Saving parks — and money, too

Big local government budget cuts are coming, which means your parks are about to be held hostage.

It's a public-sector ritual during economic downturns. When the revenue spigot stops gushing and government can't continue growing, politicians wring their hands, bow their heads and lament that they'll have to make significant cuts to parks and recreation budgets, including the possibility of park and facility closures.

You see, parks are the one government service the vast majority of net taxpayers actually use. Law-abiding, productive members of society overwhelmingly subsidize the costs of policing and providing social services to the law-breaking, unproductive folks. When government threatens to cut recreation services or limit access to parks, the productive class inevitably cries uncle and agrees to pay higher taxes and fees to continue enjoying public spaces.

Clark County and the city of Las Vegas are facing a combined revenue shortfall of nearly $200 million for next fiscal year, and the cities of North Las Vegas and Henderson are sinking in the same boat. Even if unionized public employees agree to take pay cuts, there will still be tens of millions of dollars in spending reductions starting next summer. Because parks are not considered "essential" services by public administrators -- a la jails, courts, fire departments, business licensing, etc. -- recreation is a ripe target for the ax.

But what if there were a way to improve our parks and save taxpayers money? To not only keep our parks open, but make them more enjoyable while slashing park spending at the same time?

It's past time to outsource public park maintenance to the private sector.

Landscape maintenance contractors are as ubiquitous in this valley as sunshine itself. They cut grass, trim shrubs, blow leaves and collect trash at homes, strip malls, office buildings, hospitals, hotels and schools. More importantly, they keep up some of the nicest parks in town -- the ones owned and controlled by master-planned communities and homeowners associations. It is a healthy, intensely competitive industry.

Government can make the case that many of its legitimate functions should not be outsourced or privatized. But governments can't justify providing unusually high salaries and pensions to their own armies of landscape maintenance workers when the private sector has an abundant supply of labor that will do the same job cheaper -- and better.

The typical local government landscape maintenance worker makes as much or more than the typical schoolteacher. (How's that for an illustration of government priorities?) At Clark County, landscape maintenance workers start at an annual salary of more than $31,000 per year and can top out at nearly $57,000 per year. Crew leaders can receive a base salary of up to $66,000, while park maintenance managers earn up to $77,000 per year.

By comparison, a first-year Clark County School District teacher with a bachelor's degree is paid a base annual salary of $35,083, while a ninth-year teacher with a master's degree is paid $52,485.

Local government landscape maintenance salaries are totally out of whack with the private sector. If a contractor were obligated to pay those wages, never mind the pension contributions, it "would be out of business in a week," one local business owner told me.

What kind of savings might taxpayers realize if the private sector -- instead of public employees -- took care of public parks? I enlisted a well-qualified landscape maintenance company in an outsourcing experiment. The business participated on the condition that it not be identified.

I picked a midsize public park and requested a hypothetical bid for its maintenance needs. I selected Davis Park, an 8.7-acre neighborhood park south of Sahara Avenue between Rainbow Boulevard and Torrey Pines Drive, across from Gray Elementary School. It's a nice park, but the grass has plenty of brown spots, and many of the trees could use some serious TLC. Clark County, which has a parks maintenance budget of about $12.6 million for the current year, reported spending $6,284 per month to maintain Davis Park.

I did not disclose Clark County's costs to my bidder. To match the work county crews are supposed to be doing (mowing, fertilizing, trash pickup, occasional power washing, etc.), this company would charge $3,200 per month. That's almost half the county's cost. To significantly improve the service and spend far more time tending to the park than county workers do, the company would charge $5,200 per month, a savings of about 15 percent.

Why am I sure private landscape maintenance workers would do a better job than ones employed by government? Competitive pressure, for starters. Private landscapers who do a lousy job get fired. Government landscapers who do a lousy job get pay raises.

Then look at Hills Park in Summerlin. The park used to be maintained by the city at a cost of $150,000 per year. But the work performed by city crews was so far below the community's standards -- standards met at a much lower cost by private companies -- that Summerlin's homeowners association took the park back and contracted the upkeep. The City Council finalized the agreement in June. The park already looks much nicer.

Local governments will be confronting painful choices in the months ahead, but all of their decisions don't have to be painful for the people who pay their bills. If elected officials overlook the bloat in their parks maintenance budgets, voters should outsource them.

Glenn Cook (gcook@reviewjournal.com) is a Review-Journal editorial writer.