At last night's council meeting there was some concern about paying Rich Klein a management fee for the rest of his contract at Mulligans at the Gering Golf Course. I realize not everyone liked our decision to do this, and I will try to explain the reason behind our decision.

The decision came down to one question. Do we as the City Council want to have a "full-service" restaurant at the golf course? Some of the council members who went into the closed session told me they were going to vote no going in and came out voting yes. Because they are dedicated to having a full service restaurant.

We have tried several times over the past few years to have an operator at the golf course running the restaurant. Some of them, it was a secondary business. That didn't work either, because many times the primary operator was not in the building and did not watch what was going on.

Currently the operator, Rich Klein, is there most of the time Mulligans is open, which during the winter has been Tuesday thru Sunday 11am-9pm. He has been dedicated to making it a great restaurant, with good food, reasonable prices, and good service. His hours have been consistent which was lacking in the past two operators. He has learned some tough lessons, such as the business drops dramatically in September. However, the city has not done its best either to fix things that were the city's responsibility, which we are now working on.

I know some do not think it is fair, however, we are dedicated to make it successful. We will be working on some paticulars and some goals we would like to see and really be a partner with Rich so everyone is successful. We will be sitting down and coming up with a realistic marketing plan which will hopefully help.

If you have suggestions that you would like to see at the restaurant, please let us know. You can email me at mayor@gering.org.

I hope I have answered a few of your questions.