Dismantling of trails misguided

Re: ‘A chorus of wonderful music’ at Black Oak Heritage Park, by Julie Kotis, April 2.

Fencing off the whole park, blocking trails, removing trail supports and generally fabricating nonsensical stumbling blocks to park usage that could compete with David Letterman’s legendary and farcical Top 10 lists are evidence of the city’s dedicated and misguided opposition to the long established trails. If the parks department petty despots are so adamant on bringing in consultants to assess what affects the trail system has, or has had, would it have not made more sense to leave the trails intact to allow said consultants to actually see first hand the impact, or lack thereof, that a 17-yearold trail system had on the ecosystem? Now the consultants have to incorporate a degree of speculation while making various assumptions on a somewhat hypothetical basis, undoubtedly knowing full well the city’s preferred outcome of the study. Let’s be realistic, it was prejudicial and proactive to the city’s implied desired outcome to summarily dismantle the trails that took 17 years of dedicated and free user passion to construct. At this point, the parks department is now “in for a penny, in for a pound” and will be loathe to acknowledge expenditures past a certain point as sunk costs, and therefore wasted taxpayer dollars. In essence, they are in a position where they are fighting for credibility and will likely try to defend their position, both fiscally and professionally, at all costs no matter how silly and petty they appear — barring any sane political intervention. Ron Galbraith, Kingsville