O' The Green that was Pulled

Enjoyed the fruits of my tax dollars again this evening. And helped a good cause in the process.  It was the annual "Pulling O' The Green" dinner and Celtic music  fundraiser to benefit Grant Park, held at the Milwaukee County Grant Park Clubhouse. It was a beautiful setting in a beautiful park. The whole idea is to try to keep the park beautiful. 

That's become a growing challenge. Milwaukee County has fewer workers per acre than the average metropolitan-area park system -- .30 full-time employees per 1,000 residents versus the .76 full-time employees per 1,000 residents average for all metropolitan areas. Milwaukee County ranks 75 out of 77 metro areas polled. This is according to a Milwaukee County Parks Funding fact sheet available at tonight's event.

That's primarily due to the dramatic decline in funding over the past 25 years, which has been essentially cut in half since 1986. That's not because county residents are paying less taxes. They've gone up. According to the fact sheet, park funding was only about 35 percent in 2007 of what it was in 1983. 

Don't know how much was raised tonight. I hope to find out later. The food sure was good, though -- Irish stew, corned beef and cabbage or potato soup entre, a brewsky or root beer, bread and cake. And the music, performed by the Garlic Mustard Pickers, was great. Interestingly, the Garlic Mustard Pickers band members all met as volunteers pulling the invasive Garlic Mustard weed from Grant Park and discovered their mutual love of -- and ability to play -- celtic music.