It is good to see the continuing coverage of parks by the Sacramento Bee, here and here, but sad to see the one-eye focus on increasing taxes as the only way to help parks, which many areas of the country, and locally, have shown to be a fallacy.
Privatization, public/private partnerships, nonprofit management, all have something to offer that does not call for increasing taxes and may even be providing better management and funding than that done by government, where parks and open space fall at the end of the funding queue; a situation magnified—as we are seeing in Sacramento—when government funding is shrinking.
One hopes Sacramento's public leadership will soon open both eyes to the wide possibilities available to them to provide for our parks—and not in the chaotic catastrophy-driven process used recently in turning over the nature center to a nonprofit—but through well-thought out planning and examining the success others have had, here and here for two examples.
