It is time. You have put it off but you finally hit your breaking point. You have to get in shape and get healthy.  It’s time to join a gym, so you start shopping around. The first fitness center you visit is across town, nice equipment, good classes, but kind of far for you to go to get a workout — you’d have to take the bus to get there and the rates are a bit pricey, especially since you don’t have a lot of extra cash for a monthly membership. The next fitness center you visit is closer, equipment looks nice, has some great amenities and the pricing is reasonable — still a bit high for you, so you are not sold. You check out one more — your local recreation center run by your town’s park and recreation agency. Great equipment, location is excellent at the center of town, good selection of classes, everything is on par with the other two and the price is well within your budget, plus you get to see all your friends from around town. What could be better?

For many park and recreation professionals who operate recreation or fitness centers, this is probably a familiar scenario heard from your clientele, or maybe this was your own scenario when you shopped around for a fitness center. Whatever it may be, you’re likely under the impression that what we have here is the classic American free-market shopping experience. Or is it?

In the Arizona town of Gilbert, a local thinktank is challenging the right of the town to operate the 11-year old, $11 million Freestone Recreation Center, claiming that the public facility violates state law and unfairly competes with private fitness centers. As reported last month in the Arizona Republic,  conservative thinktank The Goldwater Institute issued a letter to Gilbert’s mayor in November contending that the recreation center provides services beyond the scope allowed by state statute and is therefore “unauthorized and illegal.” They also suggest that local private health clubs have been forced to essentially fund the competition through taxes and claim that they cannot equally compete with the recreation center, which provides basketball and racquetball courts, a 40-foot rock-climbing wall, exercise equipment and saunas for town residents at the daily rate of $4 (non-residents at $6). Goldwater is asking the town to either shut the facility down or sell it to a private company, hinting that noncompliance with their request could mean legal action.

This incident in Arizona appears to be the latest resurgence of an otherwise constantly simmering controversy of public competition with private businesses.  In fact, Parks & Recreation Law Review columnist James Kozlowski covered this very same topic in 1982, the initial year of the Law Review column, and again in 1993. In his columns, Kozlowski identifies that the issue is not “unfair competition,” but that the legal question is whether “such facilities and programs provide public benefits which are expressly or impliedly authorized under state law.”

For the Town of Gilbert, this is where things get complicated.  Goldwater is claiming that because Gilbert does not have a voter-approved charter that broadly defines its powers, the town’s authority comes from state statute and thus its powers are limited, calling into question the limits of local governmental authority under a city charter and/or state law.

Officials in Arizona, however, contend that whether there is an adopted charter or not, cities and towns have basically the same powers, and, in recent years, the legislature has granted more authority to “general law” cities that don’t have a charter. They also note that even without a charter, communities still have the right to develop parks. In addition, the Arizona Republic reports that Gilbert’s town attorney Susan Goodwin dismissed Goldwater’s claims, asserting via written letter the town’s right to own and operate the facility for the “good of the public,” and stating towns are not restricted from competing with the private sector in providing recreation opportunities.

Currently, the Gilbert Town Council is mulling over Goldwater’s claims. More news is certain to come out of Arizona on this, which could be monumental for municipalities in the state and elsewhere. Undoubtedly, this won’t be the last time the issue of competition among public and private flares up again. As Kozlowski says, “What’s going on in Arizona is nothing new, just the latest variation in an ongoing theme.”


Lauren Hoffmann is NRPA’s Senior PR and Communications Manager.