Contrary to the latest reports in the media, I’m not automatically against boys wearing droopy pants without a belt. They are sometimes cute, particularly when the boy is two and his shirt is long enough to hide his diaper.
The older fellows my constituent complained about aren’t quite so cute. I dutifully reported the complaint to my colleagues on city council during the “communications and reports” portion of last week’s meeting and the press is now covering the story far better than the pants in question cover the back sides of some of the young men walking around town. It is interesting that I’ve been contacted from as far away as Bloomington Illinois regarding this issue.
I suppose I should be happy the reporter didn’t zero in on the OTHER constituent request that I reported on right after speaking about the droopy pants complaint: A request that we install beer taps on the new playground equipment in Sims Park…
Believe it or not, I had today’s topic picked out before the proverbial trousers hit the floor last week.
One of the things we can do to attract new businesses and good paying jobs to New Port Richey is to make our city LOOK better. That means taking pride in the appearance of our homes and businesses.
The city used to offer both “paint-up/fix-up” grants for homeowners and facade and sign grants for businesses. Now that we are exiting the Great Recession, I would like to see the city get those programs going again. There is a lot we can do to spiff up our neighborhoods.
It starts one home at a time. Our next door neighbors have spent a small fortune fixing up their front yard with new landscaping and other features. Most of us aren’t in a position to spend thousands of dollars to completely re-landscape our yards. Still, we can do things one step at a time.
We started our spring cleaning this year by renting a self-propelled lift so I could re-glaze and paint the second floor windows and install new screens. We followed up a couple of months later by getting a yard company to come in and do some of the stuff I try to avoid. For example: Trimming the cluster palm in my front yard that has needle sharp fronds.
One of the issues we have in New Port Richey is the high number of residential rentals. Unfortunately, neither the landlords nor the tenants seem to have much interest in making the outsides of these homes look nice. All too often, we see trash and debris strewn all over the place and cars parked all over what used to be a lawn.
The city will be considering a parking ordinance in the coming weeks. Trying to curb the habit of parking on the yard and killing the grass will help, but the underlying problem is not that people don’t know what a driveway is for, but rather that they simply don’t care.
We CAN make this better. The city is sponsoring the Cotee River Cleanup on September 20th. Click on the link for more information. I hope you will join me. You don’t need a boat to help.
I remember the Rotary clubs helping fix up the yards and paint homes for some of our elderly and disabled residents. It isn’t difficult to clean up just about any yard when you bring in a team of 20-30 Rotarians to hack an overgrown yard into submission. Perhaps we could use some of that paint-up/fix-up money to underwrite this effort the next time.
Some of the businesses downtown have planted shrubs in front of their businesses to try to make the downtown a bit more attractive. Unfortunately, some of the folks who don’t care about our community have stolen plants and destroyed the planters. This happened most recently this weekend to a business down the block from me.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the plant thieves in question are also the same groups writing graffiti on the sides of various buildings. We’ll replace the planters and clean up the graffiti because we refuse to let them define our city.
It is a sad commentary that some of today’s youth have chosen to imitate a prison fashion and even sadder that some well meaning advocacy groups believe it is racial discrimination to point out that wearing your pants below your behind and holding your pants up by clutching your crotch crosses the line from fashion to just plain offensive behavior. Perhaps we need parents to get their kids involved with groups that would provide positive role models (eg. scouts, Rotaract, church youth groups, etc) instead of letting them run loose without supervision. That and teach them what belts are used for.
Hopefully, each of the rest of us will devote some time in the next month to helping clean up our city, one river and one neighborhood at a time.
Rob Marlowe, Mayor
Pride includes respecting dissent. There are a lot of fashion choices that one could hate. Why this one exclusively? That is why people mention race. Whether or not it is conscious choice doesn’t matter. But given the numerous fashion faux paus, why are people trying to criminalize this one alone? Daisy Dukes – no! Speedos – no! Bikini briefs and tops – no. Shirtless jogging – no. Plumbers and construction workers bending over to reveal part of there posterior — no. Flip flops – no. Low-cut blouses – no. Tight-fitting and revealing shorts on men or women — no. Scary attire seen in Walmart — no. So, again, the question is :why this fashion alone? Linking black and prison makes the clothing sound really crazy, but this fashion is so far removed from prison that it’s hardly worth making the link at all.
There’s nothing wrong with hating certain fashion. Indeed, I don’t wear baggy clothes. But I am comfortable enough not to believe people who do so should be labeled criminals. That’s BIG GOVERNMENT. Something conservatives oppose.
Professor Hutchinson makes a good point. Fortunately the scary attire seen in Walmart is Port Richey’s problem.
Mr. Mayor,
I’m planning on being out at the City even this year for the cleanup on the 20th. I’ll bring my old dinged up Canoe and head upstream if I can. Looking forward to it!
I love your focus on the reignition of the cleanup/fixup grants in the City. I know a lot of places that can use it! That or a bulldozer in some cases.
Perhaps it would also be easier for reporters and other outlets to clear up your comments if the minutes for City Council meetings were published in a more timely manner. Here we are on end of business Monday and the minutes for the meeting almost one week ago are still not available. Hard to keep up with anything unless you’re at every meeting it seems. Not very open or inclusive as far as governments go.
The minutes hit the Novus system yesterday afternoon. The city manager’s goal is to have the agendas (including minutes of the previous meeting) out two Fridays before the next meeting. Last week’s meeting was on a Wednesday, so staff ran out of time to prepare the 17th’s 130 page agenda by Friday. The minutes incorrectly reflect my comments as pertaining to cell phones. My complaint was about the voicemail feature on the city’s regular phones as I don’t have a city cell phone.
Rob,
I’m not sure I’m familiar with NOVUS although I assume that’s the platform used for the minutes.
If you’re referencing the City’s website and the availability of the minutes there, I can assure you that they are NOT available:
http://imgur.com/tayirJw
If there’s a separate system that citizens can access to get to the minutes, then I would suggest the City needs to do a better job of advertising it.
Even if there is another system I’m not sure why it would be acceptable for minutes from the main Council meetings to be posted any more than 24-48 hours after the meeting. I’d say by end of business day on Wednesday after a Tuesday meeting should be the LATEST.
But, if we’re going by the City Manager’s goal of two Fridays before that would mean the minutes should have been up last week, yes?
The Novus system is currently in testing. We started getting some of our agendas through it last month. When fully operational, it will allow citizens to view agendas and minutes and search them by topic. I’m optimistic that it will be fully functional in the not too distant future.
Friday two weeks before a meeting is indeed the CM’s target and she apologized to us for not having next week’s agendas up last Friday. Depending on the length of the meeting, having Tuesday night’s minutes available by the end of Wednesday is totally unrealistic. The minutes are typically part of the next meeting’s agenda packet.
How would minutes by end of business day the following day be unrealistic? The minutes are taken during the meeting. They shouldn’t be heavily edited afterwards. The City’s clerk doesn’t even take verbatim notes. When I take minutes for the Environmental Committee on a volunteer basis they’re ready the day after and sometimes the night of, so why can’t a full time employee provide them within 24 hours?
In the interest of transparency I can’t see any reason why that wouldn’t be available. I disagree strongly with you on that issue.
Keep it up Rob!