By Frank Erickson
What a perfect month in The Alley March Edition; focusing on urban traffic problems and also to have the cartoon on the front page, which shows a trash filled landscape”¦perfect timing to focus on both trash and traffic during the month of March.
As the snow and ice melt, two things happen, cars start to speed up and frozen trash hidden in snow banks shows its ugly face. To know that a lot of our litter flows into the great Mississippi, including toxic cigarette butts is heart breaking.
I have called both Cam Gordon and Gary Schiff”'s offices (before November”'s election) and asked for more trash cans in their wards—to my amazement, they said, they have no money to do this. I find this humorous, that two guys, who claim to be green, could care less that their wards are covered with trash. The Lake Street / Hiawatha Avenue area is a trash landfill, around the railroad tracks, everywhere, trash everywhere!
This is the twisted warped idea of what freedom is to America; to believe we are free to carry on this way. Instead of adding more trash cans on Lake Street, they”'re removing them. At the bus stop in front of Wells Fargo next to the light rail, there used to be a trash cans there, two of them, now there are none, and trash is everywhere.
Same is true in front of the East Lake Library. There used to be a trash can at the bus stop in front of the Library, now that it is gone the bus shelter and surrounding area is covered in trash.
There should be roaming city employed litter crews that do nothing but pick up trash. They have money to clean up the city, they just don”'t have the concern, and it is not a priority, even for the “green” officials. How can they say they don”'t have the money to add more trash cans (how expensive would it be!?) but they find the money to build Target Field, a new Viking play land, and a redo of Target Center”“close to a billion dollars”“but can”'t add trash cans??
Trash and traffic, two things we must wrestle with. Harvey Winje”'s article was right on, who is going to take care of the Phillips Community”“certainly not those outsiders flying up and down 26th and 28th Streets in their cars, going to Abbott Northwestern Hospital, Children”'s Hospital and Wells Fargo. Phillips is getting squeezed.
Are doctors who drive their cars to the hospital and work healing people, aware that air pollution from cars causes cancer, killing us while trying to save us. If they had children, would they feel comfortable letting their kids play near 26th and 28th Street?
