What does a peanut butter and Marshmallow Fluff sandwich – the Fluffernutter – in Massachusetts, have in common with shopping carts in Lakewood?
Both – sandwiches and shopping carts – are apparently serious legislative directives by their respective governments for further study likely leading to official enactments.
In a state that already is known, or not, for no less than 52 state symbols – everything from the state insect (Lady Bug); to state rock (Puddingstone, and three other rocks); to state muffin (corn); to state cat (Tabby) – a legislative vote on an official state sandwich, for some, simply serves to spread the state’s fame.
‘Baloney,’ basically said a MassLive editorial.
‘No, Fluffernutter’ corrected their counterparts at the Commonwealth’s legislative lunch counter.
The bill still has to receive another House vote before moving to the Senate for consideration but “why the state legislature feels the need to designate a sandwich when there is plenty of other pressing business,” is a good question.
And why the Lakewood City Council has directed the Public Safety Advisory Committee(PSAC) to study shopping carts is another.
It was the consensus of the Lakewood City Council this past March 17 that the PSAC, struggling to explain its existence given its perceived lack of direction, was consequently directed by the legislative-types to study shopping carts.
Not saving the lives of citizens?
No, shopping carts.
Why a committee with stated policy to assist the police department in matters of safety has as their top priority an APB to pursue shopping carts is a question that has been raised, a deliberative process promised by which to address the matter, only to discover that the committee charged with a due diligent response is the very committee in which the whole matter summarily – and evidently without substance – reached a dead end: the PSAC.
The matter concerned what you’d normally think a think-tank like the PSAC would conscientiously address – the police department’s Use of Force Policy (UFP).
The promise that in fact the UFP would undergo serious review was made by City Attorney Heidi Wachter.
All manner of substantive argument after all had been presented here in this publication on numerous occasions but the promised study was not forthcoming.
The file is missing.
Shopping carts have taken precedence.
Given the agenda for the City Council Retreat this Saturday, May 10, calls for an update on Citizens’ Advisory Boards and Committees, hopefully that means that sandwiched between other items on the agenda, why the wheels have come off the cart will finally be addressed.
