You Pay, Kids Play

The folks at On Frozen Blog, a Washington Capitals hockey blog, urge readers to support an expansion of the Fort DuPont Ice Arena, a public ice rink located in southeast Washington, D.C. According to Friends of Fort DuPont Ice Arena, a non-profit organization "formed to manage and revitalize" the arena, the proposed expansion includes:

[...] another skating pad, new lockers rooms and showers and other additional space needs. Our expansion request is based on the fact that we have over 10,000 children in our Kids On Ice programs (ice hockey, figure skating and speed skating) and cannot accommodate requests from many communtiy groups and the District of Columbia public schools to accept more children.

The ice rink is operated by Friends of Fort DuPont, but it is owned by the National Park Service. That, dear taxpayer, means that it is owned by you.

The proprietors of On Frozen Blog may be all nostalgic over the fact that Fort DuPont is a "genuine Washington recreation landmark" and that the Caps once used the facility as a training camp, but those are hardly good reasons for the federal government to fleece taxpayers from Buffalo to Beverly Hills in order to pay for a rink they'll likely never step foot on.

It would be bad enough to spend state and local tax dollars on Fort DuPont, but I can't believe funding the renovation of an ice rink is a "necessary and proper" function of the federal government. And even if it were, I'd still have many questions before allocating a penny to such a project.

For instance, are there any private companies willing to build additional ice rinks in southeast D.C.? If so, why aren't new arenas being built? Is it because City Hall prohibits such construction? And if private companies are able but unwilling to build new rinks, why is that? Is it the area's high crime rate, rendering the location cost-prohibitive? Is the permit process too cumbersome? Are building codes and regulations too bothersome to make such efforts worthwhile?

If one ice rink truly cannot accommodate the needs of 10,000 kids, surely this indicates a demand for a service that could easily be supplied by entrepreneurs. That this demand is apparently not being met by the private sector indicates that there is either no real need for expansion, government forces are prohibiting private action, or an expansion to Fort DuPont or the building of additional rinks is not cost-effective. Assuming a real demand, however, we can deduce that either government or market forces are preventing these developments.

Whatever the case, it looks as if taxpayers are going to be expected to foot the bill for a project the market has determined to be of little value. That's just the way it works in government these days, isn't it? If the market deems a project a poor investment, why, then we'll just force taxpayers to pay for it. And we wonder why government programs are generally wasteful and inefficient.

If On Frozen Blog or any other individual or organization has a vested interest in expanding Fort DuPont, there's one really easy way they can show their support: they can open their checkbooks and donate money to the cause. Sadly, however, I suspect many will be content to express their charity by spending everyone else's money instead.

Comments

[Gustafsson]

While no expert on building regulations on National Park land, I do not believe a corporation can just build on National Park land. However, Fort Dupont Ice Arena has quite a few corporate and private donations funding their programs, which can be found here: http://www.fdia.org/SupportresandPartners.asp

And since their program is at capacity, it's hardly money ill-spent.

I kind of see your point about funding a National Park that one may never visit. Not sure when I'll visit the Theodore Roosevelt Inaugural site, http://www.nps.gov/thri/.

[trevor]

Gustafsson, sadly this is but one project of literal thousands nationwide that are funded immorally with federal tax dollars - money, I might add, that is pilfered from our paychecks (private property) before we even see them.

I'm glad to know that some of this funding stems from private donors (as any such funding should), but if nothing else, I'm glad to know that people like you are at least making us all aware of it in the first place, regardless of your stance on the issue.

[Tom L]

Gustafsson,

It's not a question of whether the money is well-spent or not. It's a question of whether the gov't should have the money for that purpose in the first place.

Moreover, the Federal Government should not own property and be in the activity of maintaining it.
It is precisely because the federal government owns that park that it and the surrounding area are in such disarray.

Ta,