Marfa 

At Wednesday morning’s Commissioners Court meeting, the county struck a six-month temporary management contract with a coalition hoping to keep the Marfa Golf Course alive after it was defunded in August with a split 3-2 vote. It’s the latest in a series of aftershocks from a particularly ugly budget season—but one that commissioners hope represents a compromise between the northern and southern halves of the county. 

Over the summer, the golf course and adjacent Vizcaino Park became a flashpoint for disagreements about how to best divide county resources between its two largest communities, Presidio and Marfa. Golf course funding has long been a sore spot for county leaders from Presidio, which has no county-funded parks—but the golf course in Marfa, which bears the designation as being the highest elevation course in the state, is one of few recreational opportunities in town and has become a source of pride for the local community, many of whom see it as one of the last vestiges of Marfa before its art world gentrification. 

For at least the next six months, the course will be managed by an LLC formed by the Presidio County Golf Course Committee, a group of locals who banded together to try to save the course from defunding, and a booster group called High Desert Golf. Precinct 1 Commissioner Deirdre Hisler said that a short-term arrangement was in everyone’s best interest. “This gives them the opportunity to really look at what operations for the golf course are like and to help the county understand what we need in a longer-term lease,” she explained. 

Management duties will include landscaping and point of sale services, including fee collection and rentals. The group will be responsible for utilities, but they can continue to utilize the water well on the course that irrigates the greens. The county has no financial obligation through the contract, but in exchange for their services, the coalition will be allowed to keep fees that they collect from course users. 

County Attorney Blair Park explained that a short-term agreement was the way to go, legally-speaking, to keep the course up and running while the county works on a permanent arrangement through a formal RFP, or “request for proposals,” process, which involves public postings and deliberation in commissioner’s court. “This is something that we can do now without using that RFP procedure and going out for quotes,” Park explained. 

Joey Benton, one of the folks involved in the new management company, felt optimistic about the future of “the highest in Texas” golf course. “We’re very excited to see where it goes,” he said.