If Frederick increasingly is known for its trendy restaurants and shops, its historical roots remain a part of its fabric, from a City Hall built on the site of an early protest against British rule to a mall and minor league baseball team named after hometown hero Francis Scott Key.
Now, another revolution could be fomenting as Frederick County considers a radical change to the way it does government business: It is debating whether to outsource many of its public services to private business, road maintenance and parks and recreation programs, budgeting in the finance department and Central Booking at the jail. Should that happen, the county of 233,000 residents would become the largest U.S. jurisdiction to privatize what have traditionally been services provided by public employees.
The proposal, launched by an all-Republican Board of County Commissioners that after last year's elections took on a more conservative, smaller-government cast, has created an uproar. More than 500 county residents and employees descended on Winchester Hall in Frederick, the seat of the county government, for a public hearing on the proposal last week — the first of several scheduled for this month — with most opposing it, and vocally so.
3 comments:
Privatizing some services may be fine. But services, like road maintenance, would be a disaster. Companies are in it for a profit, and if that means cutting corners, then so be it. All one has to do is look as the condition of some of the newer subdivisions built in Wicomico County, and then say that private is better. The taxpayers will be paying for a long time to fix what private industry has done to roads.
9:09 most of the road work is done by private contractors under bid anyway.
Not sure how quality work gets guaranteed any more. Seems like no government or private company cares about that any more.
9:32. Some roadwork is done by private contractors. Look at what happens when developers build subdivisions. Many subdivisions aren't that old and are experiencing big problems. Aside from paving and say the new Westside Collector road, or Beaglin Park Drive, the county does most everything else themselves. Brings up another good point. Look at Beaglin Park Drive. Built by private industry. I don't see how it would be affordale to pay private industry for maintenance resposibilities, road maintenance can be a 24 hour responsibility. The state did it for years because they had money to burn. Now that times are tight, they have shifted many of those responsibilities back to themselves. With Frederick County being so close to PA, it would be ashame to see someone from out of state get the bid, and all the local people put out of work. Not to mention that the dollars those people earned locally were spent locally. Now the money could be going to Pa.
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