We are informed the city has busted the bank, shot its wad, ejaculated prematurely … spent all the budget money because, you know, the housing boom will go on forever, right?
Critical services such as planning, snow removal (huh?) and law enforcement are facing severe cutbacks, so much so the city police recently announced delaying the anticipated hiring of additional critically needed patrol officers. With that in mind, I have a modest proposal:
Hire this old logger/hippie/biker for 15 or so bucks an hour to walk around (which I do a great deal of anyway) and ticket the either inconsiderate or simply idiot homes, shops, churches and apartment complexes that do not remove the snow from their walks within the mandated three days, and go back and ticket them again every three days the snow isn’t removed. That ought to generate enough revenue to not only pay my salary but hire those couple of much-needed patrol officers, in spite of their failures keep the city’s precious “planners” employed and, who knows, maybe even remove some snow!
First ticket goes to the Bend-LaPine Schools, which did absolutely nothing to remove the snow (and ice) from the sidewalk on Newport Avenue at Kenwood School, on Broadway at Thompson School, and Kingston at Kingston School for the entire 10-plus-day Yule break.
Bonus! For free, I’ll ticket every moron obstructing the sidewalk with their recycle bin.
Ten Bears
This article appears in Jan 3-9, 2008.
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Well, Ok. But, a condition of your employ should be that your Snow Cop Official Uniform resemble that of Frosty The Snowman… you know… black derby… carrot nose… mandatory red scarf… a hunk of coal in your belly button…
Excellent initial proposal, and the uniform thoughts would be a nice addendum. We all well know, unfortunately, that the city of Bend has no real interest in code enforcement and even if such a scheme were profitable it wouldn’t be enacted.
I don’t know about going undercover. It used to be fun but these days I fear some wide-stance stall-cruiser would “out” me for political spite.
I love you idea to ticket all of the offenders, the only problem that I see is the the city is the biggest offender of them all. In the end we would pay the bill again. The snow removal done by the city has been horrendous this year. Who ever is responsible for this debacle should lose their JOB!