Recently in Parks & Recreation Category

Source: By Danielle Ameden, Daily News (MA), Thu Apr 16, 2009, 04:26 PM EDT

MILFORD - In these tight times, Town Administrator Louis Celozzi is proposing that the town should privatize maintenance at the Vernon Grove and Purchase Street cemeteries for "substantial savings." ..... The Parks Department, which cares for the Purchase Street Cemetery, would be relieved of the extra work and could focus on other tasks.

Source:By Eric Dexheimer, Corrie MacLaggan, AMERICAN-STATESMAN (TX),Sunday, January 25, 2009

First in an occasional series on the privatization trend  in state government.

Over the years, Texas legislators have ordered state agencies to hire private firms to build and maintain the state's roads, operate its parks, oversee its prisons, sign up its welfare recipients and develop its information technology systems, among other things.  Each time the government signs another deal with these companies to take over jobs it has traditionally performed itself, politicians promise it will save tax dollars by bringing the efficiencies of the private sector to the cumbersome bureaucracies of government.  So how much money has outsourcing actually saved Texans?  No one knows.

......At the same time, the U.S. Department of Justice's recent report [titled: U.S. Department of Justice Statewide CRIPA Investigation of the Texas State Schools and Centers] of ongoing abuse and neglect at the state's institutions for people with mental retardation was seen by some as proof of government's systemic incompetence -- a key argument for privatization.

Related editorial:EDITORIAL: Contracts should serve public, not private sector

American Statesman (TX),Tuesday, January 27, 2009

A new series of occasional but in-depth stories about how the state of Texas contracts with private firms or individuals to perform services for the public began in the Austin American-Statesman on Sunday, and it immediately laid out an important problem: No one can document that such contracts have benefited the public, even as the state appears to rely more than ever on them.

Source: Coalition of National Park Service Retirees, Professional Report Series - Number 4, October 10, 2008

Since the first national park, Yellowstone, was set aside 136 years ago, fewer than 400 of more than 80,000 places have been preserved in perpetuity through the extraordinary means of adding them to the National Park System. The parks are not capital assets and not real estate; they are inalienable national treasures held in trust for 281 million Americans and their descendants. Yet sustained efforts are being made to remove them from the commonwealth and put them into private hands.

Today, as in the so-called Gilded Age of the last third of the 19th Century, this commonwealth belonging to all Americans is in danger of being converted to private assets due to sustained efforts to turn over public lands and sites to commercial entities. Efforts are also being made to contract out work normally done by highly-trained and dedicated National Park Service employees and to seek corporate support for park projects and initiatives once funded by the American people as part of their shared heritage.

Source: By MELISSA WALKER, Des Moines Register (IA), August 9, 2008

Des Moines officials hope a move to privatize two more municipal golf courses will pull revenue out of the rough.

Combined, the Waveland and Grandview courses were in the red almost $400,000 for the budget year that ended June 30. Officials had projected a $208,000 loss "at a time when our budget is extraordinarily stressed," City Manager Rick Clark said.

Source: By Matt Smith, San Francisco Weekly, June 20, 2007

...... This beautiful view of the Golden Gate Bridge and the Marin County shore, as well as hundreds of acres of exquisite city parkland, will soon become private if Mayor Gavin Newsom and Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin have their way.

Mayor Newsom last week submitted a resolution aimed at privatizing Harding Park Golf Course and Lincoln Park Golf Course, the latter of which is a cliff-side monument to San Francisco and America's early-20th-century fascination with the expanding the things and places society holds in common.

Source: By MIKE DONILA, St Petersburg Times (FL), June 19, 2007

CLEARWATER - With state-mandated property tax cuts looming, city leaders are contemplating a different idea for the city's signature recreation facilities and swimming pools:

Turn them over to a third party to run, even if it may mean users would have fewer options and would pay higher fees.

Source: Indianapolis Star, May 14, 2007

Stephen Goldsmith, who championed privatization as mayor of Indianapolis for two terms in the 1990s, has joined an investment company with money to spend on government assets. Goldsmith will work for CapitalSource, a commercial lender and investment business in Chevy Chase, Md., as director of its new Infrastructure Finance and Investment Group, a news release said. ……. "The new group will focus on acquiring and financing long-life infrastructure assets -- transportation, utility or recreation -- across the United States," the company said.

Source: Associated Press (MN), Thursday, May 03, 2007

Duluth may privatize its two public golf courses to resolve a union grievance, said John Hall, the city’s chief administrative officer. …… Ken Loeffler Kemp, a representative for American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, said the union opposes hiring a private firm to manage the golf courses because it could hire nonunion employees and pay them less than a city worker would earn.