Don't padlock the parks
A Times EditorialPublished February 21, 2008
How can anyone think it is right to spend taxpayer money on a park, then deny the public the use of it? But that is happening in Hillsborough County, where officials have started down the slippery slope of privatizing the parks system.
The Times' Bill Varian reported last week that the county is ceding control over its parks to private sports leagues. Officials rationalized the move as a cost-cutting measure. Voter-mandated revenue cuts and a slowing economy have forced local governments throughout the state to slash spending and payroll. In exchange for these private sports clubs maintaining parks, the county allows the leagues to control who uses the fields and when. County officials are also negotiating with the leagues to allow them to charge other users.
This lazy form of money management is indefensible on its face. Taxpayers paid for these parks and they should have full and fair access to them - to the ballfields and courts as much as to the rest rooms and parking. The public made clear last year when Commissioner Jim Norman tried to spend $40-million on an amateur sports park what it thought about privatizing the parks system. It was wrong then for a big-ticket park, and it is wrong now for the parks already in place.
The spending cuts are not the end of the world. They require only that the county set some priorities and focus on core services. Keeping the parks public is one of them.