To illustrate how little thought or effort goes into some people’s opinion, copy and paste the second paragraph of Mr. Eberhardt’s flowery essay in last week’s paper into Google (April 16, “Keep all vehicles out” pg. 9). What will come back is a link to the CRD website that he plagiarized his opinion from. He simply copied and pasted the web site language into a mindless letter to the editor.
People that hog to themselves what they make everybody else pay for are the real threat to be banned from parks because they undermine the funding. The value of a park can be calculated with a formula known as the travel cost method. Simply put, the capital value of a park is a multiple of the sum of what people are willing to pay to travel to it. The less people, the less it’s worth.
The flip side of that calculation is called the opportunity cost. Simply put, the cost of operating a park is increased by the cost of the opportunity lost to whatever management policy is imposed. The less people, the more it costs to sustain the capital value of the park.
But enough about worthless parks with no people. The actual issue here is the public right to use an existing road. A road, by definition, is not a park. In fact, the only thing the road has to do with the park is to keep vehicles out of it. The gate, on the other hand, keeps vehicles off the road and forces them into the park.
If there is a more ass-backwards way of managing a park than by blocking the road into it, I would like to hear about it. Our whole-ecology proposal of a key for the gate and a permit to use the road is the best way of protecting the park.
Terrance Martin
Sooke