More to the point, and I doubt that they have the guts to run with this, but it could be a clever twist that Leslie, by taking all this extremely valuable land off the tax rolls, essentially bankrupts the city again.
Interesting, but yeah, that will not happen. That would undercut one of the underlying themes of the show, government being overall a positive force.
I always found it amusing on the show that the joke is supposed to be (or at least was for most of the show) that Pawnee is sort of a rundown, trashy city, but they always manage to have a rich music scene, cool festivals, huge parks, a variety of interesting businesses, and so forth, and the national park just seemed to be another extension of that. It just manifests whatever extension of the city is necessary to fit the needs of the story.
A TV station, an NPR station... Agreed, IIRC I posted something similar last year.
Except most of those things are credited to Leslie. I figure if she never existed, Pawnee would just be the rundown, trashy city you mentioned.
Well, either the city has a big enough economy to support it all or not, not much Leslie could do about that from the Parks Department.
Anyway, I've found the new season poor to mediocre. I'm at a loss as to why the time-jump was necessary. If it was just to set up Leslie and Ron to be adversaries for a couple of episodes, I'm undewhelmed, because everything else seems about the way it was before. Leslie works in the same building with the same people, and the National Parks region seems to run itself except for its Pawnee business. Leslie and Ben have kids, apparently, but it doesn't seem to have changed their lives much. Everything seems back in its old grooves: Tom is obnoxious but tender-hearted for a nice girl, Andy acts dumb but comes out with something smart, April hates something about her job/life, people treat good old Jerry/Terry as a door mat, Donna is aloof... seen it, seen it, seen it.
The show hasn't gotten as directionless and self-indulgent as The Office did, but it's passed its usefulness date for me.