CP's conflict with State Government

My community partner is the San Mateo County Department of Parks, and due to the bipartisan nature and public safety focus of their work conflicts do not arise often between the Department of Parks and the other government entities. One area of conflict is land use. In the bay area the demand of land is growing higher by the day. Cities have an incentive to develop land in order to generate more tax revenue. However, cities must balance economic development with the interests of citizens. If all local government cared about was generating revenue they would not have any parks at all. The San Mateo County Department of Parks usually works conflict free in conjunction with other government agencies. One conflict that could arise would be underfunding. With the recent economic downturn every government agency had to reduce its budget. Instead of allowing that conflict to interfere with their work, the parks department has moved towards looking for private funding or co-funding. For example, in Redwood City a park is currently being developed with partial funding from Shutterfly.

CP Blog #6

The San Mateo County Department of Parks attempts to encourage legislative process by advocating to local law makers to increase the funding to the Parks department. Budgets are passed by legislating bodies such as Congress, city council and county board of supervisors. This could manifest itself in many ways such as e-mailing, calling or meeting with certain elected officials in order to make their case as to why their budget should be increased. Other times the Department of Parks will advocate for certain lands to be restored and turned into parks. For example the San Francisco Department of Parks devised a plan to restore a coastal golf course to its natural habitat and make it a park. The Department of Parks must be careful to not get too involved into politics, as it is a partisan government entity like the I.R.S. or Highway Patrol.