Show common sense with parking enforcement

Twelve years ago, I was helping at a bustling Ketchum furniture store where the owner had a delivery truck. As winter approached, he asked the City authorities if he could park his truck in front of the store at night, because his space (as well as the adjoining ones) had radiant heat piped beneath; thus there was no need for the city to plow that area. Sadly, the city said no, and the owner, although he was already paying $16,000 a month rent, still had to go to great lengths to procure a less convenient overnight parking spot.

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More recently, I met a friend who has a fine store in the same Ketchum complex, and due to the nature of her business, it’s imperative that she keeps her vehicle parked within eyeshot. This usually works out well for her; however a glitch she keeps experiencing is the need to dash out every two hours to re-park her car, while in the middle of work projects. This daily unsettlement sometimes irks her, especially during months of ‘slack’ when empty spots around her business are almost always abundant.

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The worst of it is, that this constant need for her to start up her car in the two-hour zone and then re-park around the corner, spews pollution into our clean air; as the first minutes of running the engine coincides with the worst spreading of exhaust emissions. This goes totally against the grain of Ketchum’s enlightened idling ordinance and several of her business neighbors agree that in this vein, the perpetual strict enforcement of the two-hour zone law is unreasonable.

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So far, she and I have both been impressed with the diplomatic approach that the Ketchum Police Department has used to educate motorists about our idling ordinance. And while it’s already challenging enough to keep a good business running in this town, it would be refreshing to see our dedicated parking enforcement officers apply some of this same common sense to their general ordinances. We feel that if our vigilant on-the-street ambassadors offered a little leeway, while using some self-empowerment in these situations, then this would go a long way toward illuminating the welcoming nature and fine character of our hardy town.

In strong support of Ketchum

300 word version

Intermittently, I’ve heard comments that disparage the town and townspeople of Ketchum. Some will say, “I have no desire to visit Ketchum, or any of the people up there.” That’s too bad, because if you take a closer look; this pedestrian-friendly town offers much for young and old, rich and poor.

Like most towns, Ketchum has changed over the years. Yet it still holds many elements of a true western town. When it comes to weather, Ketchum is in the top 10 percentile of sunniest towns. The people are equally sunny and there is ample reason for this. A river runs through it, offering opportunities for enjoyable fishing and water sports. We have a popular YMCA. On summer Tuesdays, a vibrant farmers-market attracts vendors and customers from throughout South Idaho. After that, live-music performers play freely til twilight in the Forest Service Park.

For the spiritual, Ketchum has more than a handful of sacred places to worship. When someone becomes severely ill or is in a crash, the community often helps with fundraisers.

Wagon Days brings a festive weekend of olden-times coming alive; as craftspeople, blacksmiths and storytellers demonstrate their trades and speak their lore. Wagon Days also features North America’s largest non-motorized parade.

The library has an extensive regional history section, with helpful staff and an oral history program. The library also hosts enlightening weekly lectures with respected authors and adventurers.

We have dozens of fine restaurants. We have movie theatres and live stage. Free newspapers, magazines and Wifi are widely available. We also have a water park, bringing boundless glee to splashing kids. On the edge of town, Sun Valley Company is installing a Gondola for thrilling Bald Mt. rides.

I’m out of words, but I hope this aids those who are quick to sneer at Ketchum.

Linseed Tonic

RE:The 7th Plank: “Farms are told which crop to grow and harvest, and are sometimes paid not to harvest, the most profitable crop being industrial hemp was outlawed in 1937, as this product was to competitive and Dupont and big oil cant be havin that. Farms are controlled by various government agencies like soil Conservation Districts, BLM Forest service Managment agencies. ACHTUNG POLICE STATE.”

Until these ridiculous hemp laws are NORMLized, a helpful stopgap measure, which can be utilized, is linseed oil. For instance, by soaking a basketball net in a small vat of boiled linseed oil for a day, drying it out and then stringing it to the rim, generally increases net life tenfold.

Sometimes the net is tight at first, requiring a dozen swishes to tender it up, so that the ball will properly return. A second basketball or a broomstick may be required for players who cannot yet leap up the eight and a half feet, to release initial stuck balls.

The same thing can be said for butterfly nets. Annette in Ketchum is a famous butterfly catcher, who on a recent fiery afternoon, while rebounding my foul shots, insisted that linseed oil extends the catch span of butterfly nets twenty-fold.

Certainly I’ve heard that linseed oil is good for some other cowboy stuff, but being a deep-down city-slicker hayseed, I disremember exactly what that is right now.

During our progressive dribbles, Annette mentioned that there are currently some bills fluttering in the air that could bring liberal change to these silly hemp laws.

It would be nice to have again, some more readily available superior-quality hemp ropes and straps, to hold up better in this harsh clime.

However, one of these fluttering bills flies outside our common boundaries. A proposal set forth by Liberty Lobby, seeks to loosen the law to permit hemp of a high enough nature, so that it can be smoked as marijuana. The quandary is (as already mentioned in these blogs) that the federal laws can be looked at as super-seeding, any local ordinance we might choose to pass, if law enforcement authorities so choose.

Though sometimes common sense prevails and first ‘offenders’ are given stern warnings, and let off the hook, without being tightly netted into jail cells with broomsticks, it’s easy to imagine which law local authorities would usually choose to enforce, given these two choices.

Moreover, it’s hard to imagine that massive civil disobedience demonstrations would take place here, with demands that authorities respect Liberty Lobby’s law -if indeed it did pass. After all, only a handful of the hippest brave souls showed up for Ketchum’s last war protest.

Albeit surprising, it is also refreshing to see Ryan Davidson’s free-speaking activist attempts as a pusher for this particular bill. Sometimes it takes a dozen Harlem Globetrotter circus-level swooshes in a row to grab any attention, before the jaded public can be tenderized.

Reminds me of when I lived near Baltimore’s inner city basketball courts and the mayor there, Kurt Schmoke, was one of the few public leaders in the nation with the temerity to call for open discussions over the decriminalization of marijuana.

Here are Mayor Schmoke’s firm questions from two decades back, which for our own good, we should again examine:

http://www.drugsense.org/mcwilliams/www.marijuanamagazine.com/toc/052298-5.htm

In 1988 Kurt Schmoke, then and now the Mayor of Baltimore, astounded the country by calling for a debate on alternatives to the war on drugs, including legalization of currently illegal drugs. Mayor Schmoke has posed three questions to his constituents; their answers don't express confidence in existing policy.

Schmoke's questions are: Do you think we've won the Drug War? Do you think we're winning the Drug War? If we keep doing what we're doing now, in 10 years, will we have won the Drug War?

In the same spirit, we invite legislators and policy makers to address the following questions regarding the "War on Drugs."

1. We spend $50 billion per year trying to eradicate drugs from this country. According to DEA estimates we capture less than 10 percent of all illicit drugs. In this regard, I have a two part question 1) How much do you think it will cost to stop the other ninety percent? 2) Does $50 billion a year for a 90% failure rate seem like a good investment to you?
2. White people buy most of the illegal drugs in this country. Yet, seventy four percent of those receiving prison sentences for drug possession are African-American and other minorities. Is race a factor in the enforcement of drug laws, and if not, how can we prove that to skeptics?
3. Has the cost of the War on Drugs in terms of billions of dollars, blighted lives, jammed prisons, intensified racism, needless deaths, loss of freedom etc., produced any significant change in drug availability or perceived patterns of drug use?
4. Someone once said "Prohibition goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man's appetite by legislation and make crime out of things that are not crimes." How do you respond to this statement?
5. It is estimated that 45 million U.S. citizens have tried an illicit drug at least once. How many of the 45 million drug users do you feel we must incarcerate in order to win the war on drugs?
6. Why does the FDA stand up for the right of adults to smoke tobacco, which is highly addictive and causes over 400,000 deaths per year, while decreeing that adults have no right to smoke marijuana, which is non-addictive and kills no one?
7. Drug use is an acknowledged fact of life in every prison in the country. If we can't stop prisoner' use of drugs, how can we rationally expect to stop average free citizens from using them?
8. Despite signatures from 85 prominent groups and individuals, why has the Hoover Resolution (a call for an independent panel to revue existing drug policies) not been considered, accepted, or initiated?
9. What lessons from alcohol prohibition lead you to believe that the current drug war will end in victory?
10. Fifty-two federal judges, the district attorney of San Francisco, The mayor of Baltimore, the vast majority of prison wardens, and numerous other respected officials consider the war on drugs an abject failure. More than a few important Americans are opposed to the drug war. Since no other US laws or policies are inspiring such resistance, shouldn't we be listening to the many voices which are saying that continuing the war on drugs may be a grave threat to the long-term health of this nation?
11. At a time when working people are being asked to tighten our belts in order to help balance the budget, how do you justify increasing the funding to the drug law enforcement bureaucracy? Explain why supporting a failed policy of drug law enforcement has a greater priority than student loans or drug education programs.
12. What do you conclude from the experience of Holland--a country where drugs fall under the jurisdiction of health agencies, not law enforcement--which hasseen a decline in chronic use of hard drugs and casual use of soft drugs since de-criminalization?
13. If illegal drugs are so obviously harmful to people's health, why is it necessary to put so many American adults in prison to prevent them from using these drugs?
14. In drug policy discussions we hear a lot about the "message" that certain policies may send to children. What message is sent to inner city children who witness illegal drug sales on their way to school each day?
15. The modern drug war began in the 1960s, and for thirty five years it has failed to reduce drug access to school-aged children. Which is better for America during the next 35 years, prohibition with continued school-aged access to drugs OR reform policies that ease prohibition but reduce school-age access?
16. Drug prohibition has been one of the biggest U.S. domestic policy failures of the late twentieth century. Why is a perpetuation of this failure more desirable than serious consideration of alternative policy options?
17. Why should 270 million citizens continue to pay $50 billion per year to try to change the habits of 20 million people, considering that this policy has not been able to change those habits in 82 years and at a total cost of nearly one trillion dollars?

At least these are the types of ideas, which Annette in Ketchum and I bounce around loosely in our basketball court of imagined justice. Though it’s occasionally nice to shoot for stars with pie-in-sky ideas, today the butterfly-man who fell to earth can only offer the meager advice of supporting your local hardware store with an adroit investment in linseed tonic.