merging parks and recreation = parkreation
tommy permalink | categories: Tampa vs Hillsborough, city, county, hc bocc, storms torrents, taxesby tommy @ 8:34 am
Update 1130am: Replaced last paragraph.
In preparation for upcoming mandated property tax cuts, Hillsborough County Commissioners Rose Ferlita and Al Higginbotham want to talk with the city of Tampa about merging both parks and recreation departments to save money.
Higginbotham says it makes no sense for both him and his neighbor to each buy a lawn mower, when one mower could do the job on both lawns.
But in an email to the Tribune, Mayor Pam says that the county doesn’t weed whack, or edge the driveway, or even put out any inviting gnomes:
“If our well-run department were to be merged into the larger bureaucracy of county government which serves its residents throughout the unincorporated area, we would lose out in determining the quality of our parks and programming as well as responsiveness to our citizens.”
She also suggested the county’s more conservative values would ruin public recreation, bringing up Ronda Storms attack on gay themed displays at libraries.
Of course, Hillsborough didn’t say if they would run this combined parks department or if the city of Tampa would be in charge. I wonder if Hillsborough County would even consider Tampa run their parks department (ha ha ha).
I use local parks, but only for recreation - I have no experience with other amenities such as after school care or organized sports - so I don’t really care if it is run by the city or the county. As long as it is safe, convenient, and easy to use. After all, it’s just a park.
I could have sworn that I remembered the current county commission reversing the ban on gay displays at libraries. If they have, I cannot find it online. After reading Mayor Pam’s entire email on the St. Pete Times website, and looking at Wayne Garcia’s piece about it, I see that the ban is still in effect. All government facilities should be inclusive of all of our citizens, so it does matter who runs the parks.
Of course, it matters more who runs our government.
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February 5th, 2008 at 11:15 am
I do use the afterschool program and it has been a wonderful assest to my family for 6 years. It would be a shame for the merger to ruin it for the kids and families that have and always will count on them to provide a safe and secure place to go after school and in the summer.
February 5th, 2008 at 11:17 pm
It’s time for our city and county governing bodies to consider going “metro.” It’s worked well in other major markets. As for who stays or goes, well it really ain’t that hard to figure out, now is it!
February 6th, 2008 at 12:11 pm
While the metro concept is a good one, do we really want to trust the city parks to the County Commission ? I really think not.
Let’s see if a county mayor idea can pass first.