Staying past park hours for the most part is dumb... as far as being a big deal, its not. People walking around trying to play a game after hours is no something that needs policing in the first place...

Is the game responsible for people littering? Or tramping grass (seriously, its grass... lets get over ourselves) or flowers... Is the game responsible for that, or are the people who do the wrong thing responsible? This points at the overall shifting of blame for everything that is becoming so common in our culture... put the blame on the person who does the wrong thing.

The idea of parks having opening hours is so completely alien to me that I don't even know where to begin...

If you leave parks open at night you have to provide quite a bit extra policing. Otherwise they get taken over by hookers and junkies, and normal people won't go there. That kind of policing is the first thing that gets cut when cities run out of money, at least in my area, so they close the parks at night.

And if you close it, then you either need a big impenetrable fence around the whole thing, or you still need to police it.

You do, but not as many.

In my city they close the small parks (1-10 blocks, surrounded by cast iron railings) but can't do anything about the huge park that covers several square kilometres and has important roads running through it. There are some hookers and junkies and doggers there at night, but they have to go somewhere and they don't bother the "normal people" who are, after all, tucked up in bed at that time.

All this suggests that locking parks overnight is more about every government's burning desire to "think of the children" and control everything possible than any legitimate concern for public safety.

If parks did not have hours enforced, they would become permanent homeless tent encampments.

Thats a bad argument... There are plenty of places that rules in place to prevent "homeless tent encampments" from being a thing. The same laws that prevent you from camping in city parks. Thats a bad example...

Obviously you haven't been to Portland lately. Any plot of land that doesn't have an overnight closure turns into a homeless camp.

Lets look at an open park that can't be easily locked up.

How much easier is it to enforce no one in the park past $10 than no camping in the park.

>> This seems like a legitimate issue though. How do you propose it be solved?

> Is the game responsible for people littering?

I feel like you didn't answer my question?

Edit, to clarify: I'm asking what the actual solution is: expecting the city to pay for skyrocketing enforcement? Or letting the park get trashed and then blaming the citizens? Or just closing the park and blaming people for it happening? etc.

I think they did:

> put the blame on the person who does the wrong thing.

How does that answer the question? I'm asking how to solve problem, the response is who needs to receive the blame?

Edit: See edit above. The question isn't whom to blame, the question is how to resolve the issue. Blaming people doesn't generally resolve an issue, but enforcing it or putting in place mechanisms for preventing it or some other tangible action might.

Enforce existing laws on the people who are to blame. Fine them for littering.

As far as flower-trampling, just shrug and wait for the fad to pass. It's not a big deal.

A city may cite a citizen for mischief or perhaps vandalism for flower-trampling.

Great, sounds like a solution to me!

While I agree, I think the problem is affording blaming the person who does the wrong thing.

Perhaps more permanent solution to the problem is in order such as fencing around the flowers getting trampled. End the drug war if you want to save money elsewhere for this.

Large numbers of people visiting part sounds like a success - the only purpose why the park exists in the first place is so that the residents can go there and visit, so if they're doing it more than before then the park is achieving it's goal and it's great!

It would be reasonable to expect that the job of these city officials should be to (a) encourage the people to visit parks even more; and (b) maintain the parks adequately to their usage - if people use the parks more then it obviously costs more to maintain, but it also obviously means that people are getting more benefit from the parks and they want them to be maintained more.

Enforcing the rules about littering and trampling flowers is part of maintaining the park; but if people are routinely staying past park hours (the whole concept of park hours is a bit strange to me, I'd expect parks to simply be unserviced but otherwise available 24/7), then likely that's a sign that these hours should be extended - the purpose of littering restrictions is obvious but the only legitimate purpose of restricted hours is that the population wants the hours to be restricted for safety reasons or whatever; if now it turns out that the population doesn't want that restriction anymore, then it shouldn't exist.

I agree with you entirely about the success but I don't think that implies a lack of a failure. Yes, the entire point of a park is for people to visit, and I love that people are doing that, but "visiting" a public place is not the same as trashing it. Especially given that there are rare flora there -- the point is for people to be able to enjoy them, not destroy them. How do you respond to that? Do you just think "who cares about rare plants, just plant grass or everyday flowers or something", or do you think there's value to having something less commonplace? Obviously these all need care, and fining people doesn't really fix the problem of letting the plants grow, since when the crowd is large there's always going to be someone messing something up, even if it's a small percentage of the people.

They weren't there though to enjoy there park they were there because of the game. Not even because the park is a great environment to play there have but because the game encouraged to be in that place. If the game had put all the rare Pokemon in a parking lot that's probably were people would have gone. Were people there to enjoy nature? I doubt it.

They enjoyed the park because they were able to play the game in a nice park instead of on that parking lot. The park is there so that people can spend time in a nicer place, and it is "doing its job" no matter if they're just walking there, having a picnic, playing ball, sitting on a bench, jogging or playing a game.

By enforcing rules against littering, using parks after hours, etc.

They were complaining the enforcement was what was expensive... "It cost the city tens of thousands of dollars in additional law enforcement."

Government doesn't have a right to cheap enforcement that trumps rights held by the people, like those protected by the First Amendment.

Yeah, I totally agree with you.

I was just pointing out that "enforcing rules against littering, using parks after hours, etc." isn't the solution to them, they see it as the problem.

I don't quite understand the issue. It's the government's job to keep up public infrastructure regardless of how heavily it's used—that's something the left _and_ right can agree on.

The right does their best to cut government revenue via lower taxes, so how do you propose maintaining infrastructure with less income?

Sure, and the left just takes that money and spends it on "entitlements" (quotes used on purpose). We could play this game for days if you wanted.

I specifically omitted my own value judgement so it's amusing to see value judgements projected upon me via downvotes and snarky comments. If you think a neutral restatement of commonly trumpeted goals and their direct outcomes is a political jab then I think it says more about you than it does about me.

Judgement does not need to be blatant in a statement for it to have been cast. At any rate, I think my response was sufficient in that I don't really care which party has control of the pocketbook, they both have an obligation to spend money on infrastructure and they both find ways not to, even if it's a common goal.

A common method supported by the right (especially the libertarian right) is to sell off the (non-defense, non-law-enforcement) infrastructure, so that it is no longer a public thing that government needs to maintain.

Make people that use the resources pay for them.

the national parks are almost fully funded by the people that visit them.

I do not use any of the Local Parks, I do not pay Pokemon Go, I do not have a use for either

People that use the parks should pay for them, then if there is an increase in activity from something like Pokemon Go that means Revenue also increases to pay for the increased costs to maintain the asset.

Unfortunately, if parks were mostly paid by the people using them, we would have no parks. Most people won't pay to use a park, and would instead just no go. Additionally, it's often extremely difficult to force people to pay to use your park. It's different with national parks which people travel to for the sole purpose of going to the park, but local parks, lakes, etc will have a much more difficult time making people pay for it.

>>Unfortunately, if parks were mostly paid by the people using them, we would have no parks.

I am fine with that, it is not ethical to take money from people by force to pay for things like this, if their was value in the community for a park then the community would find a way to voluntarily pay for it, if there are not enough voluntary support in the community to fund the park then the park should not exist

Ugh, it's a park... relax.

You should check out the parks/beaches in some towns in Westchester and CT (e.g. around Greenwich). It is a disgrace that they have people sitting there enforcing access (e.g. residency).

> the national parks are almost fully funded by the people that visit them.

Even if that were true, National parks are big, which means the additional space taken up by toll collection infrastructure at parking areas (and the staff to man them) aren't a big deal, and they present lots of needs for people to stop and buy things which creates concession opportunities.

This is significantly less true of most (but not all) local parks.

But, anyway, even National Parks funding comes mostly from appropriated funds; fees (both directly from visitors and commercial services) are on the order of a couple hundred million of the single-digit billion dollar annual parks spendibf. And even that amount actually spent doesn't meet upkeep needs; the National Parks have deferred maintenance costs on the order of four times the annual budget.

> the national parks are almost fully funded by the people that visit them.

Source on this? I feel like if this was already the case then the issue of cutting national park funding wouldn't be such a big deal, and yet it is.

selectively enforcing laws against Pokemon players... E.g. enforcing parking hours including threatening to immediately tow cars except they'd ignore cars in the same lot that looked like they would belong to patrons of the restaurant frequented by the area elites.