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I serve on a nonprofit board that does work in a state park, and while I can sympathize with this guy's plight, I understand why the parks people acted the way they did. The explanation they gave him about parks in poorer areas, etc. was bullshit. Not without some truth, but bullshit in the sense that there's more to the story and it was a simple explanation they could give him for why they were saying no. The grain of truth was that if people who live in low income areas (whose parks may be in worse condition) see that a higher-income area is getting new playground equipment, they're going to bitch to the board about it and that's a headache the board doesn't want to have to deal with. But that's not really the reason.
The real reason is that the guy knows that there's no way in hell that this is happening if they say yes and it's easier to just say no and stop it right there than to let this progress any further and waste time and money. The way this guy rambles my thought was that if he came across to the parks guy the way he comes across in the video there's no way he's getting anywhere. I don't know what you mean by him being given the run around for weeks. It's hard to get the timeline down because of the rambling, but it looks like he followed up after not hearing a response for 12 hours, and was then given the option of a phone call or in-person meeting. He then said he declined the meeting because he didn't want to drive to the guy's office, which shows his lack of seriousness right there, and schedules a phone call which he then postpones, possibly because he actually was busy, possibly because he wanted to waste the guy's time, it's hard to tell, and was then disappointed that the guy offered to reschedule it for the following business day.
I honestly don't know what the guy's strategy was, or what he was even looking to do. At one point he seems sure that the guy s going to tell him it's going to cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to install a $500 slide. No, not quite, but it's clear that this guy is clueless. You can't just buy a slide from Home Depot, sink a few holes in the ground, and call it a day. I mean, you can, but that slide isn't going to last a full season without falling apart. I have catalogs of various park products our private group orders with their own money for public use, and while I don't normally look at the playground equipment, a slide costs $5,000 on the low end for small one for toddlers up to about $15,000 for a fancy deluxe one. A typical basic 8 foot slide would run around $10k. Then there's installation, which is going to involve digging post holes for concrete footings on the supports, which is going to run at least another few thousand. And that's American. Northernlion, of course, has no idea where one even buys this kind of thing, or knows whether these supply houses even deal with the general public or if you have to have an account and a sales rep assigned to you, or what kind of contractor you call to even do this work.
He wants to blame all this extra expense on bureaucrats lining their pockets, but prices are what they are, and contractors charge what they charge. What does he expect the parks department to do, install a slide and send him a bill hoping he pays it? Waste time going through the equipment selection and ordering process only for him to back out when he finds out he can't afford it? The reason they asked him if he wanted to buy naming rights or ad space or a brick or whatever was because if this guy actually has enough money to pay for a slide installation then he has enough money to contribute to the capital projects the park has prioritized. If he'd expressed interest in that then they may have taken him more seriously about the slide since he'd obviously have the money, and they aren't going to ask how much he's willing to spend because they don't want the meeting to end with him being humiliated or assuming the high totals are due to corruption.
So they give him an excuse that is partially true. One of the things that any private group needs to take into consideration is that the agency they are dealing with is governed by a long-term plan. They have a vision of what they want the parks system to look like in five years, or ten years, or whatever, have an idea of how the vision is going to be funded, and how they're going to implement things. This is a process that the public is invited to collaborate in, but few do. The people who do collaborate are more influential than people like this guy will give them credit for; public comments are taken seriously. Just because you offer to pay for something doesn't mean they're going to let you do what you want. They may be willing to deviate from the plan, but it's not like any Tom, Dick and Harry can just submit proposals and get the green light.
I've spent the last decade trying to get trail built. The park has about 80 miles of existing trail, most of it built in the 1960s on old logging roads. These are in rough shape and vary between swampy and eroded due to poor design. They require a lot of maintenance just to stay passable, and many are beyond repair. The biggest hurdle we had with any proposals that we would build and pay for ourselves were along the lines of "We already have 80 mile of trail we can't maintain, so you have to show us that you have the manpower to take up some of that burden before you can add mileage." This is the kind of goodwill that takes years to establish. They don't want a group that comes in with enthusiasm and builds ten miles of trail, only to have that enthusiasm fade over time and end up with overgrown, unmaintained trail. It's happened in other places. If you want to be taken seriously you have to do it as part of an organized group that demonstrates that it deserves to be taken seriously. This isn't beyond the capability of anyone who is willing to put in the time. But too many people aren't, and bureaucrats are wary of people with ideas that they can't commit to. Saying "If you want to help here are some projects you can donate money to" is easy because he can donate to his ability or desire, and it doesn't require any follow up. Building a playground feature immediately puts him on the hook for more than he likely realizes, and commits him to possible future obligations (Is the park going to be expected to maintain this equipment, or does he have money for that too? Will they be able to send him a bill for repairs? Is he willing to donate to a capital fund? Will he get fixed if it breaks a few months after opening and the park doesn't have money allocated to fix it?)
As for the window thing, the code only requires those guards to be placed on windows that are below 2 feet above the floor and 6 feet above ground; i.e. it doesn't apply to most windows people have in their homes., i.e. it only applies to the kinds of windows a toddler would be liable to crawl out of without the assistance of a chair or something. If your windows do not fit this description than it's on the landlord, not the municipal government. I'm not sure where you're getting the 90 cm from.
All that said, I don't doubt that budgeting and building and maintenance and commitment are the meat and bones of the problem. I take issue with needing to prove commitment in a roundabout way, rather than a direct way. If it really is how you describe it and not an issue of distributing funds equally between neighbourhoods, you still need to infer the intent of a bureaucrat, translate the invitation to donate as an invitation to a game in which you prove your commitment. If I were in NL's situation, I would miss this entirely. Frankly, I don't want to play the courtship game with a bureaucrat, I want to do stuff that is pro-social.
They're not trying to test "can he afford 15K", they're trying to test "is he willing to pay 15K", which is a subset of that. He may have enough assets that 15K wouldn't make a dent in his budget, but that doesn't mean he's actually willing to pay.
There is such a thing as a contract, where people can legally bind themselves to a payment.
Giving him a contract is enough work that they're going to have a filter to get rid of likely spurious offers before reaching the contract stage.
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