P.J. Simao, owner of Ives Hill Country Club in Watertown, N.Y., has written to the city charging that the rent it collects from Watertown Golf Club for nine holes is “well under market” and amounts to “an unfair subsidy” that shows “patently unfair favoritism.” Watertown GC is up for sale and a rival developer outbid Simao for the property.

A Watertown, N.Y. businessman is asking the city to cancel its lease with Watertown Golf Club, station WWNY/WNYF of Watertown reported.

In a letter written by lawyer Jan Kubrick, P.J. Simao, owner of Ives Hill Country Club, another semi-private club in Watertown, called the arrangement between the city at the Watertown Golf Club an “unfair subsidy,” WWNY/WNYF reported.

The letter claims the rent city collects for nine holes is “well below market.” Watertown Golf Club owns the other nine holes it uses, WWNY/WNYF reported.

“It is time the City end the patently unfair favoritism it shows to Watertown Golf Club, Inc.,” the letter said.

In the meantime, rival developer Mike Lundy is in the process of buying Watertown GC from a majority of its shareholders, WWNY/WNYF reported.

That sale was held up while a minority shareholder, Nicki Kogut, filed a lawsuit claiming that the club should have accepted a higher offer from Simao, WWNY/WNYF reported. A state Supreme Court ruling in late August allowed the sale to go through, but the case is still proceeding through the legal system.

Under the sale, Lundy would assume the golf club’s lease with the city, which will run for another 11 years, WWNY/WNYF reported.

Simao and his lawyer claim that the golf club has received at least $600,000 in subsidies from the city since 2006 “in the form of unfairly low taxes and well-under-market rent.”

The letter they sent to the city added that “in doing so, it is unfairly harming the competitive position of the other for-profit golf club in the City,” referring to Ives Hill.

“The loss of revenue to the City coffers is also patently unfair to City taxpayers,” the letter said.

As part of his legal argument, WWNY/WNYF reported, Simao’s lawyer contends that a 2015 court decision could make the lease between the city and the golf club “null and void.” In the case of Watertown, the lease was signed in 2000 by then-mayor Joe Butler Sr..

Butler is one of the three principal stockholders in Watertown GC, and Simao’s lawyer argues the 2015 court decision “renders null and void contracts between municipalities when the contract benefits an officer or employee who had the power, individually or as a member of a board, to negotiate, authorize, approve or prepare the contract, which was in fact the case in 2000,” WWNY/WNYF reported.

In its coverage of the story, the Watertown (N.Y.) Times reported that Butler abstained from voting on the agreement i 2000 because he was on Watertown GC’s Board of Directors.