After another contentious debate over investing more city money into the SilverRock Resort, the La Quinta City Council approved purchasing equipment for the city-owned golf resort.

Last week, the City Council voted 3-2, with council members Kristy Franklin and Stanley Sniff Sr. dissenting, to purchase $756,400 in John Deere equipment for the maintenance of the more than 525-acre property.

The equipment includes several mowers, from fairway to tee mowers, bunker rakes and trailers.

The purchase will be paid through an advance out of the city's General Fund Reserve and is just one way the city is trying to reduce operation costs at SilverRock, city officials said.

The equipment is expected to provide at least five years of service for the resort, city officials said.

“It's not a tremendous cost savings over the life of the purchase, but council continues to ask us to look for ways to reduce costs at the golf course, and this provides that,” Community Service Director Edie Hylton said.

Since 2004 the city has been leasing maintenance equipment from John Deere.

Last year, the city spent $240,000 on lease payments that affected the operational budget, said Randy Duncan, the resort's general manager.

“If we purchase this in advance, those lease payments go away. So we're saving over $200,000 to the operation budget annually,” Duncan said.

Plus, if they were to renew its lease, the John Deere equipment would cost $884,655, which is nearly $130,000 more than purchasing the items, city officials said.

Despite the cost savings, Sniff scrutinized the request, mainly concerned that the more than $700,000 advance is in addition to the General Fund advance of $875,203 to the SilverRock Golf Enterprise Fund the council approved in September.

“I've added those up, and that's a pretty significant sum,” Sniff said.

Franklin and Sniff also questioned the value of the purchase, worried that upkeep of the purchased equipment may cost the city more money and that the city will have to continue to make these major purchases of around $700,000.

Mayor Pro Tem Terry Henderson argued, however, that may not be the case.

“Just because the five years has ended doesn't mean a piece of equipment that worked yesterday isn't going to be broken today because today's five years,” she said.

“There will be some that have an extended life, so there could be a rollover effect on this equipment too.”

As part of the purchase, John Deere agreed to donate 13 pieces of equipment currently in use at the resort that would normally have to be returned to the company at the end of the lease, which is up in December.

“Staff is doing exactly what we've asked them to do,” Mayor Don Adolph said in defense of the council's approval. “It's just one step, and I'm sure we'll come up with other ways to save money.”