DILLON, SC (WBTW) – Dillon City Council met Monday night to discuss the city’s contract with the City of Dillon Municipal Golf Course.

The city currently has a five-year lease with the golf course that would end on May 31.

Council Member, James Washington, made a motion to renew a two-year lease with the golf course.

“I think it’s truly important that the golf course stay viable to the community for at least the next two years,” Washington said.

However, Council Member Johnny Eller disagreed.

“I’m not against the golf course itself,” Eller said. “I’m against the City of Dillon being involved in the golf course.”

Eller asked council to table to motion until April, but Washington would not rescind his motion.

Council voted seven-to-one on the motion, and it passed. Eller was the only council member opposed to the two-year lease.

“We have deprived our community, when we put a million dollars into something that we haven’t had a return on,” Eller said.

Mayor Todd Davis said the city spends roughly $120,000 on the golf course per year.

“We lose money on the golf course, of course we lose money on a lot of things the city does, but you still do them,” Mayor Davis said. “If you don’t do them nobody else is going to, that’s what we’re here for, to make living in our area more pleasant.”

Mayor Davis said his main reason for keeping the lease with the golf course is for fundraisers.

“That’s our primary fundraiser for charities, they have golf tournaments,” he explained. “They probably have twenty-five or thirty a year, so if you don’t have that golf course, I don’t know where these charities are going to go to raise the money.”

Davis said over the course of the five-year lease, the City of Dillon has spent more than one million dollars on maintaining the golf course.

“The expenses have been about 1.9 million,” the Mayor said. “We’ve had about a million in revenue.”

The Mayor said the county gives the city $50,000 a year, and the city also uses money from the city’s two-percent hospitality tax to use towards the golf course.

“The County has given us a quarter million dollars,” Eller said during the meeting. “All that money should’ve went to the recreation department, but this council voted for it to go to the golf course.”

Eller said he wants to see money go towards other recreational projects in the city.

“Only the one percent play [golf] out of 99 here in the City of Dillon,” he said. “When you lost, or spent, one million dollars, and you have no return in your investment, then I think it’s time you cut your losses, and put that money to where it’s in good use.”

Mayor Davis said renewing the lease with the golf course will give Dillon residents a better quality of life.

“We didn’t feel that closing the golf course right now was the proper thing to do,” Davis said.