A New Park

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JMJ Farms

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Seems like at least once a week I hear on the local news that a local city in Middle Georgia is opening a new park or spending big money on a beautification project, such as water features and planting wild flowers and such beside the roadway.... On the taxpayers dime. (Usually different cities that have populations of 20k or more. Some larger cities such as Macon open several new parks annually). I don't even have time to get all the work I need to get done completed every day. Much less go to a park for a leisurely walk. Fine with me if a person has time to do this, but I do not. Is there this much demand for public parks for recreation or is this simply an avenue for certain individuals to line their pockets with misappropriated funds?
 
JMJ Farms":3mfdgas4 said:
Seems like at least once a week I hear on the local news that a local city in Middle Georgia is opening a new park or spending big money on a beautification project, such as water features and planting wild flowers and such beside the roadway.... On the taxpayers dime. (Usually different cities that have populations of 20k or more. Some larger cities such as Macon open several new parks annually). I don't even have time to get all the work I need to get done completed every day. Much less go to a park for a leisurely walk. Fine with me if a person has time to do this, but I do not. Is there this much demand for public parks for recreation or is this simply an avenue for certain individuals to line their pockets with misappropriated funds?

Someone is lining their pockets. Becker groves is now Becker nursery if tells you anything. In Florida all the big in town highways are lined with trees and shrubs. And everything is watered with city water, and Florida supposedly has a water shortage. None of this crap makes any sense to me. The state spends 50 million annually on the beautification projects.
 
What I have seen about the new parks is it's part of the cities method of providing something for kids to do to hopefully reduce gang crime. To me it just looks like a easier place for the hoodlums to have an easy hunting grounds.
 
For a town our size, we have several city parks. All but one is in a very bad neighborhood. I seldom see anybody in of them (other than the city workers).
 
I drove by one of the wildflower projects on Hwy 82 the other day and the view of the poppies was beautiful least until I had so many butterfly guts on my windshield I could hardly see through my windshield, and like you, I began to question if this was really a good use of tax dollars. I guess butterfly lives don't matter. But then again, this was probably grant money and we all know grant money is not really tax dollars because its free money and comes from unicorn farts so we should just smile and keep enjoying the kool aid.

Don't know why they don't start putting up deer feeders in the medians so travellers can see deer. I guess they haven't thought of this yet.
 
JMJ Farms":1a6oku3w said:
Seems like at least once a week I hear on the local news that a local city in Middle Georgia is opening a new park or spending big money on a beautification project, such as water features and planting wild flowers and such beside the roadway.... On the taxpayers dime. (Usually different cities that have populations of 20k or more. Some larger cities such as Macon open several new parks annually). I don't even have time to get all the work I need to get done completed every day. Much less go to a park for a leisurely walk. Fine with me if a person has time to do this, but I do not. Is there this much demand for public parks for recreation or is this simply an avenue for certain individuals to line their pockets with misappropriated funds?
Our local TV stations are out of DFW area. Seems all they do is build or talk about building parks. This morning the discussion was completion of a 50 mile bicycle riding track all over the area. Most of these places become little more than places to get mugged or killed for your cell phone, bicycle or picnic cooler.
 
In my area it seems that when a developer proposes a new housing development the city will push to have an area set aside for a park if there aren't any near the new development. Also, one town had a good size park in an area that was being heavily developed that the city was able to sell and make an even bigger park a few blocks away and still had money left over for improvements to existing parks.

In my younger days I played a lot of softball and pick-up hockey so I used the parks a lot even though I didn't live in town and pay taxes for their upkeep. Also when the kids were younger they liked going into town and using "real" playground equipment once in a while since we homeschooled them.

Haven't been to a park in years now, but I still like to see people outside using them on a nice night instead of sitting in front of a tv.
 
In this state the counties can add a "conservation future tax" on to property tax. It is just a buck or so per parcel. But it adds up to nearly a million a year. The state law about it only allows the money to be spent to preserve farmland, protect critical areas, and purchase park land. The county park department took it as their own private fund for years. The money can't be used to build or maintain parks just buy the land. As a result the county owns a bunch of undeveloped parks. Just bare land sitting there doing nothing because the county doesn't have the money to develop or maintain any more parks.
 
Try livin right next to a US National Forest...they can waste more money doing nothing than any outfit you ever saw. Latest project appears to be upgrading the Lone Star hiking trail that crosses the highway right down from me..including a new pedestrian bridge over the river. I doubt 100 people/year use that mosquito magnet of a trail.
 
JMJ Farms":10ia8ztg said:
Glad I ain't the only one who sees it as an unnecessary, unwise use of taxpayers dollars.

Keep telling yourself its only grant money and that doesn't matter. After awhile most seem to believe this.
 
Jogeephus":1b11qh1f said:
JMJ Farms":1b11qh1f said:
Glad I ain't the only one who sees it as an unnecessary, unwise use of taxpayers dollars.

Keep telling yourself its only grant money and that doesn't matter. After awhile most seem to believe this.

Is this a 12 step kinda deal Joe? Or should I expect it to take longer? :bang:
 
JMJ Farms":13i9vrb1 said:
Jogeephus":13i9vrb1 said:
JMJ Farms":13i9vrb1 said:
Glad I ain't the only one who sees it as an unnecessary, unwise use of taxpayers dollars.

Keep telling yourself its only grant money and that doesn't matter. After awhile most seem to believe this.

Is this a 12 step kinda deal Joe? Or should I expect it to take longer? :bang:

I really can't say. I've been doing it for years now and it still pizzes me off every time I see them squandering money whether its grant money or tax money. We have us a California transplant with nothing but time on his hands who is trying to make our little town more like California. In the last three years they have paved, demolished and repaved the area around our "historic" courthouse five times. Once, the DOT engineer didn't even leave Atlanta to design it and it halted all semi-truck traffic on two major state highways for nearly six months till they tore up and redid the mess. There is not telling how many hundreds of thousands of dollars went into this fiasco. But it was only grant money. Only grant money. Only grant money. :bang: :bang: :bang: :bang: :bang: :bang:
 
Most of the parks are a novelty at first then the new wears off quick. Most parks aren't big enough imo to justify their creation. When a city already has numerous empty baseball fields it doesn't need more. The only parks I like are the big national forests where you can enjoy thousands of square miles away from other people like in Wyoming and Colorado. Don't have much of that here in Nebraska but that keeps our land from being $$$ from all the hippies coming to enjoy/overregulate the national forest (the big downside to Colorado and to a much lesser extent Wyoming.). Not to mention having to be mostly tourism reliant like huge swaths of Colorado.
 

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