What are we getting for our money?

A telephone conference between two of my grandchildren hass resolved the  wall of  words problem....I think.

I took  Stephanie  to collect her car . Drove my regular route to the town hall. Noted once again , litter in the gutters.. It has been there  since the end of last summer.  The light stuff  blew into  the shrubs and bushes in the fall and stayed there all winter.

The Mayor and school children will be out soon  with gloves and garbage bags picking the stuff out of the shrubs and bushes and the gutters.

Its good to teach children not to litter. The  poster competition is great fun.

But I gotta tell you . I never saw picking up garbage fom the street as an appropriate role for the Mayor or the school children. 

Call it snobbery, reverse-snobbery, lack of involvement. lack of environmental awareness'; call it whatever you like. I have never had an inclination  to go out with agarbage bag and pick up garbage. from the streets . 

We pay a contractor to keep our streets clean. We have a piece of equipment that cost $180.000 to 
augment the contract program.  I have repeatedly drawn the mess on the roadside   to attention at public meetings. . To no avail. It still doesn't get cleaned up.   

it's still there  for the Mayor and the school children to pick up in the spring.

A former  deputy-Mayor told  of her experience   A discussion was about a veterinarian  with an animal hosital  . He had cut  into a town fence  and installed a gate into the  grounds of the Cenotaph for an amenity  for his  paatents..

There was a Council  debate about whether  that was acceptable. The former Deputy Mayor  said it would be nothing to what she and Councillor Gaertner had  seen at the rear of the Cenotaph.
during litter pick-up day.

I reember thinking   "How disgusting " 

I  fervently hoped  they didnt have anybody's  children with  them. I also worried  about virus-laden mosquitos  and-what the Medical Officer of Heaalth might have to advise about that.. 

Anyway here we are. It's Spring again. The  Mayor and school childre are going out to do what should have been done by the town's work force more than six months ago.

Maybe that was the plan.