Privatization is not such a great solution for the city of Coral Gables
March 15, 2011 Leave a comment
There is a lot of bad experience with the privatization of municipal services in the US.
And there are many hidden costs to the city government of privatization or outsourcing.
There have been serious issues of maintaining the quality of services by the private operators. The region of South Florida has a particularly bad history of incompetent outside contractors, weak state laws to be able to sue contractors for incomplete work, and there are high city costs of selecting and supervising the contractors. Evidence is that the community can be very unhappy with the quality of privatized services.
In short, privatized costs do not save costs nor is quality of services sustained. Greater effort should go into improving the efficiency of Coral Gables government operations. That is the job of the city manager and the city commission.
He appeared more eager that the other aspirant to take on challenges that the city will face in the coming years, among them increasing privatization of services.
About Stephen E. McGaughey
Coral Gables Watch 