Quote Originally Posted by corktownyuppie View Post
I hope you don't think I'm socking anything to the poor. I don't have anything against the poor. I have something against people littering in the park. The purpose of a nominal fee isn't to price people out of the park. It's to pay for people to keep it clean.

And seriously...if $0.84 per month is pricing anyone out from coming to the park, then they've got bigger problems to deal with.
I love these plans for user fees. I have some news: They won't raise enough money to keep the park clean. You will have the whole bridge full of traffic with people waiting to be allowed, you will have to employ fulltime people to admit motorists, you will have angry motorists and police calls, and it will be totally ineffective at raising the funds to "help" clean the park.

If you don't like garbage lying around, why not go pick it up? Jesus. If not, the understaffed park employees will get to it.

Belle Isle Park is free for a reason. Detroiters used to sleep on the park at night because it was 10 degrees cooler. Detroit doesn't have a huge system of city parks. And when those poor families pile into the one working car they have and have a little picnic, that's about as good as it gets sometimes.

People of means have a limited understanding of just how punitive user fees are for the very poorest.