Letter to The Dayton Observer

Here is a letter that Mr. Jason Ott submitted to The Dayton Review. The Dayton Review has published Mr. Ott's letter with editor's modifications; however, I have republished Mr. Ott's unedited letter to the editor. Mr. Ott's numbers in this unedited republication came directly from the Dayton City Clerk.


Dear Editor:
I have lived in this town all of my life. I love this community and thoroughly enjoy most everyone in it. However, lately we have felt the effects of the recession that has also affected the nation as a whole. Our town of Dayton is an amazing little town. For a town of our size to have a grocery store, bank, pharmacy, nursing home, and several other businesses is a remarkable achievement. These businesses and the remarkable success of the Rodeo and Labor Day festivities are a true testament to the ingenuity, perseverance, and character of our town. However, I do not believe our town should continue to support (and run) a failing business that only will incur more and more debt on the community. When 10% of our town turned out and voted to take on the burdens of the struggling golf course, I was against it, as I am now. The golf course was $170,000 in debt when we took over the business. Now in only one year it has racked in another $107,000 in debt. The town has also heavily invested in this business and so far this has failed. Now is the time to rid our town of this burdensome property. Some have said that we can save the golf course by simply spending money playing golf there, eating food there, and/or renting out the building there. There are simple responses to those three recommendations. First, how many people play golf in Dayton? There are currently 106 members. With reports only 30 members living in the town of Dayton. I do not believe this is enough to support the bills the golf course incurs. Many golfers from the area will also go to other viable options such as Gowrie or Fort Dodge. Competition is not on our side here. For the restaurant, I believe that the continued attempts to run similar restaurants in our town that have not occurred great success in much better locations should be proof enough. Finally I also believe that renting out the golf club for events will not work consistently because of competition and poor location. Our own town provides much cheaper alternatives to the golf club and Fort Dodge, Ames, and Des Moines provide much more fancy options within a reasonable distance. So in order to support these debts the city council will have no other choice than to eventually raise taxes. This will take away from many people’s living conditions and their ability to do things they thoroughly enjoy (i.e. golfing).
So I am hoping that the citizens of Dayton will realize that we need to take on the practice of fiscal responsibility as a town. We must do what we need to do to prosper as a town. This does not include continuing to take on debt by sponsoring a failing business. It is simply not the intelligent thing to do. I realize that many people love the sport of golfing, (I am a fan myself, but cannot afford the sport at the moment.) but this not mean that the city must have a course to survive. Also I realize many wish we would have not to make cuts in order to make the city more sustainable. However, we are going to have to make cuts and we simply should not charge all citizens more with our already high electric and water rates (from information in a 2008 report) by raising property taxes. This doesn’t mean we want to cut jobs or programs, but if it is needed then we will have to do it. For example the State of Iowa has cut education spending drastically in the current budget. At Iowa State, the administration including President Geoffrey do not want to raise tuition (many have even taken furloughs), or cut jobs and programs, but in order to not fall apart at the seams some of these things are going to happen.
To conclude I hope that the golf course will be petitioned to come to a new election to decide whether we should keep or sell it. I also hope that every citizen of our wonderful community will recognize the need to get rid of an unnecessary weight that has the very real possibility of deeply wounding if not slowly killing our great town. Also just in case some question my commitment to this cause and why I have not attended a town council meeting on the subject. I am a student at Iowa State University and have weekly meetings on Wednesday nights starting at 6:15pm that last an undetermined amount of time; otherwise I would certainly be there. So I hope everyone takes a deep hard impartial look at this situation and the problem we are in.

Thank You,
Jason Ott