Getting involved in our city

As a suggestion that would be a useful act to help make our city look nicer for ourselves and visitors I offer a suggestion to the city council and to the folks who call this city home.

Why don't we start a program somthing on the order of the "adopt a road" or "adopt a mile" within our cities limits. Residents could "adopt a street" or "adopt an avenue" or various groups in town ie. clubs, churches, boy scouts or businesses could gather as they felt the need arose and just walk their street, avenue or area with a garbage bag and pick up trash on the side walk and streets. The project would be of great benifit to the Mayor's beautification plan and be a good civic minded project we might rally around for our own good. Sorta like meeting on the street with a purpose and to say hello. Maybe, it doesn't have to be an adopt a street sorta thing but just proclaim a particular day or weekend to be a "beautification day" and have some city trucks drive the streets to pick up the bags for disposal. A good time for this might be a week period or a weekend period just prior to the 4th of July.

These kind of things will not go unnoticed by those that are not so inclined to pick up trash and such and soon you will see many "new faces" out there assisting in your efforts. It tends to put a bug in the minds of "some" of those that might just carelessly throw something out the window or such, when they see their neighbor picking up something that might be "their"trash.

Just an idea--What do you think??

Thank you for your comments. Yes, maybe we can train city workers to bend over and pick something up, if necessary. We also might train the entire city to bend over and pick up stuff, if necessary. There will always be workers everywhere that don't or won't do their jobs. In the mill, in government, in K Mart, in Menards and even in our own homes there are and will always be workers that won't do their jobs. But, I am not a very firm believer in the American axiom that "its not my job" or "thats your job not mine" kinda mentality. Besides, those city workers that might have been hired to pick up trash, are doing so because "we" are careless in putting it there or allowing it to occur.

Nobody, especially not myself, is "insisting" that anybody volunteer for anything. Volunteer work just doesn't seem to be volunteer work when someone insists on its being done. Never the less, a program to do something on the order of a city wide clean-up by ourselves would seem to be a good thing to help ourselves and develope a civic sense and mindset for our own well being. I would call such a mentality, if I had to give it a name, "Civic Pride". If there are city workers responsible for doing a clean up, that there not doing, and I could well imagine that might be true, then those workers will be more inclined to now do that job they were hired to do because of the peer presure that will come to bear by the rest of their neighbors and residents in "their" town. Without regard to enabling anybody to do their job, such a clean-up holiday would still be good for us all even if a few were enabled to remains sloths.

We used to have more of this kinda "Civic Pride" but we seem to have lost it or modified its meaning to conform to the soreness we now seem to have in our backs and minds. Anyway, I took it as a matter of great pride in our city and in the people that live here, when last summer I overheard tourists admiring how nice our city looked and how nice we all got together for our class reunion and were having so much enjoyment in just enjoying each other. I might add that nobody "insisted" that we get together and have fun, it just sorta happened.

Very useful, thanks!
Mike Arlington | rid cellulite