I had the opportunity Friday to meet with the new city manager for Watonga, Leroy Alsup. I came away feeling more hopeful than I have in quite a while.
The man has a quiet confidence with no hint of self- aggrandizement. Everything we talked about was not about him, it was about making the city better.
One of the most heartening things is that he has no agenda. He wants to do what we want him to do. His goal is that in three years the city council can look back at hiring him and say it was the best choice they could have made.
One thing I hope council allows him to do is free code enforcement to do its job. I have had it up to the gills with people who live in town and think they can do whatever they feel like doing on their property.
Yes, it is their property. But your right to swing a fist ends at the tip of my nose. I mean when your s%^t makes the block look like who’d-a-thought-it, you forfeit some rights.
There are far too many homes with garbage piled up all over the place or in a heap next to the road. Folks, if you don’t have utilities hooked up to the house, the garbage isn’t going to get picked up. Even if you do have utilities, garbage shoved in a moving box isn’t going to be collected. Neither is old furniture, appliances or TVs. Use your damn heads.
If you want to have 47 derelict vehicles on your property, for the love of Pete, move out of town. Your neighbors don’t want to see that and neither does anyone who might be considering a move here. It drags down the whole community.
There are rules and they apply equally to everyone. Even if you think a rule is stupid, it still applies to you.
The worst of it is that most of the offenders know better. They know they are doing wrong. Some just don’t care. Others are just thumbing their noses at authority.
But when code enforcement moves from issuing citations and fines or weed liens to dragging your dumb butt into court and to face the judge, hefty fines and short remediation windows, don’t say you weren’t warned.
For a couple of years, we have had an ‘our hands are tied’ attitude. Some of us have tried to keep fighting the good fight.
But now we can all get on the same page, the citizens who want things to improve, the city manager, the city council and the city employees. We can grab the opportunity to show pride in our town, our work, our potential.
Those who want to keep everything like it was can get on board or get out of the way, because Watonga is on the comeback.