By Ted Schnell • BocaJump | Feb. 8, 2012

You’re teeing off, facing into the wind on the sixth hole, an uphill shot at a spot on The Highlands of Elgin that’s about as far from the clubhouse as anywhere else on this side of the course. Holding true to the course guide, you keep to the right side of the fairway.

Satisfied with your drive, you stow your driver and climb into the cart to follow your ball down the fairway. But nothing happens. Dead quiet and no movement.

After more than four years of serving duffers on The Highlands of Elgin, the fleet of global positioning system-equipped golf carts is losing power, sometimes while golfers are on the course. That means someone must run a freshly charged cart out to them — and tow the dead one back to the shop for a recharge. Many of the carts, according to the city administration’s memo to the Elgin City Council, no longer will carry enough of a charge to complete an 18-hole round.

The carts are moneymakers at the course, according to Elgin management analyst Aaron Cosentino. “Actually, the golf carts are pretty lucrative for us,” he said. “We pulled in from the golf cart revenue in 2011 … $350,000 … and the lease payment was only $52,272.”

But the three-year warranty on the carts’ batteries is expired, and replacing the batteries on the entire fleet would cost about $50,000, the staff memo to the council states.

The dilemma is that’s a pricey fix for a fleet of carts that, under the city’s contract with EZGO Textron, is scheduled to be traded in at the end of the 2012 golf season. The city’s contract with EZGO started in January 2008 and runs through December 2012.

But Cosentino said the city has an option in its contract to end the lease early and begin anew — with a new five-year lease and a new fleet of the same quantity and model of golf carts whose new batteries, city officials have been assured, are supposed to last more than five years.

The new lease would cost the city $52,516, only $242 a year more than the city already pays, and would run through 2016, if approved by the City Council.