To the editor:

Your Sunday article about rec center fees promotes the idea that use fees reduce the tax burden on “residents who may not use the rec facilities in the first place.”

It’s an idea to which I’m not categorically opposed, but let’s be honest — as a city, and as a society, we’re not committed to this.

Compared to the Sports Pavilion’s budgeted $1.6 million, the city has budgeted $41 million for street maintenance, which doesn’t even include more than $20 million in annual capital improvement projects. Not everyone owns a car, and not everyone with a car drives the same amount. Are we going to start tolling local streets? Sure, we have a gas tax, but Lawrence receives only $3 million annually in gas taxes, not even 10% of what we spend.

Our parks and rec centers are among the few public spaces we have, where people of all ages, races and economic means rub elbows and come together as a community. This is as close as we get to Italy’s piazzas or England’s public squares. Can you imagine roping those off and charging admission? If we do that, we might as well just hand these facilities over to a private group like the Jayhawk Club, which would probably run them more efficiently anyway.

And please stop with the “but Johnson County does it like this”! If I wanted to live in Johnson County, I’d move there.

Percy Wegmann,

Lawrence