Tax Dollars Blues

Recently I wrote about four city employees standing right under the stop signs at a 4-way stop, each one holding stop signs. I didn’t see any construction going on anywhere and thought this was a blatant waste of four perfectly good stop signs, but I soon forgot about it.

Today I was at the same intersection and the same four people were there. The thought crossed my mind; “I wonder how much money we, the taxpayers, are paying these people to be human stop signs when we, the taxpayers, have already paid for the four stop signs they are standing directly under?”

My curiosity led me to pull over to pose the question, “What the heck?” (or WTF for you younger readers). I approached a person in an orange vest that turned out to be a woman. “Why are you guys holding stop signs when there are already stop signs here?” I asked.

“There’s a detour,” she explained, and then went on to tell me the entire detour route. As she was doing this, the man at the stop sign to the right of us yelled, “CINDY!” I presumed he was her boss and he was alerting her to approaching traffic so she could have her sign at the ready. He must have felt that the few seconds it took me to ask the question and her to start answering was distracting her from her duties, which he appeared to think required her undivided attention.

The first time he yelled, she looked over at him to acknowledge that she’d heard and heeded his control-freaking. When I didn’t immediately scurry away, he quickly called, “CINDY” again.

“Actually,” I said, “I’m writing a humor blog and thought it was funny to see you guys standing out here under the stop signs. Is this really necessary, even with the detour?”

“CINDY!”

“We have to keep traffic moving off Multnomah Blvd. as they come around the corner to this part of the detour, and since this is such a short stretch of road right here, it would get backed up.”

“CINDY!”

I looked over and noticed he was waiting for one driver to get to him so he could let him or her through, which meant that Cindy couldn’t let her cars go. They were stacking up and snaking back around the corner of Multnomah Blvd., the very thing these four people were trying to avoid at all costs.

Cindy and I both watched him. The car he was waiting for continued to approach slowly, no doubt confused that his sign said, “Slow” but the sign right over his head said, “Stop.” I know the feeling from going through earlier. You really don’t know which one to believe. Finally the car got up to him and went through. Meantime about 20 cars had stacked up on Cindy’s side, blocking traffic on Multnomah Blvd. (which is a hard word to say and people who aren’t from around here really muddle it up. It’s pronounced “bull-i-vard).

In all honesty, I believe the stop signs could have handled the traffic better than what I just witnessed.

Finally Mr. “Hey Everybody I’m In Charge Here And Don’t You Forget It!” signaled Cindy that she could let her cars pass.

In a related story, I got a parking ticket about a month ago that I lost. It was for $70 and I don’t want the fine to double by not paying it, so I called the City of Portland and asked for a copy.

“I can’t find a record of the ticket,” the clerk said. “The policeman who wrote it hasn’t filed it yet. Call back in a week.” Which I did, and they still had no record.

“It’s been over a month, what am I supposed to do?” I asked, hoping the statute of limitations had run out on the thing.

“Just keep calling back every now and then,” she said.

“How long do I have to keep calling?”

“Sometimes it takes these guys two or three weeks to file their tickets,” she said.

“But it’s been over a month already!”

“Well, just keep calling.” So every week from now to whenever my ticket gets filed, or until eternity (whichever comes first) I will be calling the city.

I see those signs at highway construction sites that say, “Your tax dollars at work.” I’m thinking that my tax dollars hired some folks that really aren’t giving me my money’s worth.