Organizing recreational services

The management of recreational services is one of the most challenging and difficult tasks for local governments today. The problem lies in being responsive to the needs and insistent demands of a complex population; in planning for the future while grappling with present crises; and in persuading both budget examiners and politicians that recreational services are indeed a cost-effective means for achieving other social objectives, such as health promotion, youth employment, and the growth and development of all citizens to their full potential. Contemporary society is experiencing conflict; this is particularly true in

the urban metropolises where tight budgets, poorly prepared workers, and the headaches of maintaining and operating aging and deteriorated facilities abound. The field of recreational service may be thought of as all the opportunities provided through the marshaling of physical property, economic capability, and human resources in the delivery of recreational experiences. While this normally incorporates the elements of public, quasipublic, and private sector enterprises, it is primarily an outcome of public agency responsibility. This is so because it is the mandated function of the public recreational service department to offer, as its chief reason for establishment, a comprehensive and varied series of recreational opportunities to all the citizens residing within the locality’s boundaries. Thus, the public recreational service department is the agency of last resort for those individuals who have neither the affluence, experience, nor physical means to gain recreational satisfaction without depending upon public sector offices. Although the public recreational service department should coordinate its

functions and cooperate with all other community-based organizations in the total provision of recreational services, it is the only legally assigned municipal agency, which is primarily concerned with citizen recreational performance. Everything that it does in order to fulfill its responsibility for providing immediate recreational opportunity, either of an organized or of a self-directed type, for people in the community is designated as a recreational service. In contemporary society, there are so many different agencies and such a

multiplicity of functions that the individual, as well as each agency, must

that prevents relationship between individuals and organizations is developed so that maximum output is presumably achieved with a minimum expenditure of time, money, and effort.1