MARK SCHUMANN
“Pictures speak a thousands words, they say,” Councilman Richard Winger wrote yesterday in an email to City Manager Jim O’Connor and Clerk Tammy Vock. Winger was referring to pictures of overgrown parks he was sending to O’Connor. “Please have these available for overhead projection at next Tuesday’s (Council) meeting.”
Winger said he does not want to cut the funding for parks maintenance as has been proposed in the 2013-2014 budget. “This is my second message on the subject,” Winger wrote, “and I don’t see that the problem is being corrected, which leads me to believe we are on the wrong track contracting this out.”
Earlier this year, the city outsourced to an Orlando company maintenance of its unirrigated parks, ball fields, right of ways and easements. With five bids to choose from, ranging from $50,000 to $100,000 a year, the city went with the lowest bidder, and is now appears to be paying the price of being what some have said is penny wise and pound foolish.
By outsourcing to the lowest bidder, the City stood to save $50,000 a year, except that it also lost two public works employees in a department that has been cut from 144 to 96 workers in recent years. The department must now field citizen complaints and managing the work of an independent contractor.
During his weekly radio interview Wednesday, Mayor Craig Fletcher said he is inclined to revisit the Council’s decision to eliminate the animal control officer position as well as position in the Clerk’s office, but he made no mention of the parks maintenance issue. In an early July budget workshop, Fletcher said, “I don’t want to look like Melbourne. I don’t want to look like Sebastian,” but then supported additional cuts in the public works department.
The City Council will meet in a special called meeting next Tuesday at 9:30 to consider the 2013-2014 budget.
Indian River Guardian 
So the City saved money but – judging from the picture of the youngster in tall grass – it made this little park practically unusable as it was intended. This is sad – really sad.
Revisit the two eliminations? That’s a positive start, now let’s just table the whole ridiculous idea and move on to the parks issue.
The old cliche of a picture is worth a 1,000 words is true in this situation. The smaller government types always claim that outsourcing government services is less of a burdern on the taxpayer. The basic premise is consistently wrong because the quality of services provided always diminishes.
The smaller government types need only look at the Department of Defense budget which has exploded since the conception of outsourcing began. The net result for the taxpayer is you pay more and get less.
The lesson here is to not always go with the low bid. Why would a Winter Park company seem like the best option. What are the chances that a yard service owner lives within a block of this park. Give him the job. Give each project to someone different, but local. If they are not keeping up, the neighbors will let them know.
I wonder if that is the park across the street from where Charlie and Glenn might live. It would be interested to see how much we have paid them not to cut the grass so far. Come to think of it I will not cut the grass for half the cost of what we are now paying them not to cut the grass.
Monte Falls has said that they won’t be paid for work not performed.
I take him at his word.
I feel bad for the residents that live in this city, the parks look like crap because the city won’t pay enough money to get them done right. I mean the last bid was for mowing all the road ways and medians, the amount of work totaled 116 acres and they chose a company from the west coast of Florida and was only paying him a little over forty thousand dollars a year. I have a lawn company here in town life long resident why choose a company from out of town they just want to be cheap and you see the end result.