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.
Source: By EVAN McLAUGHLIN, Voice of San Diego, October 19, 2006
For a clue of how Mayor Jerry Sanders' proposal to allow private businesses to compete for city jobs might work, look to Indianapolis. About 2,000 miles away and with a population about half the size of San Diego, Indianapolis is being held up as a shining example of why voters should -- or shouldn't -- vote for Proposition C in the Nov. 7.
...... Indianapolis now contracts out its information technology, golf courses, wastewater treatment, some of its trash collection and snow-plowing services, and its airport operations.
In addition, some city employees in the heartland city beat out their private-sector competitors when it came time to put the services to bid, downsizing their own operations in the process.
Source: Janna Goerdt, Duluth News Tribune (MN), Thursday, October 19, 2006
..... Duluth Parks and Recreation Director Carl Seehus predicted this week that the city-owned and operated courses could earn between $50,000 and $60,000 this year.
....... The profits resulted in part from favorable summer weather that led to higher-than-normal turnout. Another factor, Seehus said, is the continued effects of a 2005 “restructuring” of golf course management. The city dropped a golf manager position that paid $50,000 to $100,000.
Other city-owned golf courses in northern Minnesota rely on profitable bar and restaurant businesses, private management companies, land sales and continual loans from city governments to stay afloat.
Source: JASON CLAYWORTH, Des Moines REGISTER (IA), July 17, 2006
Des Moines has followed the leads of other cities and, in small steps, has begun to putt its way out of the golf business. Iowa’s capital city, on average, has lost more than $200,000 a year at its three public golf courses since 2000.
....... The latest agreement was signed last week for Blank Park Golf Course on the city’s south side. It lets a private company, C-Corporation, control almost all hiring decisions, maintenance, major improvements and renovations. City officials earlier this year hired a private company to supply 11 workers at Waveland and Grand View golf courses, which will save taxpayers an estimated $114,000 a year.
Source: By Kathryn Casa, Vermont Guardian, Posted May 12, 2006
In its ongoing quest to run more efficiently, the Agency of Natural Resources will send three key staffers to a Washington-area management conference at a conservative think tank founded by a strong advocate of government privatization. John Sayles, ANR’s director of policy and research planning, Brendan Cosgrove, executive assistant to the commissioner of Fish and Wildlife, and wetlands ecologist Shannon Morrison will attend a two-day “Lean Sigma Six” conference at The Performance Institute, whose president and founder, Carl DeMaio, is the keynote speaker. The trio learned of the think tank and its programs after visiting counterparts in Iowa who recently reorganized their environmental agency.
..... DeMaio founded The Performance Institute in 2001 with offices in Virginia and San Diego, where he was instrumental in helping to revamp that city’s government. According to one report, he supports “de-funding unions as part of the right’s long-term strategy to cement their long-term dominance.”
Source: By Emily Shartin, Boston Globe (MA), April 30, 2006
Skaters and hockey players have been able to get more ice time as the management of some public rinks has shifted to the private sector, a new report finds. The report (.pdf), issued by the Pioneer Institute, a public policy think tank, looks at the effects of the state's move to contract rink operations to outsiders. It shows that state-owned rinks under private management are open about nine weeks longer than they were when they were run by state agencies. Private contractors can run the rinks more efficiently because they have money to invest in repairs and can focus solely on operating the rink, officials say.
Source: By Scott Kraus, The Morning Call, April 7, 2006
On second thought, Allentown Mayor Ed Pawlowski has decided not to contract out management of the city's golf course. The on-again, off-again privatization effort, which started in 2005 under former Mayor Roy C. Afflerbach, is officially off. After reviewing four bids the city received in March, Pawlowski said he decided to turn them all down, and will hire a city-employed course manager to run Allentown Municipal Golf Course.