Our Mill Creek Golf Club is finding 2011 will be a struggle to survive. In the past five years since we had a new owner he has found fighting mother nature and what she brought to our course more than he could bear. Within that time there have been three floods and one tornado with the repair and upkeep of the course was finally wearing very thin. I have been involved with meetings where these things have been brought to our attention. Our owner is asking for help from the little village of Salado and the sub-division called Mill Creek Community Association.

I happen to be deeply involved with the Mill Creek Golf Club and a dedicated golfer plus have been working the past five years with the Mill Creek Community Association (MCCA). I am involved with the MCCA as the editor of their newsletter so am very much interested in what goes on in both organizations. Being also involved with the village of Salado activities it makes me very interested in what happens to this community. If our Golf Club goes under it will surely hit the whole community. This was the purpose of these meetings with the owner of the course.

The first meeting was with special selected members to meet with the owner as he brought the fact to us loud and clear. He related to us that he has reduced the employee of the Club and Grounds workmen. He is willing to stay involved as long as the club can stay solvent. If making the club membership dues more inviting and able to recruit new members may help for the time being. He is interested in a buyer but believes the full community should be involved and maybe a way for a group to buy him out. The group decided that another meeting should be held with the Mayor and Alderman, MCCA Directors and Water Department for the Village.

This is how I became involved in the second meeting with the owner. I invited our present President and past President to attend with me for the MCCA. The Mayor and one Alderman attended for the city and two represented the Water Department. There were three from the original meeting also attending so an interesting exchange developed. Everyone agreed to the seriousness of what would happen to the Village of Salado if the Mill Creek Golf Club would close. Several suggestions were discussed as assessments, fund raising events until we finally decided we need to inform the full community of this situation. We decided to first encourage membership to the golf club as Matt our new promoted Manager informed us that we only have 69 memberships at this time.

This was a terrible shock to me as with 660 family that live in MCCA area that we have such a small group of people interested in our golf club. Our first project was to get a full article in the Village Newspaper the following week, followed up by the MCCA newsletter stating the facts as to what is happening to the golf course. We are hoping this publicity of the state of the golf course can draw in enough interest to bring up our membership to 100 in the next 6 months. That may be a tall order with the economy the way it is.

If there is a group interested in buying the course then a new organization can be formed with the Village. I feel this is a start but we have to inform the full area of Salado as to the situation and importance of having a golf course to draw people into our community. With all the damage that was done to the course with the last flood it will take a lot of work to bring it back to the 27 holes we had. You can check on the review I wrote recently with shows a before and after photographs of our little creek that flows through our golf course.