If the city staff could actually write a decent contract, outsourcing might be a good idea. Unfortunately, the contract they would write wouldn't have any performance standards or consequences for failure and would be awarded to some inside player.

We've all seen this with other park projects. Notice the Fern Ridge Path extension to Greenhill. That path failed in the first year. The city waited another four years and then put out to bid for repairing it. The company that did the repairs caused other damage that we will eventually put out to bid to repair, and so on.