Does Anybody Really Care?

The Ann Arbor City Council appears to be seriously considering cutting the Parks budget, which could mean fewer cut lawns, the near-elimination of hand and hedge trimming, and less frequent snow removal. I'm not sure how I feel about this. If we must trim the budget (and I suppose we probably must), this seems among the more benign places to do it -- if all it really would entail is leaving some of our parks a little more ragged around the edges. And this comes from someone who is an obvious fan of the city's parks. So it'll be interesting to see how others react. Will this cause an uproar -- or hardly a stir? I can tell you this much: so far, we've been pretty lonely on our park visits. We sometimes feel as if we're the only ones who even notice that the city is filled with almost nothing but parks, parks, parks. I haven't seen much evidence that people care all that much. I think most of us take them for granted. Hardly anyone seems to be using many of them. But now that the parks may be threatened, we'll see how Ann Arborites feel -- or claim they feel.