I’M planning a wee day out in Glasgow. I thought maybe the Transport Museum (£74m), then Kelvingrove (£35m) and finally over to the Burrell (£66m) and the best bit is it won’t cost me a penny. All free. Hurrah!

But am I the only one who thinks that’s odd? I took friends to the Transport Museum recently and we all work and earn decent amounts and yet none of us had to stump up any cash at all. I’ve also been to the refurbed Burrell a few times – again: didn’t cost me a thing. Collectively, the Burrell, Kelvingrove and the Transport Museum cost £175m to build or refurbish and yet the visitors aren’t expected to help pay for it with an entrance fee.

Can that be right? Glasgow council, who funded most of the build and refurbishments, is facing a black hole in its budget of about £50m and yet cannot recoup any of the cost of the museums from the people who visit them. The city is also having to consider cutting services for the least-well-off in the city while funding visits to museums by people who, mostly, could afford to pay for a ticket. Can that be fair?

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However, maybe, at last, the council is waking up because it’s just been revealed that it plans to start charging entry to the Kibble Palace in the Botanic Gardens. The council points out, rightly, that it has to find millions to balance the books and charging a fee for the Kibble would raise £185,000 a year. Not a huge amount compared to the £50m black hole, but it’s something. It helps.

The argument some people are making against any charge appears to rest on fine words about free entry being part of Glasgow’s identity. But fine words butter no parsnips and batter no sausages and pay for no black holes. Brian Atkinson, of the Friends of Botanic Gardens, told The Herald charging would strike a major blow to the promotion of environmental awareness. West end resident Donny McIntyre also said free entry was a citizen’s right.

But with respect to people who live in the West End and value their free access to the Kibble, I would point out that assets in other parts of the city are suffering because of a lack of cash. I recently spent some time with the people who use Springburn Park – it’s desperately short of money and the winter gardens is a skeletal shell. The same problem applies to the glasshouse at the People’s Palace: it’s just as important as Kibble and yet it’s closed for lack of funds.

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So I have a question: is it fair that assets such as Springburn Winter Gardens and the People’s Palace should be suffering for lack of money while relatively well-off people are visiting other assets such as the Kibble or Kelvingrove for nothing? The obvious thing to do would be what most other cities and countries do which is charge for entry to public buildings and use the money to help pay for them, while giving free access to certain groups: the over-70s perhaps, or people on low incomes.

Perhaps, hopefully, Glasgow’s decision about the Kibble is the start of an awareness that something of this nature has to be done and that a principle of free entry for everyone including the well-off sits uncomfortably next to a bill for £50m. People talk of a citizen’s right to get into stuff for nothing, but it seems to me there isn’t enough talk of the civic duty to balance the books and minimise the burden on council tax payers.

And please don’t think this comes from someone who doesn’t care about Glasgow’s museums. I was there on the day the new Transport Museum opened and I remember speaking to a great old guy called Alex Warren who, as an apprentice, worked on one of the giant locomotives that’s on show at the museum and in fact is the largest single object in the building: South African Locomotive 3007.

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My point is that someone like Mr Warren, who was in his 80s, would still get into the museum for free, and Kelvingrove, and anywhere else in Glasgow he fancied going. But the rest of us – or those who could afford it – would be expected to pay and for good reason. For the sake of the council budget. For the sake of the buildings. For the sake of all of us.