Thursday, April 06, 2006

Littering and Poor English

Some thoughts on Pueblo’s image problem.

People keep wondering why Pueblo has an image problem. During the past week I experienced two things which might give us a clue.

Yesterday at about 2 in the afternoon as I was on my way to a meeting at the City Planning Office, I witnessed three men littering private property at the corner of D Street and Main with the remains of their soft drinks: cups containing ice. What made this especially bad was that the three men were driving and riding in a service body truck with the Pueblo City logo on the side. I suppose they could have stolen the truck, but it is more likely that they are City employees.

For those of you unfamiliar with the area, D and Main is one block off the Union Avenue Historic District, an area of hundred-year-old commercial buildings which is having problems with vacant, poorly-maintained properties. Having City employees dumping their trash a block away certainly doesn’t help.

I am also concerned about the level of morale displayed by this act. If a City employee won’t be a booster for his own city to the extent that he refrains from littering, what can you expect out of the rest of us?

Last week I received a letter from the local country club which started out “Dear Perspective Member.” What can I say? My perspective is that I don’t want to be considered a prospective member of an organization that lets that kind of thing go out, while at the same time it tries to claim it has high quality everything, from food to tennis courts?

People keep trying to blame the image problem on the lower-income people living here, since Pueblo has a few more than average. Yet the City employees certainly have decent, if not extravagant, incomes, and the country club certainly doesn’t fit in that category.

We all need to start checking our behavior for the effect it has on others, including prospective job providers and our neighbors and stop blaming “them” for Pueblo’s image problem. It isn’t just the smokestacks and the weeds.

Less...