By Steven Hill : 48hills – excerpt
The Ferris Wheel is not the only example of the SF Recreation and Parks Department privatizing Golden Gate Park — and establishing structures without a two-thirds vote of the Board of Supervisors.
Nearly 18 months ago, a private vendor moved into the western end of the park next to Bercut Equitation Ring and built 20 or so stables to house as many horses. Chaparral Ranch Horse Program offers riding lessons and trail rides through the park for $80 an hour. It was supposed to [be] a six-month pilot program.
Also, in a public park that routinely rousts out the homeless from living in the park, the vendor installed two large RV trailers, where an unknown number of vendor staff are living full-time.
These sure look like “structures” to me. And they have not been authorized by the Board of Supervisors…
Is it just a coincidence that the Parks Alliance, the off-the-books friend of Rec-Park that served as a slush fund for nearly $1 million in Mohammad Nuru’s Recology kickback money, just threatened to pull funds from a park in Supervisor Connie Chan’s district if she didn’t back off her criticism of the organization?
So many questions, and so few answers. Meanwhile, the privatization of San Francisco’s public park jewel proceeds apace…(more)
New Policy and Priority at Golden Gate Park. No more natural habitats and no more public access where we can make a buck.
Let’s keep the public out of OUR public parks so we can cash in on it to feed out growing park budget cause our main cash cow got caught out cleaning funds. And let’s make sure the public is not snooping round to see what we are doing and file and complaint. Let’s keep them busy fighting over the street access for as long as we can. No cars. No free access and no camping unless we set up a camp site that we can benefit from.Who do our public servants work for now? They are certainly not working for us.