It’s All About the Outfall: Amid the ongoing battle over poop treatment and disposal comes word that a local citizens activist group is forming with the apparent aim to put the sewage-disposal plan back on a more fiscally responsible track. As sewageawareness.org’s website points out, “Something smells bad here … let’s get to the bottom of this!”
A Noble Effort: Whomever you are (we have some suspects). And as much as the Hammer doesn’t like to be an interloper, nor get flushed with irrational exuberance, he cannot help but note that the anatomically turd-proportionate brown suit of Victoria poop agitator Mr. Floatie may well be available. How about a lend-lease deal, and/or a cross-border Sister (Sludge) City relationship? Many benefits could flow forth.
And Surely: The competing local liquid-related superhero/mascot, “Wayne Drop,” would not object to a semi-biosolid, gravity-based compadre?
Meanwhile: It sez here that Bellingham’s parking enforcement has been lax, and that that’s about to change, given the hiring of two parking-enforcement personnel about to be deployed to check downtown meters. All of this raises some obvious questions, chief among them: Wait, there are meters?
In Fairness to the City: At least the folks responsible for parking had the good sense not to play the “civic duty” card often used to justify a lack of enforcement of tickets on mass transit in some large cities. We all know that went out the window about two decades ago.
Further Fairness: It is heartening to see city officials stepping up to at least attempt to curb the onslaught of investors buying up and forcing out tenants of mobile home parks. The 10 parks among us are vital pieces of the housing affordability picture, which otherwise remains extremely ugly.
All Verklempt Over Here: It’s not often that B. Hammer blushes in the newsroom. Nor falls to the ground in a show of sheer appreciation. But both — OK, neither — of those things happened on Monday, when a loyal reader texted over a photograph of a new fog line paint stripe along Samish Way.
Background: Yeah, it’s a petty thing (note the continuing theme) in some ways. Said stripe was the subject of a Hammertime plaintive wail in this space last week, in which we lamented the absence of any vestige of roadway lane markers along Samish Way, the former backcountry highway turned busy city thoroughfare, traveled by many cyclists and pedestrians on a daily basis.
Frontground: That was last Wednesday. By Monday, the deed was done. Hammer leaves open the possibility that this, like the Electoral College, was just some bizarre coincidence, but deep down he knows better. As was said here previously, when utterances on the CDN op/ed page surely caused a sunken ship to be pulled, same day, from the depths of the briny sea in front of Bellingham’s Waypoint Park: B. Hammer vows to use these newfound omnipotent powers purely for the forces of good.
Asterisk: Hammer as always reserves the right to define “good.”
At Any Rate: Big, fat smooch of thanks here to city Public Works, which we assume struck this blow for public safety by doing the deed. The line is straight and worthy.
The Hammer is swung on Wednesdays, or as needed.
