City Has No Plans for Country Club?

If you live in Florence, or perhaps just shop frequently in the Lauderdale County seat, some of your tax dollars just made 100 individuals $20K richer. Why?

We're not sure. Mayor Bobby Irons has announced that the city currently has no actual plans to expand the current landfill into the Golf and Country Club property--it just didn't want this wonderful deal to slip through its municipal fingers. We know that Councilman Barry Morris' father-in-law benefited from the sale. Who else received money from the purchase of this stately white elephant?

Surely the city didn't buy the FG&CC in order to ensure more paying customers for its Blackberry Golf Course, now hard pressed to compete with two Robert Trent Jones Golf Courses? In our column yesterday on the small Colbert County town of Cherokee, we mentioned the expression "follow the money." It may not have applied to that comical circus near the Mississippi state line, but we have no doubt it does here.

Now we not only own a luxury golf course and club house, we'll be footing the bill for its upkeep. Located on the edge of the city with little use, how long until vandals discover a new venue for their senseless graffiti and destruction?

We expected better from our council. We're just not sure why.


What's up with this: A reader has informed us that Pasquale's in Muscle Shoals has closed. Indeed, it has. Too bad the city to the south of Florence didn't see fit to bail our this icon.

Shoalanda