Here’s the breakdown. According to the town’s 2013 Com- prehensive Annual Financial Report, Blue Hill brought in over $2.5 million but ended the year about $600,000 in the red. Broadacres made almost $550,000, but needed roughly another $250,000 to get through the year. The past few years have seen similar deficits. Both courses are much loved and well used, but the loses may be getting tougher to stomach for a population already paying some of the highest property taxes in the nation.

Blue Hill, overlooking Lake Tappan in Pearl River, was built at the turn of the century for private use by New York City businessman, Montgomery Maze. Maze’s son developed the property into the Blue Hill Country Club in 1924. The town acquired the course in 1967 and has operated it ever since. Up until about ten years ago the gracious course of rolling hills and wide-open space was profitable, but as other towns opened their own public courses, Blue Hill began to lose money.

Broadacres’ history is far more colorful. Built in 1962, the tiny course is nestled among the tall oaks and derelict buildings of the now abandoned Rockland State Hospital grounds. Employees and patients used it for about a decade until the hospital closed in the 1970’s. In 2002, Orangetown purchased the entire site (348 acres) and acquired Broadacres as part of the deal. The town intended to lessen overcrowding at Blue Hill with Broadacres, but the course hasn’t pulled in the revenue the town hoped for.

For the last three years, Supervisor Andrew Stewart, and councilmen Tom Diviny, Tom Morr, Denis Troy, and Paul Valentine have bickered over what to do with Broadacres. At numerous town meetings Stewart, Morr, and Valentine have said the cost of keeping Broadacres open can’t be justified, especially as the town struggles to fund what Stewart calls essential services such as the police, fire, and highway departments. Diviny and Troy have argued that closing the course would lessen its value and displace town employees.

The hotly contested compromise is that, as of this spring, appliedgolf, a New Jersey company known for resuscitating struggling golf courses, has been contracted to manage Broadacres for the next three years. The company faces a challenge, namely to update Broadacres’ charming but basic facilities. So far the clubhouse has fresh carpet, new furniture, a widescreen TV, and cable. There’s also a new website, and some greens fees are 10 to 15 percent lower. More sophisticated data retention practices will track who is using the course and when. According to a representative of appliedgolf, this should help inform future marketing efforts.

The challenges of Broadacres and Blue Hill are not Orangetown’s alone. Of the fifteen courses appliedgolf currently manages, nine are public. Appliedgolf’s president Dave Wasenda says the company is seeing an increase in the number of municipalities looking to outsource management of their courses. When asked if struggling municipal courses can be made solvent, Wasenda says, “I think depending on where the course is, what kind of competition there is and the course’s overhead, it is possible for public courses to break even and even make a profit.”

That’s certainly what town officials are hoping for. It’s easy for a non-golfer to dismiss public courses as luxuries, but taxpayer dollars fund many services not every taxpayer uses. Well-funded schools, sewers, libraries and parks contribute equally to a better quality of life without distinguishing who uses what. But as Orangetown strains to pay for the services and amenities residents expect, Blue Hill and Broadacres will be easy targets for cutbacks.

That said, looking out over Lake Tappan at Blue Hill’s 8th tee and watching the sky soften to dusky pink, the dollar signs simply disappear.