Newton resident Abbie Richards has declared war on golf. And her hilarious, rants are resonating on TicToc, Twitter or YouTube.
This article from USA Today is a great introduction.
And so is this…
Since people are into it: this is my platform #cancelgolf 🚫⛳️ pic.twitter.com/v1NOjZAdhu
— Abbie Richards (@abbieasr) May 25, 2020
And here’s where they talked about Richards’ on ESPN…
@tofizzle “too avant-garde for SportsCenter” is the highst praise I’ve ever received ##cancelgolf
And this historic hysteric exploration of the game …
Oh and there’s this whole Shaddowbanned thing too, which (showing my age here) I totally don’t get.
This woman is my hero!!! I’d seen her TikTok videos but had no idea she was from Newton.
Over here in Needham our 58-acre golf course is owned by the town and leased to the Needham Golf Club for a criminally-low amount – $215,000/yr. when it was last reported in 2008, although it’s adjusted for CPI so it might be up around gasp $250k now. So a small group of individuals is leasing 58 acres of some of the most valuable land around for not much more than $4,000/acre/year, covering rent and taxes. Absolutely absurd.
They were supposed to have their lease reevaluated every 10 years, and back in 2008 a resident tried to challenge the legality of the lease, since the town’s purchase of the land in back in 1898 mandated that it be for protection of the water supply. But everyone in town government has club membership, so just to spite the resident, the town extended the club’s lease from 10 to 20 years and essentially drove the guy out of town.
Now we’re stuck with a disgusting pesticide-laden 58-acre parcel reserved for exclusive use by a couple of hundred poseurs with net revenue to the town of a few thousand dollars per acre per year, covering both rent and taxes. Meanwhile, the land could have been put to literally a hundred better uses, as Ms. Richard’s has pointed out.
Is the story of the Newton Commonwealth course a similar one? I can’t believe that Newton would ever be as easily snookered as we gullible Needhamites were.
The video history is marvelous.
Confession: I once got a hole-in-one on a course in central MA. To prove it to my friends, i took a picture of the ball in the hole . . .
@Paul Levy, I’m definitely borrowing that one!
I still can’t hit the ball through the windmill. I was never good at it.
Takes years of concentration and practice, Rick. But meanwhile, you can have plenty of Italian ices!
Brilliant! This young woman must have terrific parents.
As a show of solidarity for Abbie, I hope you will join my own personal protest against golf courses and everything they represent, which is whenever I drive past Brae Burn or Woodland or Charles River, I wait until a hedge fund manager is on his backswing and honk as loudly as I can.
Two words: Eminent Domain.
Abbie Richards is spot on. In addition to the environmental costs, regular taxpayers greatly subsidize this hobby of the the ultra-elitist ~0.0001%. Through Chapter 61B of the MA tax code, private golf clubs enjoy a 75% tax exemption. Think of what Newton could accomplish if its private golf clubs paid anywhere near their actual tax obligation.
Victoria Danberg took on the absurdity of the golf club tax exemption over a decade ago (article linked below). Alas, big money interests make it a seemingly intractable loophole across the Commonwealth.
What to do? As long as Newton is subsidizing these wealthy golf courses, the clubs should be required to have a few days/week where all services are fully open to the public. If a stated original purpose of Chapter 61B was the protection of “open space“, then let’s all have access to it.
http://archive.boston.com/news/local/articles/2007/08/30/teed_off_at_tax_break/
Why don’t we require them to add solar panels to their large expansive parking lots that the City of Newton would lease and sells back tho Eversource that we then derive income from?
@NewtonResident I agree here. (I’m not anti-golf or anti-golf course. I myself love the sport.) One of the courses presumably “satisfies” this by having some open-to-the-public event once day per year. Big deal. And even at that it’s not like there’s a big “Open House” sign by the road or advertised in the Newton Tab (or dare I say “Village14). You still have to be affiliated with some event. There are lots of ways to do this right by the tax-payers. It’s pretty shameful.
Go Vicki. Would you care to resume this fight, or at least reignite it? Push for solar panels on the parking lots?
Love, love, love Abbie’s anti-golf rants
Do any local golf courses, public or private, offer public use of their paths for recreational use? Yes, “someone might be hit by a ball”, but no alternate hours or something? Seems like we should always be asking out local institutions, “How are you being a good neighbor?”
From a pure transportation point of view, having a multi-use bike and pedestrian path from Grove Street to Washington St sure would be awesome.
Our Commonwealth’s special 75% property taх exemption for private golf clubs is just wrong. Issues like these reveal our legislators’ true colors. Show me a Democrat who supports the Chapter 61B discount for private golf courses and I’ll show you a hypocrite who either belongs to a private club or has a lot of friends who do.
Government has plenty of other carrots and sticks to ensure that natural land remains that way. Just ask Mayor Fuller.
Repealing the golf club exemption seems like an obvious goal for a group like Raise Up Massachusetts … much less controversial than some of their other initiatives.
Mike Halle: “From a pure transportation point of view, having a multi-use bike and pedestrian path from Grove Street to Washington St sure would be awesome.” Indeed it would be, and then a further connection all the way to Waban center.
@Jerry Reilly-
I remember, back in the day of the Newton Tab when I called golf courses an environmental wasteland. I got a lot of pushback from that comment from folks who lectured me about all of the wondrous wildlife at the Commonwealth Golf Course. It makes me so happy to watch see these charming videos and to know that I wasn’t just being a crank. The one and only time I have ever been on a gold course I was stunned by the silence – no birds, no insects – just a barren wasteland thanks to pesticides and herbicides. One of the people I was with declared “it’s so nice to be out in nature!” Given that I was quite a bit younger, and less temperate, I didn’t hold my tongue and declared that there was no “nature” left on that barren wasteland of toxic soup! Glad I’m not alone.
@Lisap-
That’s a great sample size you have there. On any given day at Newton Commonwealth one can see turkeys, hawks, foxes, coyotes, herons (both great blue and smaller), and the occasional birdie or eagle. Flying golf balls make it a little dangerous for walking in-season (even for golfers sometimes) but it makes for a nice walk during the winter. And it’s anything but elitist. The occasional Titelist for sure but elitist, no.
@Bill B
Yeah I know. But one doesn’t have to actually go onto a golf course to observe its preternatural stillness, the presence of pristine weed free grasses fed by hundreds of thousands of gallons of water. And to note the stillness. Oh I’ve been near plenty – that I haven’t trod the greens doesn’t mean I have no observations. By the way, some years ago golfers were warned to stop the practice of licking their fingers before picking up golf balls due to an unusually high incidence of tongue cancer. Could that be due to the poison put on the land?
@Bill B – Yes you can see all those same creatures on parking lots in Newton too but none of them actually live on those parking lots or on the massive lawns of the golf courses. No doubt a few do live in the very small patches of untended woods that are generally in a few corners of courses.
Yes, definitely lots of green vegetation and that does have its advantages but as Lisap says – precious little ‘nature’.
My favorite bit from “Abbie’s’ videos was the when she takes on the question of it actually being a sport – “You can play it while smoking a cigarette – end of story”.
She’s wearing a soccer uniform. Soccer fields aren’t exactly environmental paradises. Especially when they’re made of artificial turf.
It’s a mare egalitarian sport, but it’s still a giant lawn.
More egalitarian that is.
@Rick Frank – Left out of your comment is that each golf course is more than the size of 50 soccer fields and every town doesn’t have lots of private soccer clubs getting advantageous tax treatment.
Abby Richards is an environmentalist with an environmental degree pursuing
a masters degree in climate studies.
If she’s reading this I’d love to know what she would replace these open green spaces – golf courses – with?
Mixed used retail? HighDensity housing? “Leeds approved” Northland Development volume 2?
City wide resident accessible art film theaters? Needham Michael, you get the first swing here – grip hard, choke up, put your back into it and let er rip..
Sorry, her name is spelled Abbie,
not Abby.
Just for fun and because I see it being mentioned, I actually drew up a back-of-the-napkin plan of the development of Newton Comm a while ago. The course actually has direct access to Comm Ave. and is way bigger than one might think. Boston also pushes all of their garbage developments right along the perimeter, like they do all along the line with Newton. Nonetheless, if development was done right, it could add acres upon acres to our green space, as well as potentially adding an entirely new village to Newton using 21st century urban planning. I bet it will happen one day in the not so distance future. One can dream! Until then, i’ll enjoy my semi-annual outing on the course.
@Paul Green, in the case of the Needham Golf Club I would just like to see it turned into a public park. It’s a tremendous waste of a public asset in its current state.
BTW it turns out that last year the sleazy Needham Select Board actually reduced the Needham Golf Club’s rent by $75,000. So they’re paying a grand total of $150,000 per year for 58 acres of public land. Nutsy stuff.
@James, is access from Comm Ave. to the Newton Commonwealth course via this strip of land between the Green Line tracks and Flat Breads Café? Cool. https://mapgeo.s3.amazonaws.com/clients/newtonma/files/property/image_00037468.jpg
Newton doesn’t deserve Abbie. Though golly I do LOVE seeing this spark some debate. Keep it coming kids… Boomers?
#cancelgolf
@Michael – Yes, that would be it. 🙂
@Michael
To be clear, the Needham Golf Club is open to all residents of Needham. Certain times are set aside for members only, but town residents can play at other times.
@Greg
What do you suppose the business impact of Newton’s three private golf clubs is? Certainly many executives of Newton businesses are members at these clubs. And certainly many of them chose to be in Newton for proximity to their club (I know of at least three companies that moved into the N2 district because of its proximity to CRCC). Are we really so blind as to believe that there is no positive impact here?
The 61B tax question is an interesting one. It’s totally fair to ask how much a golf course (or soccer field) *should* pay in taxes. I don’t know the right answer, but IMHO it’s unreasonable to charge the “highest and best use” value at the commercial tax rate. But I understand that reasonable minds may differ on any idea of what’s “fair”.