If you lived in a big city, there wouldn’t be a community events sign because there would be too many events for one sign. Maybe there would be many such signs, but my guess is there wouldn’t be any such sign. The venues for events would have signs about what is going on in that venue. But we are a small community, so we have a Point Roberts Events sign. But it is in terminal distress. You can see from the picture that it has lost all its stars on the bottom row. And the paint on its legs has seen happier days. And, although you cannot actually see it, I am told that it is none too stable when one is trying to post a sign.
And that is why the community council, which may in the future be called the P.R. Community Association, has decided to get this sign redesigned and rebuilt so it is more useful and more aesthetically pleasing. The landscaping at the base is to be replaced. Well, if you call weeds and blackberry brambles landscaping, the landscaping will be replaced. If you don’t, as I would think is the correct stance, the surrounding ground will be for the first time receiving some landscaping. I doubt seriously if the stop sign and the speed limit sign can go someplace else and the same goes for the library sign, so the overall aesthetic impression may still be somewhat less than desirable, but the sign itself and its groundwork will be soon a thing of beauty.
If you lived in a big city and they actually had a community events sign, then the city government would look out for the condition of the sign and would replace it or restore it when it became unsafe and unuseful. But when you live in a little town that has no independent government to speak of (we have only a Parks Board, a Water Board, a Fire District, and a Wellness Clinic Health District), such things don’t automatically get done. And that’s why government and the concomitant taxes required to fund government can be a good thing if they take care of such things. I am inclined to think that we pay a lot more taxes to our official government in Whatcom County than we receive back in services, but the County does not seem to care much about that. Which is why government gets a bad name, of course. But even if the county government were loving, generous, and kind toward us here in Point Roberts, I doubt if they would care about our community events sign. At some point, even here on the Point, residents have to take some responsibility.
To get the sign redesigned and rebuilt and landscaped, somebody has to find out who owns the property the sign actually sits on. Now, the stop sign and the library sign are clearly within a foot or so of the curb, so one might think that it was public property, but apparently not. The person who owns the land had to be contacted and had to give the community people permission to fix the sign. But first, the county person in charge of Public Works had to be contacted because he too must give permission. And when both permissions were granted, the Parks Board of Point Roberts needs to say what a good idea it is. And that, too, has happened. But, somebody had to make all those calls, somebody who didn’t have a job description that included making those calls, getting those permissions, someone who just volunteered to do it. And actually doing the new design, rebuilding, and landscaping work will also require people who volunteer to spend their time making things a little better in Point Roberts.
That may be what it means, ultimately, to live in a small community if it’s going to be a community you actually want to live in. A lot of volunteering and a lot of volunteer work, positions available to everyone, no interview required.
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Has anyone noticed what the stop sign and the library sign have in common? White lettering! Yes, that's right; high-visibility white lettering. Just a thought.
It's truly amazing how hard it can be to volunteer to do something. I live in Carlsbad, New Mexico, about 30 miles north of the southern US border, and 40 miles south of the Artesia Federal Law Enforcement Training Center, where they train our Homeland Security border patrol people. Many of them live in Carlsbad, having run out of places to rent in Artesia, making it possible for me to have a chat at the supermarket with someone one month, who will be up in Point Roberts making all your lives difficult the next.
Carlsbad’s Border Patrol office is housed in the downtown Federal Building, as is the Forest Service. I once tried to volunteer to clean out the noxious spreading weeds, trees, and broken beer bottles (from the bar across the street) out of the planter boxes in front of this edifice. I emailed the head ranger of the Forest Service and offered to do so, their being the most high profile tenant, with their chainsaw-carved Smokey the Bear statue, complete with shovel.
She couldn't let me do it, though, because the building was privately owned. About six months later, the owner cleaned up his act, but meanwhile, it continued to look awful. My, that was irritating. It was all I could do to restrain myself from cleaning up their planter boxes without permission, which doubtless would have resulted in my immediate arrest and incarceration on charges of Unauthorized Urban Beautification.
I hope y'all don't run into any such roadblocks, but it sounds like people are doing yeoman work and hoop-jumping appropriately.
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