I begin this tome with an apology for being an abject coward in the face of the cancel culture. I will not express my doubts about the widely accepted idea that killing 20,000 civilians (half of whom are infants and children) is a necessary and legal means of self defense. Therefore, in the effort of not being automatically labeled as an anti-Semite and terrorist sympathizer, I will deal with a safe and trivial matter this time around.
For the last three years, I have been attempting to find out why the City of Centralia refuses to enforce its own edict on public parking. to wit: the city-owned parking lots.
Prelude:
After dumping approximately $100,000 in rent for the last 20 years, I was forced to discover that I got by on the cheap and would soon need to earn three times my income in order to give all of it to a new landlord. I was rescued from the fate of living in my car at the last moment by a very special family enterprise who offered me a rent-subsidized apartment in downtown Centralia.
My alternate apartment on wheels now serves its normal function in a city parking lot.
The epic saga begins.
The city has rules and regulations on its lots, and I’m very mindful of them for obvious reasons. But obeying these mandates is irrelevant. I’ve discovered that the city finds enforcing its own rules as something they’re “working on.”
Observe a group of young men physically pushing a junk car into the lot and positioning it with two others, and leaving them unmoved for years.
Imagine repeatedly reporting it to the police for years and having them shine it on for years.
Oh, they did make one symbolic effort: They put up signs. Rules say the vehicles in their lot must be operative: A closer look at them finds broken tail lights, missing door handles, open windows and expired plates (one goes back that proverbial three years).
Imagine bringing photographs of these in and having no effect on the city’s reticence.
Now you get the idea. If you steal a car, have a body or load of drugs in it you want to stash, park it in a city lot and the evidence will remain in dumb silence, even if it’s reported to the police.
Wait just a minute. I think I just struck gold! Remember when Pearl Street was shut down between The Chronicle and city hall years ago?
An officer discovered a shoe box on the sidewalk in front of the police station, and the area was cordoned off until a bomb squad expert from the Seattle area could come down and defuse the situation. The empty box was removed in a matter of hours in an “abundance of caution.”
Well, maybe I should emphasize the fact that those abandoned vehicles are loaded with garbage, which does not exempt those dreaded boxes. Think that will get any response?
Dennis Shain
Centralia
