Litter Watch 2004
This city employs a ridiculous amount of parking control officers to issue $20 tickets to illegally parked cars. Here's my new idea: re-assign them to be litter control officers. I am outraged by how filthy this city is. I want just one of them to follow me around every day and issue $300 tickets to each person who drops their trash on our streets. How much damage is done to a city and to the environment if a car is illegally parked, or if the parking meter ran out before the driver returned to the car? Big deal. Littering is a much bigger problem in my opinion.

Yesterday, I witnessed four episodes of littering. There's $1200 for the city coffers - brought in by one officer with only four tickets.

Episode #1: A woman tossed a piece of paper onto the sidewalk before boarding the streetcar.
Episode #2: A teenager carefully placed his pop can on the sidewalk before joining his friends across the street.
Episode #3: An elderly man pulled Kleenex from his pocket and threw it onto a tulip bed outside my office.
Episode #4: A young woman dropped her banana peel on the sidewalk in Cabbagetown.

If the offender can't pay the fine, he or she should be sentenced to four Saturdays of litter detail.

Maybe I'll take my new idea to the mayor's office.