Liverpool City Council propose charging for Park use

[openspaceman]

1 minute ago, kevinjohnsonmbe said:

Or, grass cutting and leaf collection are out dated, unnecessary, costly and potentially inappropriate actions which, by their very nature, incur (financial and environmental) "costs" which are poorly considered.....? 

Personally I've no problem with rewilding but my point was that any charge for the licence for a commercial undertaking to use the public facility should only be in relation to the additional cost they cause the LA.

 

Most of this locally seems to relate to commercial dog walkers often with many dogs, it's something I cannot understand as walking my daughter's dog is one of my few pleasures and , to me, part of the responsibility for having a dog.

 

I never thought I would accept "poo bagging" but now it seems normal to me but I don't worry too much if he dumps off the beaten track. There's no way someone with several dogs bothers and as they all arrive in vans they mostly dump within 200m of the car park

[kevinjohnsonmbe]

32 minutes ago, openspaceman said:

Probably not but our one has a penchant for imaginative accounting

I'm more inclined to think they all do rather than restricting my contempt only to those that hold an opposing political ideology.....  Maybe's we're better off restricting ourselves to topics that we can agree on...?  

[kevinjohnsonmbe]

31 minutes ago, openspaceman said:

should only be in relation to the additional cost they cause the LA.

I can agree with that.....  seems eminently "fair."  I will have to try and grab / post the news clip that I watched this morning if it's on iplayer or youtube.  That wasn't the impression I took from the slightly confused and poorly thought out message that chummy was attempting to relay - which I interpreted as, business uses park, business pays for park upkeep.  There didn't appear to be any relation between impact of the use and the cost of the licence, rather just a fairly clumsy reference to "we're too skint to look after the trees, who can we fleece...."  

 

That was just my interpretation - I may have been pre-caffeine, pre-breakfast grumpy old bastard mind....

[Mull]

 
That was just my interpretation - I may have been pre-caffeine, pre-breakfast grumpy old bastard mind....

Do you have another frame of mind??[emoji848]

[kevinjohnsonmbe]

7 hours ago, Mull said:

 

Do you have another frame of mind??

 

Only by degrees..... ??

[difflock]

Since, presumably, it is impossible for the professional dog walkers to lift multiple dog craps, while keeping control of multiple other crapping dogs.

So, in respect of this issue, a bit of targeted policing of the already extant Park bylaws, with fines, and hey seize the dogs, until the fines are paid if needs be, should address this issue.

Impromptu concerts = noise pollution issues.

etc

etc

Anyway, just recently the Mrs. was reminiscing about the Glasgow Parks of her youth, with the ever-present omnipotent "Parkie", who ran a tight ship.

Our local "Common", always known as the "Fairhill" now under Council ownership, was and is a wonderfully riverside located village centre site, utilized as;

(i) The local Loyalist bonfire site with associated dumping, vandalism, staggering amounts of litter and antisocial behavouir, for 3 months of the year leading up to the Twelth.

The other 9 months it is merely a convenient dumping ground for the locals, especially on the riverbank.

Why are "people", in general  such animals, with respect to public lands that they do not own.

mth

[kevinjohnsonmbe]

7 hours ago, difflock said:

with the ever-present omnipotent "Parkie", who ran a tight ship.

Totally agree!  It's a bold statement but, I'd venture to suggest that it all started going to hell in a hand-cart when it became de rigour for government departments to recruit, train and rely more upon the business MBA / CMA rather than upon the solid, practical experience of good home grown departmental talent promoted from positions of practical knowledge into positions of sufficient influence.  Once the bean counters get their grubby, excel focussed pounds, shillings and pence perspective inculcated into the very fabric of the organisation the inevitable outcome is pretending to know the 'cost' of everything but the 'value' of nothing - a la PFI for a cracking example case in point.  (I present this point from both the perspective of having been promoted from doer to teller and as the ever critical spreadsheet focussed budget manager for an £11 mil/pa departmental spend through 12 cost centres)  

 

Granpa was a "Parkie" for Oxford City council and I spent many Summer holidays of my yoof accompanying him to work (again, never happen these days) which has had a profound effect on my later life and passion for parks.... 

Edited February 11, 2018 by kevinjohnsonmbe

[Steven P]

I'll add a comment - might add another. In the last couple of years my boys have been toa group in the local woods - their fees pays the leaders wages.. but not much and the fees are a reasonable amount, The group isn't running at capacity every week so there isn't a lot spare to pay a commercial fee, however since the group started the car park is no longer a meeting place for men wanting to enjpy the company of other men in their cars on a saturday afternoon... and this has carried over to the car park being a nicer place for families to park all week/ If this group was to go then the afternoon dogging would return.

 

Charging a fee sounds reasonable but there is another side to allowing regular groups to use the paks - parks improve by having a regular and consistent group presence - which probable outweigs any license fee they pay.

 

Then there are dog walkers and so on, whose presence doesn't necessarily have an effect on other park users - would a lone park dog walker deter the druggie from having a quite hit and leaving their needles by the path? A military fitness group might.

 

So their are sums to be done, costs and benefits to work out and my gut feeling is oddly that a fee should be a flat rate for a  dog walker as for a group with 20 fee paying participants.

 

Then my second comment would be how do you distinguosh between a buisines and a community group? For example in my youth my Scout troop would often end with a 5 a side game in the park - so should they pay the same as a fitness group with 20 people each paying £10 a session? A big park user is parkrun - 5km runs through the parks and for no cost to the runners, - if they are asked for a fee they withdraw from the park rather than ask their participants for a fee (See Little Stoke Parkrun) - and the loss is that 20 to 500 locals are less likely to get out of their beds on a Saturday morning and do some physical exercise. So how would you distinguish who to charge and who not to?

 

 

Final comment is how do you enforce it - do you ask anyone with a dog in a park if they are commercial dog walker and for their license?

 

 

 

I think he is asking for a whole world of trouble asking for park users to pay a fee . He might do better sticking up the parking charge. Regular park users like the dog walkers would pay the fee every day and occasional users such as me and my boys wouldn't mind too much, groups like parkrun or the local Scouts could still organise their events for free.

[openspaceman]

29 minutes ago, Steven P said:

For example in my youth my Scout troop would often end with a 5 a side game in the park - so should they pay the same as a fitness group with 20 people each paying £10 a session?

No because the scouts are a charity rather than a commercial undertaking, the fee paying fitness group yes but only commensurate with their cost to the park

29 minutes ago, Steven P said:

 

A big park user is parkrun - 5km runs through the parks and for no cost to the runners, -

If there is not cost to the runners this is not commercial.

 

It has already been said that this is a can of worms because there is no point in making rules that you cannot police and if you charge for licences then the cost of administration and policing can easily exceed the income.

[Steven P]

however you might consider that the Scouts (typically) charge their members a subscription fee which is very similar to a fee paid to a fitness group. How do you distinguish perhaps between a run like parkrun, a charity fundraising run such as race for life where all profits go to charity or a pure commercial event like the Liverpool Half marathon - would it just be on the charge to each participant? number of participants or what?

 

I guess my point is that the line between charging and not charging is quite fuzzy and you can argue either way for many things - though yes, a can of worms and he will upset quite a few people however he organises the fees