The following is an excerpt from the book “Lonesome Dove,” by Larry McCurtry, that kinda casts a loop around what the Lakewood City Council will hear Monday night (December 14, 2015) when Chief of Police Mike Zaro reports on the long-awaited roundup of what has been a 21-month study (p.46) by the Public Safety Advisory Committee (PSAC) as to what to do about missing shopping carts:
“Every now and then, about sundown, (the heroes of our story) would strap on guns and ride off into that darkness, into Mexico, to return about sunup with thirty or forty horses or perhaps a hundred skinny cattle. It was the way the stock business seemed to work along the border, the Mexican ranchers raiding north while the Texans raided south. Some of the skinny cattle spent their lives being chased back and forth across the Rio Grande” (p.21).
Zaro will zero in on a similar scenario of shopping carts being carted off across – and thus removed from – the borders of parking lots where they are left free to roam – and/or rust – until, and maybe unless, corralled by gun-packing officers of the law, riding atop 269 horsepowered mustangs (Ford), the wayward four-wheeled runaways lassoed and led back to their rightful owners all of which is illustrated in a git-‘er-done YouTube link provided by Zaro for the City Council so that the council can see how another police department rustled up them there carts that had been steered into the gulches and behind the mesquite bushes of Slidell, Louisiana (there is also a Slidell, Texas).
“In April, 2014,” writes Zaro by way of background for the City Council, “the PSAC took on the growing issue of shopping carts being abandoned on city streets throughout Lakewood.”
Back in August of this year, Marie Barth, Council member liaison to the PSAC reported to the members (August 5) that “she had run into a citizen who has been taking pictures of shopping carts he sees around the city every day.”
Unfortunately, though Barth had asked him to bring the pictures to the meeting, he was a no-show thus there was no evidence as to whether these were several different branded shopping carts seen behind that tree or down in that gully, or rather were one shopping cart hauled here and there – photographed in the fountain outside city hall for example, and perhaps one with Mt. Rainier in the background, you git my drift.
Not only did the album of alleged pictures not appear, neither is there mention in this study by the PSAC for the study session of the city council as presented by Zaro how many abandoned shopping carts in fact there must be to constitute “the growing issue.”
The sense is though that were these stolen cattle and not shopping carts we may want to saddle up and get in on a piece of the action.
After all, when the heroes of “Lonesome Dove” were on the return trip from foraging into Mexico and found the brands of the critters that they’d dun stole from down south were already those of the guy who was paying for replacements up north – his having been stolen just days before and taken down south – the “sinners-turned-Christians” pulled up and considered.
“Here we set out to rob and now we’re in a position to return valuable property to a man who’s already been robbed. That’s curious justice, ain’t it?”
“It’s wasted night, is what it is.”
“If it was me I’d make the man pay a reward for them. He’d never have seen them agin if it hadn’t been for us” (p.125).
So there you go hombres.
Though shopping carts are listed as Number Four of “four things that tend to push our city towards a more slum-like condition;” and therefore certainly a matter worth nearly two years of considerin’ by those ridin’ herd on this here situation; and despite one PSAC member’s contention that there remains “no known solution in place,” Zaro believes otherwise and while he admits it’s “too soon to assess the effectiveness” of his recent plan, still the good citizens of Lakewood can rest easy by their firesides assured that “over the next several months the Community Safety and Resource Team will continue to monitor” the situation.
Meanwhile back on the ranch: to hear the rustlers-turned-rescuers in “Lonesome Dove” tell it, shopping carts – like stolen cattle – sure as shootin’ can be herded back to them that’s rightful owners all while providin’ those without work – or in deed of honest work – a reward.
Not to mention endin’ all the thievin’ – and wasted time spent studying – that’s been goin’ on.
It is my understanding that shopping carts cost upwards of $200. I wonder why the owners of these carts are not aggressively gathering them from Lakewood streets and returning them to use at their businesses, rather than replacing them and causing the price of doing business with them to increase to cover the additional cart purchases.
Photos at Council meetings are not necessary. Just drive down almost any major street, within several blocks of businesses having carts, and one will see numerous abandoned carts. Some time one may see carts miles away from their businesses.
Many think Lakewood is already over regulated. How about adding another requiring businesses to gather their wayward carts, and not rely on city staff to do their work for them? And fining them for each cart city staff returns, or in the alternative, how about requiring businesses to pay the city $25 for each cart city staff returns to them?
David–
Give us all an early Christmas present and give it a rest. Let’s hear something positive, Mr. Grinch. We have much to be thankful for as a community.
Aptly stated, Jason!
I checked my Christmas list Whalen. You weren’t on it.
Hmmmmm? I thought you got elected to solve Lakewood’s problems? If you can’t figure out a solution to something as simple as shopping carts how can we expect you to figure out things a bit more complicated…..like a budget or police deadly force policy or…….take your pick.
If you can’t take the heat maybe you shouldn’t be in the kitchen.
This amusing-but-sad article on the decisions of befuddled, misdirected public officials puts me in mind of a favorite joke:
Two brothers live in Vancouver, WA. They drive to Portland, OR to sell hay. They buy it from a Vancouver farmer and, in turn, sell it to a Portland rancher. Purchase price – $2/bale. They then sell it (drum roll) for $2/bale. This is a real head-scratcher for the brothers, who, after late-night bill paying, finally figure they aren’t making any money. “You know what we need?” exclaimed one brother in a light-bulb moment. “We need a BIGGER TRUCK!”
Thanks for the laugh. This is one of your best, David! And all true.
Your comments regarding the SHOPPING CARTS and the person you mentioned as a NO SHOW is me and I did drop off the images to Suzanna the folowing day. I plan on joining the security council to cure this cancer spreading around our community, i have many ideas how to cure it with one being it the job of the business owner to place an alarm on them when they reach a certain limit of the store property, this will be a deterant for all to steal them and take them as thier own.
If they can make the alarm on my watch loud enuf to wake the dead, they can make an alarm that will deture those that steal them. I will be doing research on this, just one of my cure’s.
You’d think that the stores with the missing shopping carts would devise a PR campaign to “rent” the carts–say for $1 a time to the desperados—-or allow them to purchase a license for a cart–now that’s a way for the city’s PSO department to make some money–considering all those “scofflaws” who don’t pay any attention to the 20 MPH flashing lights on Gravelly Lake Drive–while zooming past at 35 MPH.
Meanwhile, Dave, it’s a good letter–hopefully SOMEONE will pay attention. But, probably not, because city officials are “too busy” paying attention to looking good.
Most homeless people use these carts to hold everything they own! Do you really want to take the only home they have away from them on Christmas Mr. Anderson?
You are the Devil.
By the way anyone can return a cart to one of these stores as I have done, just throw them in the back of your truck and drop it off in the shopping cart return of the store it came from. You will get many thanks from the employees.
Just don’t try to take it from someone who needs it. Many poor elderly use them as walkers; they will leave them near there residence or bus stop and walk them back to the store to shop going back and forth with them.
They really don’t look that bad; what looks worse is junk cars in the yard, or a home that is run by a slumlord who rents to people who don’t care about where they live.
Ironically, and Lakewood Deputy Mayor Jason Whalen’s protestations to the contrary, in the last 24-plus hours in response to The Suburban Times article which Whalen took exception to, there have been more suggestions – including the likes of those found on Facebook where this ‘debate’ also rages – as to how to solve the terrible scourge of shopping carts that have encroached upon and are overrunning our city – than ideas, any ideas, that have emanated from the Public Safety Advisory Committee in nearly the last 21 months.
Which leads me to conclude that if you want an alleged problem solved, put the responsibility on (a) the people who created it; (b) the people most responsible for it; or (c) anyone who doesn’t serve on a committee.
If, however, it is not a problem to be solved but rather busy work for a governmental-appointed committee, then by all means task such a group as the Public Safety Advisory Committee (PSAC). It might interest the reader to know that on March 10, 2014 when Zaro suggested PSAC study shopping carts it was because “some members perceived lack of purpose and direction of the (PSAC) committee.”
Why a safety committee should be charged with the responsibility to study shopping carts – which is what the City Council would one-week later delegate PSAC to do and which PSAC has been doing ever since – is not only a mystery but serves as a most apt illustration of what would have happened had a group of government-paid engineers been assigned the responsibility to design a fork.
We’d still be eating with our fingers.