Trophy Lake around 36,000. Add those up and you’re already past 230,000 rounds at just the bigger public facilities, before counting private clubs or smaller courses. County-wide activity is clearly in the hundreds of thousands of rounds annually.

Now look at Rolling Hills. In 2023 it hosted around 25,000 rounds. That’s the highest total it’s had in more than a decade, but it’s still well below the 30,000 to 40,000 rounds that are typical for a solid local 18-hole public course. It’s also far below the 35,000 to 40,000 rounds the course itself used to generate in the late 1990s and early 2000s. In other words, Rolling Hills is a meaningful but underperforming piece of a much larger local golf market. One course doing 25,000 rounds does not define golf in Kitsap County.

With that context, let’s look at the case for keeping the county involved or at least retaining strong public control.

Supporters of continued county ownership make a few solid points. First, Rolling Hills is a community amenity. It’s one of the more affordable places to play in Kitsap County. Seniors, juniors, military members, and working people use it. If a pure private investor takes over, the fear is that fees will rise and those discounts will shrink. Public ownership, the argument goes, is the only way to guarantee the course stays accessible to ordinary residents.

Second, land is finite. Once you sell a public asset, it’s gone. If golf economics change, a private owner might eventually want to redevelop the property. County ownership keeps that decision in public hands.

Third, the current arrangement already brings the county a steady check every year. Some people argue the county can improve the deal — demand capital investment from the operator while still collecting rent — and keep the best of both worlds.

Those are legitimate concerns. Affordability matters. Losing a public recreational asset permanently is a real risk. And the county has every right to protect the public’s interest in property it already owns.

Now the other side — and this is where the stronger argument lies.

The fundamental problem is not the lease terms or the capital needs. The fundamental problem is that a government agency is in the golf business at all.

Golf is a private commercial activity. People pay to play. Private companies build courses, maintain them, market them, and either make money or close them. That is how markets work. When government owns the land and the buildings, it creates a set of distortions that private operators never face.

First, capital. The six-to-eight million dollars in needed upgrades is not a small number. Under private ownership, investors put their own money at risk. They decide whether the return justifies the investment. Under public ownership, the pressure is always there to use taxpayer funds, issue bonds, or accept lower returns because “it’s a community benefit.” That is how deferred maintenance happens in the first place. The current operator paid the county rent, but the property still deteriorated. Why? Because the incentive structure was wrong. Money that should have gone into the course went to the county instead, and the county had no strong incentive to force reinvestment. Additionally, these upgrades will raise the price at Rolling Hills. The price advantage of Rolling Hills is not significantly lower than the private courses. If you add the upgrades and required maintenance, and not offset these costs with county funds, then the pricing would be about equal to private courses.

Second, efficiency and scale. Private operators live or die by performance. They cut waste, innovate, and respond to customers because they have to. Look again at the numbers: the broader Kitsap market supports hundreds of thousands of rounds and tens of thousands of golfers. Gold Mountain does nearly four times the volume of Rolling Hills on its two courses. Other private and public operators are successfully attracting play at higher volumes. One underperforming 25,000-round course does not require permanent government ownership to keep golf alive in this county. Government agencies do not face the same discipline. Even with a private manager under contract, the ultimate owner is still a political body. Rates, capital decisions, and long-term strategy become subject to public meetings, oversight committees, and political pressure. That is not how successful commercial enterprises are run.

Third, fairness. When the county owns a golf course, it is competing — directly or indirectly — with private courses that pay property taxes and receive no public support. Why should taxpayers underwrite one course while others compete without that advantage?

Fourth, the declining participation at Rolling Hills indicate an underperforming course that is not currently providing a significant benefit to the community. The private courses pricing is not significantly higher than Rolling Hills, so the argument of keeping pricing down would only be if the course would continue to defer needed upgrades and improvements. Because these improvements were not done could be a reason for the reduced usage.

The cleanest solution is for the county to get out. Sell the property or structure a long-term lease that transfers both the upside and the risk to private investors. Let them fund the irrigation system, renovate the greens, and decide what fees the market will bear. If the course can succeed as a private business, it will. If it cannot, that is valuable information the market is supposed to provide. Government ownership simply delays that verdict and socializes the losses.

Some will say this is ideological. It is not. It is practical. We do not ask the county to own restaurants, movie theaters, or bowling alleys. We do not ask it to run hotels. Golf is no different. It is a discretionary recreational business. The fact that the county already owns the land does not create a permanent obligation to stay in that business forever — especially when that one course represents only a small fraction of total local golf activity.

There is also a political reality. Once government is involved, every fee increase becomes a public controversy. Every capital shortfall becomes a demand for taxpayer help. Every operational decision becomes a political football. Private investors do not hold public hearings about cart fees. They simply adjust to demand.

To be fair, a complete sale is not the only option. A long-term lease with clear capital requirements and performance standards can achieve many of the same benefits while the county retains title. But even that arrangement is second-best. The ideal is for government to exit commercial ventures it has no special competence to run.

Rolling Hills has value. It has history. It serves local golfers. None of that requires the Kitsap County government to own and oversee it. The private sector is fully capable of operating an 18-hole golf course in a market that already supports more than 26,000 golfers and hundreds of thousands of rounds. The private sector is better positioned to decide whether the capital investment is justified. And the private sector will face the consequences if it gets the decision wrong — without asking taxpayers to cover the shortfall.

The upcoming decision is not just about one golf course. It is about whether we continue the pattern of government agencies drifting into private commercial activity, or whether we draw a clearer line. Golf courses are private ventures. Government has no business being a golf course owner.

That’s the case as I see it. The numbers are real — millions in needed upgrades, 25,000 rounds at Rolling Hills against a much larger local market. The principle is clearer still: public agencies should not be in private businesses. Kitsap County has an opportunity to correct course. It should take it.