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Just the Facts - Answering the Critics of Local Government Park and Recreation Services by Jack Harper, Geoffrey Godbey and Stephen Foreman There are many myths which surround local government recreation and park services in both the United States and Canada. Most of these myths have developed because, until recently, there has been no national database in either country to identify how much these services are used, who uses them, the benefits the public associates with such services and their willingness to pay for them. Recently, however, studies of nationally representative samples of the public undertaken in the United States and in Canada, using a common set of questions and research procedures, provide the first comprehensive look at these services. These studies in combination with other recent research, shatter the many myths about local recreation and park services. Among such myths are the following: MYTH: People don't think recreation and leisure are very important REALITY: About two out of three people in North America say that their leisure is either as important to them as their work or more important to them than work. MYTH: People don't have any free time to use for recreation and parks ® REALITY: North Americans average about fer,y hours of free time per week and the amount of free time they have has increased almost en hour per day since 1965. About 15 hours of this free time is used for TV viewing as c primary activity and another five hours for TV viewing as a secondary activitiy. MYTH: Local government is becoming a less important provider of recreation REALITY: About four out of five residents of bath the US and Canada use their local government recreation and park systems. This is probably a higher percentage of use than almost any local government service. Only 7.5 percent of the edult public in the US said that they weren't interested in park an recrecticn services or that such services weren't designed for people like them. MYTH: Recreation and parks is a service in decline REALITY: Recreation and park services, as a percentage of local government spending, have remained constant during the last few decades. In inflation adjusted dollars, Crompton and McGregor (1994) found that Icccl government spending for these services in the US had increased from $20 per person in 1965-6 to over $32 in 1990-1. It should be noted, however, that fees and charges and other means of generating revenue have increased to compensate, in part, for the huge decline in Federal and state or provincial support to municipalities. Employment of full-time staff remained essentially unchanged from 1978- 4b1990.