The Junction City Commission discussed whether or not to add a non-resident surcharge to recreation facilities within the city.

Commissioner Pat Landes had requested that the consideration of the surcharge be placed on the agenda. His thoughts were that a surcharge could be added to both the airport and golf course in order to increase the revenues and help make those facilities be self sustainable.

“We’re always posed with problems about how do we raise revenue, and is it fundamentally just,  that a community that pays for a facility, those residents that do not pay their taxes towards that, pay the same rate as those that do,” Landes said.

He explained that the fee would not be extremely high and compared it to green fees at Rolling Meadows.

“I’m talking about maybe 20 percent on an $18 fee. So lets say you pay four bucks more on a green fee than somebody that lives in Junction City.”

John Bernstein, PGA General Manager at Rolling Meadows told the commission that he researched his customer base and found out that 60 percent of his customers do come from out of town.

He also said that he approached a group of golfers the other day that were from Wamego and asked them what a surcharge would mean to them.

“One gentleman told me, and he’s kind of a regular at our facility participates in a lot of tournaments, and he said I already quite a bit of money in transportation, I will not come back,” Bernstein said.

Cheryl Beatty, Interim City Manager did add in the memo that the discussion include adding the surcharge to all recreation facilities in the City. That would include Spin City, the 12th Street Center, and the City Pool.

Adding the surcharge to all of those facilities did receive a negative response during the public comment portion of the meeting.

Tiffany Eichelberger who lives on Fort Riley explained,”I’m a military wife, and I also know a lot of other military wives who also have a lot of children, who would like to keep using these recreational facilities. I saw that the potential surcharge was five to 25 percent. At 25 percent, for people to be bringing their families that’s really cost prohibitive at times. As military we’re on sometimes very limited budgets, and to do a family outing like that, it would not be in the cards anymore.”

The Commission did go ahead and table the matter and asked that they receive more information on how a surcharge or flat increase would effect each facility.