T Grimble
January 30th, 2003, 09:00 AM
Last night Gov. Romney announced his intention to consolidate many areas of government in his State of the State speech. The example that he chose to use was the consolidation of the MDC into other state agencies. Presumably this would mean that the roadways would fall under the control of Mass Highway and that the parks would be controlled by the DEM. Perhaps as a way of emphasizing this move he fired Commissioner Balfour, a long time Republican insider.
This news is both positive and negative for the mountain bike community. Commissioner Balfour was viewed by many as a hindrance to NEMBA's objective of improving the riding experience and minimizing user impact in MDC parks. His priorities were more aligned with high impact recreational activities such as skating rinks and soccer fields and did not push for a focus on trail users or conservation stewardship. On the other hand, there are a lot of very good people at the local parks whom we have been working with over the years and I expect that this could affect the jobs of some of those people too. As positions get shuffled around workloads will likely increase causing a lot of stress on the supervisors and rangers at the parks. This is a good opportunity for us to step up our involvement in the parks and try to fill in the gap as much as we can.
Gov. Romney has placed a focus on public private relationships to increase efficiency and that is an area where we can all get involved. What you can do to help is to simply increase your level of involvement a little bit. Attend an extra maintenance day or volunteer at a local event. These things are a clear indication of our commitment to the trails and are visible to the people making decisions. NEMBA has a strong relationship with the DEM and I am confident that our relationship would not suffer in the event that the MDC and DEM merge.
This news is both positive and negative for the mountain bike community. Commissioner Balfour was viewed by many as a hindrance to NEMBA's objective of improving the riding experience and minimizing user impact in MDC parks. His priorities were more aligned with high impact recreational activities such as skating rinks and soccer fields and did not push for a focus on trail users or conservation stewardship. On the other hand, there are a lot of very good people at the local parks whom we have been working with over the years and I expect that this could affect the jobs of some of those people too. As positions get shuffled around workloads will likely increase causing a lot of stress on the supervisors and rangers at the parks. This is a good opportunity for us to step up our involvement in the parks and try to fill in the gap as much as we can.
Gov. Romney has placed a focus on public private relationships to increase efficiency and that is an area where we can all get involved. What you can do to help is to simply increase your level of involvement a little bit. Attend an extra maintenance day or volunteer at a local event. These things are a clear indication of our commitment to the trails and are visible to the people making decisions. NEMBA has a strong relationship with the DEM and I am confident that our relationship would not suffer in the event that the MDC and DEM merge.