Dear Citizens of East Baton Rouge Parish. Should any reader identify any misstated facts, please use our webform and let us know what statement you care to challenge. We will publish corrections as warranted.
The Historic City Park Golf Course of Baton Rouge located in the Garden District has been under threat from a diverse group of individuals, business interests, and city leaders for over two decades. This continuous threat has now reached its pivotal moment. We need your immediate help as a concerned citizen to activate now and assist your fellow citizens in saving this 100 year old Historic Landmark in the heart of Baton Rouge.
We need you, the citizens of East Baton Rouge Parish, to demand that the golf course retain its current footprint, scale and scope. Tell the officials who represent you in city parish government (i.e. your parish council representative), tell the newspaper (call their switchboard and complain), tell the television broadcasters (call their switchboard and complain), tell the self-anointed and the self-appointed at Baton Rouge Area Foundation (BRAF), write to your friends on Facebook, Instagram, Next Door, and Tiger Droppings, tell your neighbors that we do not want to re-imagine or change City Park if that entails destroying the existing century old golf course, reducing its historic nine-hole format, shrinking the size of the fairways and/or destroying or minimizing the unbridled beauty of City Park Golf Course in the heart of Baton Rouge that has severed as a greenspace and recreational resource for all of East Baton Rouge Parish and State of Louisiana since its creation in 1926.
ATTENTION PUBLIC OFFICALS: Should you wish to respond in writing on official letterhead, we will gladly post your response on this website. We welcome you to publicly declare your support for City Park Golf Course and your unwavering commitment to maintain its current footprint, scale and scope. We believe it is a matter of public record that the Mayor of Zachary and/or his representatives upon the BREC Commission have been supportive of the golf course. We also recognize Collis Temple III for protecting City Park Golf Course over the period of serveral years. We acknowledge and thank all members of the BREC commission who have supported and protected the golf course. We welcome your continued support for our cause. We hope for and invite others to support City Park Golf Course.
Progress does not mean bulldozers, wine shacks beneath a 120 decibel interstate, boathouses, Greek outdoor amphitheaters and running trails to replace the timeless beauty of City Park Golf Course's historic fairways and greens. If the public desires an additional arboretum or outdoor track, this should not be placed upon existing golf course land or footprint. The Parish already has an arboretum next to the Main Library on Goodwood Blvd. It is quite nice and certainly worth a visit. We also have a wonderful botanical garden off Essen Lane courtesy of a generous gift from the Burden family to LSU. A new arboretum would be a blatant display of largess and hubris when the parish government can barely afford to pave our streets and fund our first responders.
City Park Golf Course was designed to play golf and provide a green environment with an active lifestyle. It supports scenic beauty for walkers, joggers, golfers, and the general public just as it is. Yes, perhaps it could be a nicer golf course, but losing any piece of it will be a disaster.
Are you, the citizens of East Baton Rouge Parish, aware that BREC has an annual 14.9 mil taxation fund ?
Admittedly, in our heart, we want to support BREC, we want to support BRAF, but when special interest take over these organizations, rather than improving the existing public golf course and improving vacant unutilized park area, we find ourselves desperately ringing the alarm to save the very existence of the golf course before it is bulldozed forever by private interest hiding under the banner of public progressive good.
We will not sit idle until we are assured the golf course footprint will remain complete and intact.
Raise community awareness by telling your friends, sending emails or creating media to alert your friends about the potential destruction of City Park Golf Course and why you think it should remain. Text your friends our website link and ask them to spread the word. BREC Commission public meetings occur each month. The March and April Meetings will be critical to show your support and presence.
Click our other links for further information.
Get involved with us at ProtectCityParkGolfCourseBR.org
Sign up and join our cause. It has taken 100 years to get here, yet with a one minute vote to rubberstamp a pre-ordained consulting report, your city leaders and some unelected appointees can destroy a valued and cherished public greenspace. Our public custodians seated upon the BREC commission have already relinquished (December 2025) to consultants the ability to propose the best planning and use recommendation for the City Park Golf Course property. Similar decisions most often are precursors to a rubberstamp vote at a subsequent BREC commission meeting to approve the consulting outcome that was bought and paid for in advance when the consultant was hired. If you, the citizens of East Baton Rouge Parish, fail to take action and get involved, the resource will be lost forever.
Visit our webpage to learn more about the threat to destroy historic City Park Golf Course in Baton Rouge. www.ProtectCityParkGolfCourseBR.org
Your civic leaders at BREC continue to avoid public comment and hide their plans in restricted "stakeholder" meetings lead by special interest groups like BRAF and their New York consultants.
Don't be fooled by big name international out of town New York consultants. Don't let BREC rubberstamp consulting recommendations to avoid public debate. Don't let consultants mislead the public with surveys rigged to provide pre-determined outcomes. Don't let a series of closed non-public meetings predetermine a staged public vote on the destiny of Historic City Park Golf Course.
The BREC commission is utilizing consultants in the backrooms of a $700 million non-profit organization to obfuscate a coordinated effort to replace the stewardship of public lands currently vested in the governance the BREC Commission. Sadly, the BREC commission is attempting to further distance the public from oversight of the commission and its actions by paying an international New York consultant to recommend that stewardship of public land be passed to a newly appointed commission (again unelected) with stewardship rights for decades or more; The intent is clear, pay the consultants to deliver a backroom recommendation and rubberstamp the outcome in a simple quick public meeting, all while claiming the BREC Commission is following the recommendation of the so-called 'experts'. The cherry on top is your tax dollars pay for it.
Understand how the system works. The BREC Commision consist of a nine member board, one seat each for five mayors of EBR parish plus four appointed commission members. The appointed members serve at the pleasure of the EBR metro council for multi-year terms. Also, significantly distancing themselves from public accountability at the voters booth. The public does not elect all BREC commissioners directly. However, these members annually spend a 14.9 mil tax amounting to approximately $118M annual spend. This tax rivals in size and scope of many other city parish taxes. Furthermore, the BREC commission routinely outsources the messy task of public decision making to consultants. BREC pays the consultants and of course the "correct" recommendation is forthcoming in a special report. BREC then simply rubberstamps the recommendation. This is how your tax dollars are spent, out of sight of the public eye until it is too late to change trajectory. That's what’s going on behind closed doors. Love it, Like it, Accept it or Demand Change and Transparency.
For a house valued by the assessor at $100,000, a one-mill property tax totals $100 (i.e. $1 for every $1,000 of assessed value). Assuming you have a home that would sell for $300,000; the millage tax will be applied to only the assessed value, being only 10% of sales value, meaning the assed value is only $30,000; thus for a 14.9 mill tax, that means this hypothetical homeowner is paying $30,000 x (1/1000) x 14.9 equal to $447 per year in property taxes dedicated to BREC annually.
That's correct. If you live in East Baton Rouge Parish and own a home, chances are good that you are required to pay approximately $500 taxes or more to BREC each year. Sometimes, homeowners lose their properties when they can't afford the taxes. Sometimes the parish just bulldozes your house. If you rent, your landlord is paying those taxes and charging you, the renter, accordingly. How can your rent go down, when the landlords property taxes always go up?
We advise BREC not to give away portions of Historic City Park Golf Course to special interest, not to mislead and gaslight the citizens of East Baton Rouge Parish, not to claim there will still be a 9-hole course when BREC's real intention is to shrink the golf course by 50% in size and scope while still calling the remnants a nine hole 'Chip and Put'. We advise BREC not to replace portions of the golf course with parking lots, buildings, wine bars under loud interstates, boathouses, Greek amphitheaters, and another arboretum. We advise BREC to place any new jogging trails upon a location other than golf course land. We suggest BREC build a boathouse in a location that will not cause BREC to years later attempt to usurp golf course land to build parking lots. We want to let BREC know that we, the taxpaying citizens of East Baton Rouge, the Voters of East Baton Rouge, are watching and will remember BREC’s actions and the council members who laid the ground work for the potential loss of the golf course to develop. The council should have protected the golf course by appointing members who were willing to protect it. The Mayors should be protecting a 100 year old landmark, not witnessing or actively contemplating its destruction. Why was the review study of City Park not undertaken with a clear directive to protect the golf course. Doing so would avoid needless wasted time planning to destroy it.
We note with gratitude that the metro council did have the good sense to prevent an ardent hater of golf from obtaining a commission seat upon the BREC board.
Have we reminded you, the public, the fine taxpayers of East Baton Rouge Parish, that the BREC 14.9 mil annual tax rivals the fire department budget, rivals the police department budget, rivals the city general fund ? While citizens struggle to pay their Delta Gas utility bills to heat their homes, BREC is handing its high price international New York consultants, at the behest of BRAF, a $600,000 six hundred thousand dollar contract for consulting to decide what recommendations are needed to reimagine City Park Golf Course and destroy it forever. This is a repeat of a previous paid study fifteen years prior. Imagine the assets that could have been purchased if the BREC Commission had simply listened to vocal voices telling it early and often to keep the Historic City Park Golf Course intact, complete, and unmolested.
We recommend taxpayers become vigilent to the activities of the BREC Commission and strive to follow updates on the potential reprogramming and destruction of city park golf course.
Did we need to fix the lakes? Yes. Did our civic leadership spend the money well? Did BRAF decide what it wanted and then simply orchestrate a process upon the public to produce a predetermined outcome with a pre-chosen consultant? Consider that these same consultants reimagined what University Lakes could be and the results speak for themselves, being questionable at best.
Has that effort to dredge the lakes provided good value for money, a good result, a botched landscape, or has it simply destroyed the vistas on University Lake? Yes, the lakes project accomplished badly needed dredging, but the disposal sites ruined the vistas and destroyed a 100 year old scenic cityscape of Baton Rouge. Is more than $100 million of taxpayer dollars being well spent?
If the International New York Consultants are so great, why didn't they figure out that the public needed a wider land mass along Dalrymple between May and State street with 10 feet of separation from the heavy traffic and bollards to protect pedestrian traffic. Why did these consultants fail? Because they didn't bother to listen to the public. Instead they did as they pleased without forethought and simply submitted to the will of their paymasters.
We entrust our mayors, and their appointees to hold our public resources dearly and steward our lands, lakes, and public assets with care and thought. Instead we are possibly witnessing the intentional handover of said stewardship to special interest groups and the international New York consultants who either don't care about Baton Rouge or don't understand it.
Was the public input process on the lakes restoration fair? Sadly, misdirection in public meetings lulled the citizenry to sleep while a cabal was busy at work passing land rights out of the hands of the public and into the hands of special interest. Should we be surprised when those special interest groups start making bad decisions and approving poor plans that benefit themselves and ignore public interest?
Was the process simply a gas lighting and misdirection campaign by BRAF and its consultants? Did that process mislead the public and deliver a different outcome? You can be the judge, but the same processes are hard at work to destroy the Historic City Park Golf Course in Baton Rouge.
Are you aware a senior administrator in BREC is under public indictment?
Click here for WBRZ news coverage of grand jury indictment of BREC official.Should the public really believe that processes that seek to hide in the shadows provide the public any level of confidence in BREC given the most recent indictments of one of its highest administrative managers?
If this concerns you as a citizen and a taxpayer, we urge you to immediately take action and tell BREC not to take one square foot of your Historic City Park Golf Course. Join our cause to challenge the political powerbrokers in Baton Rouge and keep our magnificent oak lined fairways and greens for future generations to enjoy for another 100 years.