What do you think and why?

Matt

Don't know much about the ins and outs...please educate.

FJ...out.

Actually, I'm still learning myself. It's part of a CWP class for school. I'm taking a simple poll, and trying to learn more from others that might have experience.

privatization=private parties(companies) have ownership on land and can build buildings, etc...

non-privatization=stays the same for most parks...

Matt

Oh ya, and from my research so far, it's Against for me.

Let me see here...if you vote against privatization of National Parks then your argument becomes supported by the premiss that by doing this it would not allow private entities to exploit or misuse our public lands.
On the other hand voting against insures that the government continues to do as it sees fit without question or accountability.

Just food for thought Rip.

FJ...out.

I don't want to say to much, because it might not be right and it will make me sound like a huge idiot. I know this has been a hot subject in class, and might be on here too. No flames, please, just facts. Thanks.

Matt

i can see it now, the "diet pepsi/mount rainier national park"

Hell NO, I dont even want to think about what it would end up like. The idea dosent seem like it would result in the best management of the resources. If the state, or even the county was to to manage the ONP I believe it would hurt the environment, the economy in the long run, and turn the park into a locals only area. The county or state is not going to have as much money to manage an area as the federal government, and the recreational uses would be limited.

I believe the idea is designed for the badlands where the only tourists have four stomaches and the ideas of the urban majority have no bearing over how the locals make their living. (I think thats why they called them the sage brush rebels)

The olympic national park is an area where everyone can enjoy the beauty of the olympic peninsula, not an area for timber harvest.

It is never a good idea to introduce profit margins into the running of anything that had previously been run by the government, especially National parks.

Also, last I heard there's a lot of question about corporate accountability these days as well.

I think it would be almost crazy for a private entity to take on something as large as a national park. Imagine the liability that they would be assuming. What would their insurance costs be? Probably cost prohibitive. I also envision very strict governmental regulations on what they could do with the park and it's resources. That would add more overhead to ensure that the park was in compliance with all the bureaucratic hoops that were put into place.

I'm no business expert, but I think that the captial required to operate something as large as a national park would make the user fees prohibitively high, which would keep the public away unless there was something unique that would draw them to the park. Do the user fees we pay in our parks cover the expenses of maintenance? I doubt it.

I think it is a big mistake. It costs us more to have public employees operate and maintain the Parks but I believe they do have the best interest of the parks, environment and public at heart. Opening it up to low bid "for profit" companies will turn the Parks into McParks with McServices and the public will ultimately end up with an McExperience. Take for instance the difference between freeway rest areas in WA (State Operated) comapred to CA (Contracted Services). In WA they are fairly clean, well kept grounds.... in CA they are worse than a crappy gas station, litter everywhere and grounds that are barely better than a vacant lot.
I think services in general at the parks will suffer, contractors will do the bare minimum or less.

If you want to see a good example of how a private entity can bung up what the Feds should be doing, check out the Hanford cleanup.

To privatize our National Parks is a difficult problem and one that has come up for many years. Used to be a supervisor of maintance in Yellowstones west district and every year had to do a budget that could compete against what a private company would bid. Things like Trash pic up,campground maintance and water and wastewater operations as well as road up keep. In a park as isolated as Yellowstone the goverment could do it a lot cheaper than any private company could. But having to continualy cut costs so it would not go private hurt what was needed to be done over the long run. We could never give a real and fair budget and to this day our National Treasures have payed the price. From what I've heared that in parks where private work is now done things are no better than if the goverment did the work maybe even worse. I know one thing and that is the kids who worked as seasonals and the adults who worked full time for our national park services really cared and loved our parks and did a good job.

Finneyrock,

"It costs us more to have public employees operate and maintain the Parks..."

How so, I'd like to hear your opinion. The way I see it is we pay taxes, liscenses, entrance fees (on some parks), concessions (on some parks), and I'm sure other ways I'm not thinking of right now. When the parks become privatized, all that money is cut from the budget. The company that now owns the company must not only charge us (sportsmen) more for the "upkeep" of these parks, but also to make a living. And because not all people in the nation use these parks, the price will be raised to compensate for the people that use the parks.

Am I far off?

Matt

Well, lets see........there are several ex-ENRON
execs looking for a new gig......O yes, we could have management overseen by, lets see.....OK we will make it the SEC.......Only 11 of the Nasdaq
100 are following the rules of the FASB, the rest are using some form of "creative accounting" and the SEC can't do a damn thing about it, except point their finger. You sure have a lot more faith in who and how than I do. The present system just needs some accountability and some teeth to enforce. Thats my not very humble opinion on this one! Tell us what your classmates
finally decide>

I think that there should be some clarification made here. Are you asking if the Feds should hand over all aspects of a park and say "Here, have at it?" Or are you asking if certain specific operations of a park should go private?

Private companies are in business for one reason only. Profit. With the size and responsibility of running a National Park, no company could completely run it and make a profit without making access and use fees so high that no one will use the park.

On the other hand, if a private company can offer garbage clean-up services or concession services, for example, at less cost than the service is currently operating at, then great. Let them get the contract. But for this to work, the Park Service must maintain management of the park and grow the balls (or have legislation in place) to hold the private company accountable for their work. There must be severe penalties imposed upon the company if they do not live up to the quality of work outlined in the contract.

All too often the government will award a job to the lowest bidding private company, and then do nothing about it when they fail to live up to their end of the deal. Just look at our recent stadiums built in Seattle. The taxpayers are paying the price for unreasonably low construction bids, and the state did nothing about it. When companies bid the jobs, make them stick to the bids, or sue the h*ll out of them like we do in the private sector.

Just my opinion.

There's alot of parks with concession services that are ran by outside vendors so that would be nothing new. Granted that isn't running the park it's providing a service within the park, so it's really apples and oranges there.

My basic outlook on the whole deal is that some things are worth paying tax dollars for. National defense, parks and hatcheries are a few.

I'll be the first to admit these systems are very broken but they are something that we need to keep paying to keep.