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The Sligo Creek Golf Course can remain open past its scheduled closing date of Oct. 1 without using county funds, says a newly formed nonprofit group dedicated to saving the course.

The organization's proposal centers on a management fee charged by the Montgomery County Revenue Authority, which is scheduled to operate the Silver Spring course until Oct. 1 before handing operations back to the landowner, the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission.

Each of the Revenue Authority's nine golf courses was charged a $139,000 management fee in fiscal 2008 for costs associated with the authority's home office in Rockville, such as insurance fees, marketing fees and the salaries of 10 employees, said Executive Director Keith Miller.

"In essence, it's a bookkeeping fee. It pays for nothing at the golf course itself," said Merrill Goozner, the treasurer for Sligo Creek Golf Association Inc., a nonprofit group of residents who want to save the course. "… When you realize that's what it is, you say ‘Wow, how can you attribute this to every course the same?' "

The SCGA says that flat fee is disproportionately being charged to Sligo, because it is the only nine-hole course in the golf system and requires less of the services associated with the management fee.

The other courses in the golf system are 18 or 27 holes. According to an independent study by the National Golf Foundation published earlier this year, revenue was $636,000 in 2008 at Sligo Creek, and almost 30,000 rounds were played there. The management fee is roughly 22 percent of the course's revenue, as opposed to 5.6 percent of revenue at 27-hole courses Northwest and Needwood.

With Sligo Creek losing about $143,000 in 2008, according to the NGF study, supporters of the course say the fee is to blame for the course's poor performance, not its ability to attract golfers.

"It manufactures the loss," Mark Suffanti, founder of www.SaveSligoGolf.com, said of the fee.

Miller said the management fee is irrelevant to Sligo Creek's profitability.

Nine-hole courses around the country are failing because they receive a lower volume of rounds at a lower cost, and, without a driving range, the majority of Sligo Creek's revenue comes from its greens fees, Miller said. While Sligo Creek has fewer holes than the system's other courses, the operating costs aren't significantly less, he said.

"It's a limited revenue stream with a relatively high expense stream," Miller said in a phone interview Thursday. "There's no real potential for growth."

The NGF study projects a $160,000 management fee and total losses of about $202,000 at Sligo Creek for fiscal 2009, which just recently ended.

"Eliminating or modifying the $160,000 management fee at this facility will not be enough to eliminate the economic loss," the study says in determining that Sligo Creek "may not be economically viable under its current configuration" and is "adverse to the MCRA system."

Park and Planning leased operation of four courses, including Sligo Creek, to the Revenue Authority in 2006. The lease stipulates that the Revenue Authority may relinquish operations of a course if it is ruled financially adverse to the golf system.

Goozner said that if the management fee were proportionate — $51,000 by their numbers — the County Council wouldn't have to appropriate the $150,000 County Executive Isiah Leggett (D) proposed last month to keep the course open for an additional one to two years.

Under that proposal, the course would remain under the auspices of the Montgomery County Revenue Authority,  and a task force would determine how to make a golf course at Sligo Creek profitable.

If it were to close Oct. 1, Park and Planning would allot $56,000 for general upkeep of the land until a new use is determined.  

"We have a situation where the County Council doesn't need $150,000, they can spend the same amount of money they would have to spend anyway to keep it open," Goozner said.

SCGA has been meeting with Leggett and County Council members to pitch its financing plan for Sligo Creek.

On Tuesday, five council members sent a letter to Planning Board Chairman Royce Hanson, urging M-NCPPC to extend its lease with the Revenue Authority another 12 months. In a meeting July 16, the board decided that Parks should not "expend its time and effort" to consider a golf course for the land, because it would require an amendment to the Revenue Authority's lease

Valerie Ervin (D-Dist. 5) and Nancy Navarro (D-Dist. 4), both of Silver Spring; George L. Leventhal (D-At large) and Marc Elrich (D-At large), both of Takoma Park; and Nancy Floreen (D-At large) of Garrett Park, want to keep the course open but would like to hear more alternatives to spending taxpayers dollars to do so.

"At this juncture, it does not seem to us that any alternative is preferable, nor more cost-effective, than the continued availability of golf," the letter said.