Thank you for your important local reporting on the closure of Village Greens Golf Course (April 5, 2019 issue of Port Orchard Independent). We need to face facts and do what is realistic in regards to the Kitsap County-owned Village Greens Golf Course that the county secretly decided to close before getting public input.

And what is factual and realistic is we should not trash can yet another neighborhood just because it has fallen out of favor with the local real estate speculators. Keep the golf course open and operate it at the trivial cash loss it incurs. The benefits to the community far outweigh this cost.

Look around in some parts of Kitsap and you can see that there is so much wealth, we can easily afford this. Tax wealth, not poverty. Look at all the money the county spends maintaining dog parks so people have someplace so their dogs can defecate.

Village Greens could also be made a people park, YMCA, disc golf, baseball or combination of those and other things. And let’s get the nearby grocery store open again (formally a QFC) so all the folks around there can once again walk to the store.

Do this by telling the property owners (controllers) a new commercial rent control law has been enacted requiring them to lower the lease and forget about the tax scam benefits they get from letting this huge building stand empty.

These things are all legal, possible and doable. This is what is realistic and factual. The community and people are what is important.

E. Schmidt

South Kitsap