Belle [[?) Isle...

[corktownyuppie]

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.

Or I could just go somewhere else where I don't have to deal with this nonsense. And that's why Belle Isle is a mess.

While you're championing the needs of the poor, the lower-middle, the middle, the upper-middle, and the upper-class are all saying, "Forget it. I'd just rather go somewhere else." And so what do they do? They spend a couple hundred dollars and travel to Chicago as tourists to enjoy Navy Pier.

Look I care about the poor, too. The problem is that if you care about them at the expense of everyone else, everyone else says, "Forget it. I'd just rather go somewhere else."

Believe it or not, I was actually with you until you said,

If you don't like garbage lying around, why not go pick it up?

I spend all day doing work for someone else. We all do. So when I go to the park, I don't want to have to pick up for someone who just didn't care to walk to the nearest trash can.

I understand how punitive user fees are for the very poorest. But the city cannot care for the poor WITHOUT MONEY. Who is punished the most by the uncontrollable crime in the city, the rich with their private security force and locked garages? Or the poor and middle class? Guess what...we don't have ENOUGH MONEY. Who is punished the most when recreation centers close? Is it the rich with their $40 Tiger tickets and tickets to the Fox Theater? Or is it the poor and the middle class? Guess what...we don't have ENOUGH MONEY.

We need money.
We need money.
We need more money.
We need a lot more money.
We need to stop wasting money.
We need to stop people from stealing money.


Money money money money money.

And so when you're telling me that we shouldn't charge people an $0.84 per month charge to use the park because some people can't afford it? I don't care. Not because I don't care about the poor. It's because I care about the poor. Because without attractive city services, there's no reason to live in the city. The people with money leave [[as they have) and the poor who are left have even less money to go around to help them. It's already a mess as it is, and this is coming from someone who grew up here and decided to move back.

Are you really telling me that when you weigh the happiness of 100 poor people that can't afford $0.84 per month vs. the $5,000 in taxes my roommate and I wrote to the city this year, you're choosing them over us?

I hate to be blunt, but this is the essential problem. Detroit can be divided into two groups of people, independent of race, gender, education, or ability. There are those who contribute more value than they receive. Then there are those who consume more value than they give.

We have not enough of the first, and way, way, way, way, way, way, way too much of the second.