Court Administration in Rural Areas

service problems lend themselves to solution by service agreements, and this is certainly true with regard to contracting with the private sector.' 0 Thus far, the potential for public-private contracting has been used predominantly for professional and housekeeping services, those we have been most prone to associate with the possibility of contracting. Nevertheless, our respondents identified as contracted services a range from those that have been provided traditionally by local governments, such as police and leaf collection, to those with a much shorter history of local government provision, such as halfway houses and services to the elderly. We believe this suggests that the potential for public-private contracting is as yet untapped and that, whereas only a sprinkling of small jurisdictions are using private contracting for these services, we may in fact be seeing a rise in contracting as local governments become saddled with the obligation to provide new services in addition to the historical.