Bread, coin, loot, dough or chips, whatever you want to call it, it takes money to have fun these days.

Think I’m wrong?

What did your last Hannah Montana concert tickets set you back? Or going to the movies, other than taking in the afternoon matinee at the Plaza Cinema in Oak Harbor?

What about the last time you filled up the old gas guzzler to take the family out for a Sunday drive?

Summer vacation? Forget it!

Enjoy the Discovery Channel on television, kids, because as far as we’re going this year is Vancouver Island — maybe.

Yes, indeed, it has become difficult these days to have a good time without shelling out a considerable number of those green, rectangular pieces of paper with pictures of famous Americans on them.

Pay for fun has also trickled down to the world of sports, and I’m not talking about shelling out beaucoup bucks for court-side tickets to see the Lakers, either.

In a recent issue of the Whidbey News-Times, we reported the Oak Harbor School District put together a fee schedule on what it will cost should anybody want to use Wildcat Memorial Stadium for an activity.

Make no mistake about it, rental of the facility will set users back a nickel or two.

Under the proposed fee schedule, it will cost the Oak Harbor Youth Football Association $455 to play two games on the artificial turf.

This includes five hours field rental at $125; a supervisor for two games at $50 per game; two hours, minimum, of custodial detail to pick up the trash costs another $100 bucks and tack on $40 for somebody to run the scoreboard.

Folks, that’s a bunch of money anyway you look at it — especially when parents are already paying a fee for their offspring to play in the league and filling up their vehicles, carpool or not, to take players to out-of-town games.

The largest single expense under the new proposal is for lighting the field.

Two-and-a-half hours costs youth football an additional $130. Funny, they propose to charge the adult soccer league the same amount for just one game.

In reporting on quite a few soccer games during my career, I have yet to see one that lasted two-and-a-half hours. Maybe the overall light bill has something to do with the cost of turning the switches on and off.

Don’t get me wrong, I think the school district should charge a fee to use the new stadium — if nothing more than to tuck a little money away for turf replacement 15 years down the road.

Out-of-town teams who want to play at a neutral site, or the Washington Interscholastic Activities Association using the stadium for playoff competition, should compensate the Oak Harbor School District.

But please, give the local teams a break! Remember, it was local tax dollars and donations from the community that built the facility.

On the topic of lights, here is a question I would like answered.

During the winter, every time I drove into town after dark, the lights were on at old War Memorial Stadium and a team was practicing soccer.

Who absorbs the cost for that?

Was a “fee schedule” for the use of War Memorial Stadium somehow created that nobody knew anything about?