Los Gatos Weekly-Times

Columns

Despite plea, trash continues to pile up in Los Gatos

By John Miller

A little over a year ago, I wrote a column in the Los Gatos Weekly-Times lamenting the tsunami of garbage that engulfs the entrances to Los Gatos from Highway 17. While acknowledging that cleaning up state property was not the legal responsibility of Los Gatos, I wrote that putting pressure on Caltrans to remove the mess was most certainly in our collective interest.

I urged the mayor and others, who ought to be concerned about this blight on the community, to send a clear and unmistakable message to Caltrans, to the Legislature and the governor himself that we, the outraged and indignant citizens of Los Gatos, were mad as hell and not going to take it anymore.

Unfortunately, I was in error. Apparently the citizens of Los Gatos are hardly outraged and indignant and, with the exception of myself, certainly not mad as hell concerning the garbage and trash that continue to blight the entrances to our community.

In fact, I am dismayed to report that since my pleading with the authorities to do something about the trashing of Los Gatos, far from being improved, conditions have actually grown worse. Bottles, cans, paper, plastic bags and debris best not identified in a family newspaper continue to deface the town gateways. Worse yet, trash blights the curbs and parking spaces of the town square, downtown parking lots and the very sidewalks upon which we tread to our own beloved emporia.

What is one to conclude from this disappointing reality? Obviously, our city fathers must be consumed with more important matters than the pig-penning of downtown. But they are not the only ones who must share in the failure to remove garbage (and the rats it will inevitably bring?) from the streets of Los Gatos.

My plea to the Town of Los Gatos Chamber of Commerce to assess its members a modest fee toward establishing a fund to hire someone to regularly clean downtown streets and the entrance ramps from Highway 17 met with a deafening silence. This suggests that retailers apparently think unsightly and unsanitary conditions are good for business. Despite such an attitude, I do not believe the people of Los Gatos really want garbage in the streets, though in the face of their overwhelming indifference, I am beginning to believe that they deserve it.

Tell me it isn't so.

John Miller is a public relations consultant in Los Gatos and author of 'Egotopia: Narcissism and The New American Landscape.' His guest column 'Freeway on- and off-ramps a mess ... so how come?' appeared in the Dec. 20, 2006, issue of the Los Gatos Weekly-Times.