Ten Cents on the Dollar: San Diego's Golf Course Audit Lays Bare the Public-Assets Problem
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A city audit has put a stark number on the return San Diego receives from eight leased golf courses covering more than 800 acres of public land: three and a half million dollars in rent for all of calendar year 2024, against thirty-four million dollars in gross revenue generated by private operators in fiscal year 2025. That amounts to roughly ten cents on the dollar — from some of the most valuable public real estate in one of the country's most expensive markets.
The audit did not emerge from a vacuum. It reflects broader scrutiny of city-owned assets and lease structures negotiated years or decades ago and never meaningfully updated to reflect current market conditions. Eight hundred acres in San Diego County invites an unavoidable opportunity-cost conversation — about affordable housing, about alternative recreational models, about what the public treasury has foregone — even if the conclusion is not necessarily that golf courses should be redeveloped.
In a related governance development, the City Council formalized a requirement for SDPD litigation cost reporting following an August 27th report that identified police-related cases as the primary driver of rising city legal payouts. Risk Management is expected to deliver a full accounting before the next budget cycle in early 2027 — meaning the 2027 budget conversation will, for the first time, include a structured public reckoning with what SDPD litigation actually costs the general fund. That number, once published, historically generates its own policy momentum.
The Midway Rising project continues to move through a complex legal and legislative gauntlet. The City Council repealed Measure C on August 25th under a court order. State Senator Akilah Weber Pierson is expected to lead a gut-and-amend legislative maneuver to exempt the project from standard CEQA environmental review. But the project sits in a coastal zone, where the California Coastal Commission holds jurisdictional authority — a constraint that makes any legislative CEQA carve-out significantly more contested than it would be for an inland site.
The Office of Emergency Services has begun direct outreach to roughly 7,000 properties identified as vulnerable due to slope position or floodplain location, as part of El Niño storm preparedness efforts. Storm-drain maintenance priorities have been flagged for fiscal year 2027. In a county with San Diego's history of hillside erosion and flooding during strong El Niño years, that advance planning carries genuine consequence — the kind that is either vindicated or forgotten depending on what the winter brings.