User Fees

A local citizen wrote that a proposed field use fee would be a “tax on our youth” rather than a use fee.
He arrives at this conclusion because he is a taxpayer and a father of a youth baseball player.
Somehow the logic of this escapes me.
We all pay taxes and they go for the common good; police, fire, the library, recreation areas – services and facilities that are available to all.
When a special interest group, such as youth baseball, wishes to use a service or facility just for their specific purposes and to the exclusion of the rest of the public, there should be a cost assessment.
There are two ways to recover costs for special interests: You assess a user’s fee or you establish a special district with taxing capability, as we do with our school system.
If you are excluding the general population, you should not be expecting the rest of us to pay for your special interest.