If you have attempted to use any of the City of Albuquerque’s 22 community centers during the past 2 weeks, you may have seen the following sign. That’s right, the first thing the City of Albuquerque does when kids get out of school at Albuquerque Public Schools is…to shut the City’s community centers down for two weeks.
Now, I’m sure the maintenance is critical and I hope the training is helpful, but with students off school for just under 12 weeks, is this really the only opportunity to do training and maintenance? With 22 community centers spread out across our fair city, is there no way to keep some of those centers open while training is done at the others?
These community centers are nice facilities with meeting rooms, fitness areas, and gymnasiums available. Those are fixed assets. In the private sector (think airlines and airplanes) the incentive is to maximize the use of those fixed assets by minimizing down time. Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to be the case in the public sector.
Since government facilities operate primarily for the convenience of their employees, my guess is that the first two weeks of summer are a perfect time for vacations.
What’s a libertarian doing using a government service?
I drive on the roads as well and have even called the paramedics. I’m forced to pay for the service. A few of them like cops and paramedics I’m even happy to have government do. I might do things differently if I were in charge, but if I’m paying for something, I’m not going to hesitate to use them. Besides, the marginal cost of my using a community center is minimal. That is not the case for many other government programs.
Yeah you’re right Jamie, we (taxpayers) should just be forced to pay for the services, not actually USE them. That’s for the freeloaders, such as yourself.