The Warren Street Dog Park was originally taken hostage by the Dog Owners of Tribeca (DOOT) in 2008 — after the 92-by-43-foot green space opened between Greenwich and West streets... Founders installed a keypad lock on the gate and sent members a secret 4-digit passcode after they paid a $120 annual fee [which was spent on] upkeep, such as pressure-washing the blacktop three times a week, maintenance and repairs, insurance and supplies such as poop bags.....It's unfair and absurd to pay a fee for access to a very well-kept dog park? I'd say it would be totally fair and normal if the government had done it. What's not normal is that private individuals took it upon themselves to collect the money and provide the services. But they justify their behavior because the city would not maintain the high standards they want — not just the thrice-weekly power washing and other maintenance, but:
“Why would I pay for something that should be free?” said Liwah Lai, 60, a longtime neighborhood resident who was walking her maltipoo. “It’s unfair and completely absurd. There are so many dog owners in the area like me who need to use the space.”
“At public dog runs, people let their dogs run wild and act aggressively,” said member Lenore Sherman, 61, who has a golden retriever named Huck. “Here, owners are held accountable for the behavior of their dog.”I don't see how legally DOOT can win, but I understand their disappointment with the quality of services NYC can provide.
It's funny, the different kinds of entitlement on display here: people who think they can take over and run publicly-owned property and people who think city services "should be free." Who's worse? There are problems with entitlement to exclusion and entitlement to inclusion.
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65 comments:
John Galt is unavailable for comment.
The first group is wrong but right, the second right but wrong.
Excellent study in community affairs. You correctly observe that there is no perfect solution. As a dog owner, I can certainly testify that a park with no enforceable rules is not safe for you or your dog. The privateers should have agreed to work with the city to establish rules and fees and perhaps volunteered to do some of the maintenance. Perhaps they tried this to no avail.
Who's worse. They're all assholes. Expecting something for nothing. But that's the leftist mindset. It's on display here every day.
In L.A. the homeless would have already busted the lock and turned into a campground.
Let them buy land and build their own private dog park.
Woofing your way to adverse possession.
The real problem is that government ALWAYS underestimates the cost of their initiatives. They have GOOD INTENTIONS but the follow through is always lacking. So the dog park they can support is one with poor dog owners, wild dogs and feces everywhere - the Tragedy of the Commons. Our government is timed to the lowest common denominator so look for the city to reassert control.
"...people who think city services "should be free.""
Isn't that a willful misunderstanding here? Doesn't the person most likely mean, "free, once the tax dollars have been paid?"
Aimed not timed
The city should:
Hold a mandatory meeting at the park for all park users and interested parties.
Block the exits.
Confiscate the small dogs and free them in the wilds of northern Canada.
Ban use of the word maltipoo under any circumstances.
Give Huck a dog biscuit.
Where I live, there are high taxes and they are often spent on amenities that are pleasing to some people and used by only a subset of people. But there are also fees and requirements of a permit for things.
The excellent dog parks require you to buy a permit. Some of the ski and bike trails require you to pay. It's public land but it's not free because of that, even aside from the fact that you've already paid your taxes.
I don't know how these things can be balanced. You also need to buy a license for your dog just to have it out on the street (where it impinges on the human beings, potentially in a very negative way). Should more money be charged for a basic dog license and then the city put in a lot of extra work to make high quality dog runs? Should people who don't even have dogs -- who don't burden the city with a need for dog services -- be paying taxes to cover amenities for dog people?
One of the things about this dog park in the article is that the people doing the organizing work wanted higher standards of behavior and the ability to kick out offenders. I don't think the city government could be that fussy about what people can do.
Nobody is excluded from the private held park. They just need to follow the rules and pay the fee. They have a choice. The public controlled park gives people no choice. You get what you get, and you cannot demand or expect more. If all the parks were private you could choose the one that fits your preferences, but with all them public, you get one choice everywhere, so no choice. This is true of all things. Imagine if the government controlled the car business, or pizza, or clothing. Probably at most two choices for everything: a large or a small.
Libruls band together and act like conservatives when it suits their interests. I am not shocked and wonder if they are still DiBlasio supporters.
I was tempted to think that the Post was harshing a bit much about the DOOTs, but reading their quotes, I don't have a lot of sympathy for them.
Here's a suggestion for the DOOTs: the park is a gift. Externalize the money and management from the gift of the park to the neighborhood.
There are many non-profit organizations that welcome everyone, including the socially inept, and yet manage to function. Churches for example.
Bago: no, the choices would be shitty or shittier.
The government will never provide a good value on what it provides unless you are willing to take anything as long as others pay for it: Getting that value requires you to use the service a lot and also be poor (paying few taxes) otherwise you are paying too much for it. The end result of that is an abused, overused, underfunded, wasteful and usually poor quality service.
One more example of NYC going to the dogs.
What if an organization of citizens took over a public school in this way ?
Living someplace like Madison with it's relatively homogeneous and prosperous population makes public services more like the DOOT system than the public systems in most large cities. In most cities and all large ones, the takers outnumber the makers more dramatically and personal responsibility comes less naturally to a large number of participants.
"What if an organization of citizens took over a public school in this way ?"
The customers would suddenly have a say in the product quality and cost.
Let's not make this way more complicated than it is.
It's public property. What it is used for is irrelevant. The "services" provided for by whomever is irrelevant.
It's public property and a group of private individuals cannot simply seize that public property as if it is their own. That's called at best trespass and at worst theft. And if they are charging people to access that public property, holding it out to be private property, then if is additionally theft by false pretenses, just like selling the Brooklyn Bridge to someone would be theft.
But all this dog stuff and services rendered for free or for fee is all beside the point.
there are also fees and requirements of a permit for things.
Fees and permit requirements are racist.
People of Color cannot afford to pay for fees and permits.
Also, People of Color might have to provide photo identifications, and that too would be racist.
If a pizza shop was run like a public school the employees would set the prices so that they were well paid, and have them deducted from your bank account whether you ever ate pizza or not. There would be only one version of the pizza, so that everyone got equality in their pizza. Bad pizza would get the same stamp of approval as a good one on the way out the door, and customers would need to finish the pizza at home if they wanted it to actually be nourishing. The pizza shop would have one managers for each pizza makers.
Across the street from where I work there’s a free municipal parking lot, mostly used by people who visit the area only occasionally. Back in the 90s, a couple of enterprising locals started charging people for parking there. No time limit, very reasonable flat fee payable up front in cash only. I was astonished how long they got away with that; I’m pretty sure it was over a year. They didn’t even wear costumes.
Althouse said “... is that the people doing the organizing work wanted higher standards of behavior and the ability to kick out offenders. I don't think the city government could be that fussy about what people can do.”
The difference between a country club and city/public golf course. When playing at a country club I always ask my host if this is the kind of place that makes you put your shirt back on when you have lunch in the clubhouse between rounds.
"It's public property and a group of private individuals cannot simply seize that public property as if it is their own"
It's done all the time. It's how most of our tax dollars are appropriated. They are spent on subsidies and projects based on private relationships of politicians to the receivers of those funds and projects. Shared things like public parks are mostly just cover, a form of Soma for the public, and even that Soma is manufactured by a friend of a politician.
I am confident that almost all the members of Dog Owners of Tribeca (DOOT)are proud liberals who insist government is the solution to all problems. But like most good liberals, they will insist they and their interests be exempted.
Responsible Brahmin dog owners disapprove of the Hoi polloi who let their badly trained doggies run roughshod, so they built a wall. Must be racist.
Why did it take 10 years for people to complain?
"Squatter sovereignty"?
Usually when you're charged to use a park or whatever, the real reason is NOT "they need the money" - its to keep out the riff-raff and those who would abuse a "Free" service or area.
My parents would say "There's always one" - aka there's always some one who will abuse the situation, won't follow the rules, etc.
Making them pay and limiting access gets rid of those people.
Maybe they could try that in the parks with the homeless dudes.
Like, the homeless dudes need to enter a code to enter, and they are given plastic bags to shit in.
And if they get in fights with other homeless dudes they are not allowed back in and shit.
Then you just hose off the area three times a week and everything's good.
-4CP
It makes a difference who does the taking, and how. My sister found a muddy mess in Riverside park and persuaded the Parks Department to let her and her friends plant a flower garden there. Veggies are strictly forbidden. The City provides water and a tool shed. The Garden People provide a place of beauty which can be seen by all in the final scene of "You've Got Mail." Go now, because a lot of the flowers mysteriously disappear just before Mothers' Day. A bench near the garden is labelled as a memorial to my late sister, Mary Louise Taylor, the founder of the Garden People.
Ann Althouse said...
Where I live, there are high taxes and they are often spent on amenities that are pleasing to some people and used by only a subset of people."
There's your problem right there. Taxes paid by most to benefit the few.
This method should be embraced by small-government advocates and libertarians. Take over a service and maintain it. If the government doesn't take action within a year, you win.
It works if you use someone elses property or trademark without them enforcing their rights. Governments should be held to the same standard. Ten years is too long a time to claw back your authority.
Does adverse possession work when it's public land?
If the park is opened back up and there are aggressive dogs, the other dog owners should flood the city with complaints about the dogs, preferably with video evidence, and express concern about their and their dogs' safety. They should get on social media and talk about how the park is no longer safe for their children to play with their puppies and post cute kid and puppy pics with an aggressive dog in the background.
The city could ban aggressive dogs from the park, but that would be hard to enforce and they might be concerned that any attempt at enforcing that would have a racially imbalanced outcome. The best solution from the government's point of view would be to close the park and turn it into a parking lot. (No skateboarding allowed.)
What if I didn't like the way they were running things and decided to put my own lock on and charge $50 a month with a differnt cleaning schedule and different rules? Or maybe $1000 a month to make it more exclusive?
It's theft plain and simple. They really ought to face crinknam charges, but probably won't.
It's silly that most overpopulation issues mask themselves as economic or political problems. There are way too many people in Manhattan, this decreases the value of human contact - ironically making people crave it more, which jostles them into seeking a more "natural" connection in a fucking animal that is too dependent upon the person to give it anything other than unconditional affection, physical contact, and loyalty. So everyone needs a dog on top of a residence there and the lack of space or facilities provoke exclusionary barriers for better upkeep. It's a vicious cycle but I suppose some asshole's got to rationalize it.
Now, given that the city didn't even notice the park being taken over, they probably were running it terribly.
Maybe they should start charging fees to pay for the amenity.
Maybe they should lease it to DOOT, which can enforce rules better than a public entity.
Maybe they should leave it free, because the idea is more to get dog poop off the sidewalks then to have a nice park or because now that it's gotten political attention they'll improve it for a little while.
Maybe they should just realize the dog park was a bad idea in the first place.
But if DOOT wants their own private dog park, they can buy it - at expensive Tribeca prices. City land is not simply free for the taking.
@david loewinger, "crinknam" charges?
There are a lot of details left out of that article. At first, I thought DOOT has been running this psrk for a decade and "...yet the city never noticed." Seemed to me that the psrk received no attention at all from the city for ten years. So I ask you, what would this park be without DOOT? After ten years of neglect, it wouldn't be even identifiable as a dog park. It would be just another vacant lot. Under public control, the public would have received absolutely nothing in return.
And then I read, "When the dog run first opened, the Parks Department tasked the DOOT to help run the park." That's all. Leaving aside the fact that "help" turned into "completely," without knowing the nature of the agreement between the parties leaves it impossible to know the extent of each side's negligence. We know DOOT excluded nonmembers, and that appears to be a violation. But we can also infer that the Parks Department did nothing and provided neither reimbursement to nor oversight of DOOT's stewardship. That can't be right either.
This is just like another NYC kerfuffle du jour with Upper West Side parents whining about letting the little people into 'their' schools. The solution is the same. Buy your own damn dog park/school and you can charge tuition/admission and set the rules. Hijacking public property and trying to do the same is just stealing.Screw 'em all. You have to be an idiot to live in NYC.
"What if I didn't like the way they were running things and decided to put my own lock on and charge $50 a month with a different cleaning schedule and different rules? Or maybe $1000 a month to make it more exclusive?"
It's theft plain and simple. They really ought to face criminal charges, but probably won't."
Yes and no. If you took over and charged too much or were otherwise abusive, the locals (the people) would complain and stop you one way or another. While the DOOT people did not have exclusive right to the park, they did have a right to it, and as locals they had arguably more right than most. This was the people taking charge of their own resource and improving it. It may not be entirely legal, but it is probably good for most people who want to use the resource and these people are willing to make a sacrifice to be responsible with it.
It reminds me of the child in England that recently died becuase the NHS (the government) refused to let the parents attempt to save the child with their own resources. The government did this legally (for the good of all), but was it moral, fair, or right? Collectivist system always eventually require forced participation even if it results in a poor outcome for everyone. That's why they eventually must resort to walls to keep you in rather than out.
david loewinger and others above,
Read all the way through the article. "When the dog run first opened, the Parks Department tasked the DOOT to help run the park." They didn't take it over on their own, they were "tasked" to run it by the Parks Department. We don't know what was in that agreement.
I would not have a problem with the city charging $10/month for a nice dog park. Since I doubt that the city would be capable of running it well, I would have no problem with them farming it out to a civic group like DOOT and letting them charge $10/month with the proviso that everyone can join the group.
Ideally DOOT should rent their own space and run it as private enterprise. Are there no vacant lots in the area that they could rent by the year? Perhaps the owner would give them a deal on rent to avoid the cost of keeping it cleaned up.
John Henry
Blogger bagoh20 said...
Living someplace like Madison with it's relatively homogeneous and prosperous population
Unless you are black, right? Then you can fuck off back to Madison's black ghetto.
John Henry
What if an organization of citizens took over a public school in this way ?
Tcrosse wins the thread!
We have the opposite problem in my neighborhood. 25 years ago, an acre was set aside by the developer for a park. He was supposed to develop it and turn it over to the city. He didn't, going bust instead.
City has no money but will let us (HOA) develop it if we like with our own money. If we do, it has to be a public park open to anyone.
Every year at the HOA meeting someone wants us to develop the park. Every year I explain about the public nature of it, traffic and so on. Every year it goes quiet until the next HOA meeting.
IF we could control access to residents, I suspect that we could do a special assessment for development and a modest dues increase for maintenance.
John Henry
"92-by-43-foot green space"
Interesting definition of "green space."
It's a concrete pad the size of an end zone.
I almost feel sad for the city folk.
Jack Wayne scores! "The real problem is that government ALWAYS underestimates the cost of their initiatives."
Althouse: "Where I live, there are high taxes and they are often spent on amenities that are pleasing to some people and used by only a subset of people."
Dispersed cost and concentrated benefits.
DING! What is Government, Alex?
Jack Wayne said...
The real problem is that government ALWAYS underestimates the cost of their initiatives. They have GOOD INTENTIONS but the follow through is always lacking.
Not true. They rarely have good intentions and the low cost estimates are generally told to dupe people into supporting it knowing it will cost more.
So the dog park they can support is one with poor dog owners, wild dogs and feces everywhere - the Tragedy of the Commons. Our government is timed to the lowest common denominator so look for the city to reassert control.
This is the point where they come back and say they need more money.
Every time.
There seems to be an easy solution to this problem. Let the city lease this land to DOOT for a nominal fee. Let DOOT charge a reasonable sum for the upkeep of this facility, but here's the kicker. DOOT should use a portion of this money to provide service dogs for homebound AIDS patients. Then the people who object to the fees could be demonized as the kind of people who would deprive AIDS patients of love and solace. Win win for everybody.
You’ve lived in New York City, so surely you know how these things really work. The city typically wants a half-dozen dedicated union jobs allocated to the park, along with a few fake-work jobs for the friends of city bureaucrats and some kickbacks from the subcontractors who will do the actual work on the park's infrastructure. When they can't get that they let the park go to hell to see if the neighbors will feel different after five or ten years of watching junkies shoot up there. The neighbors in question here simply said "screw that" and stepped in. Now the city wants to give its shakedown a second chance.
"The neighbors in question here simply said 'screw that' and stepped in."
Did no one actually read the article?
That said, I agree with the first part of your comment EP. In Chicago, the phrase we used was six men on a garbage truck.
Private takeovers of unkept parks and privately owned vacant lots is pretty common in NYC. Park land is locked up and privately maintained by the locals for bocci courts, softball/soccer fields, basketball courts..... It can go on for decades and usually only becomes an issue when the neighborhoods ethnic base changes and the new group wants the area for different uses. The "community gardens" on vacant lots are all really private clubs whose members have even gone to court to try to keep the city from eventually selling the lots.The park workers assigned to the facilities are happy to turn over their duties to volunteers.
Did no one actually read the article?
Yes. Since the entire article was fed to the Post by the Parks Department (or more precisely, a union rep), I don't take anything in it at face value. And since Althouse is supposed to be a sophisticated consumer of media, she shouldn't have either.
Don't we know that “Government is simply the name we give to the things we choose to do together”? So that makes DOOT the Government. Those darn bureaucrats haven't got any business interfering with the Dootecrats.
Not enough time for adverse possession, even if they tried to apply it.
Dog people, I'll never understand them.
-sw
"I would not have a problem with the city charging $10/month for a nice dog park. Since I doubt that the city would be capable of running it well ..."
It's not just the city's inefficiency, but the difficulty the City would have controlling human and dog behaviors in the park. The private group just deletes your access code if it doesn't like your behavior, but I don't see how government could do that without providing substantive due process.
Why aren't the members of DOOT in jail?
Mark is exactly right--they are selling what is not theirs to sell. Fraud is a word that comes to mind. Theft is another. Prison is a third.
Blogger Mary Beth said...
Does adverse possession work when it's public land?
No. Not in New York. Probably not anywhere.
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