"Cowardice asks the question...is it safe? Expediency asks the question...is it politic? Vanity asks the question...is it popular? But conscience asks the question...is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular but one must take it because it is right." ~Dr. Martin Luther King

Saturday 24 May 2014

Contractors do well out of it

My street has a strip of asphalt down the middle. Grit,gravel and dust form the shoulders of the road.
It's referred to as "soft".  Drainage is by ditch and culvert.

It's been like that more than fifty years. Getting close to heritage status. Stable neighbourhood.
Street vistas unlikely to change. Tree groupings established. A former Mayor  has always lived  in a house on the street.  House owned  and occupied all those years by the same family.

We don't have sidewalks so we don't get sidewalk plowing in winter.  Why would we?

But we do have the privilege of paying for sidewalk plowing elsewhere.

We do get street -sweepng though. It's not clear why. The sand has washed off the street onto the soft shoulder and on into the drainage ditch long before the street-sweeper arrives.

What the machine does, is send up choking clouds of dust to come back down and settle on grass and gardens just beginning to green up nicely.

Windows,window sills and shutters  do not benefit.

Contractors probably appreciate the business though.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Councillors will still get elected on whether or not taxes are kept down & snow is removed. Everything else is window-dressing, some of it actually useful like the library, seniors' centre and rec centre etc. Aurora gets the snow cleared ok; misses the grade on taxes.