City offers golf, pool memberships at 10% off

A 10 percent discount is in effect for all 2018 annual golf membership fees at Westwood Golf Course and season pool passes at Maytag Pool following recent city council approval. While season passes have remained fairly stable at both recreational hot spots in Newton, the city is hoping to increase the number with the sale.

“This request is just to increase the number of annual memberships,” community service manager Brian Laube said. “We want to get more customers in the door and then hopefully get some repeat customers, sell more merchandise, sell more concession.”

Following an amendment to have both sales running concurrently, the discounts were activated at approval of the resolution through the end of March. The change was made to open up a large time frame for citizens to take advantage of the sale. In the original resolution, pool passes were on sale from March 19 to 29.

“The people that are tied to the pool said the biggest demand for pool passes is around the spring break time. They felt we could take advantage of sale a week before and the week during spring break,” Laube said. “Golf, they felt, because they really don’t have a spring break, their season starts once the weather breaks, we felt we wanted to have it a little earlier and longer duration.”

Mayor Mike Hansen said he would like to see the pool pass discount increase to capture a larger audience like the golf pass does. Councilwoman Evelyn George agreed adding the passes could be used as gifts for the upcoming holidays.

“Let’s have a longer time that the pool passes are available. Could that be a Christmas gift, I know the timing on the golf is so it could be a Christmas gift, Valentine’s gift,” George said.

George also wanted to clarify the term membership for the passes to the golf course. She asked Laube what all is included in a member to Westwood.

“Basically, the use of the course,” Laube said. “If they are using a cart they still have to pay cart rental fees. If they keep a cart out there they still have to pay to store it.”

George said she would like the terminology to be changed to season pass since the membership does not contain any “perks” beyond the opportunity to golf.

“The term membership brings back kind of the country club membership. If you buy a pool season pass, you get to go to the pool during regular business hours,” George said. “I would like to see it changed to a season pass for clarity.”

To obtain a season pass to either the golf course or pool, contact Public Works at 641-792-6622.

Contact Jamee A. Pierson at 641-792-3121 ext. 6534 or jpierson@newtondailynews.com