A case in point: The trees and flower beds around The Square.
This story began back in the 1970s, when somebody (no one will say who now) in the Leitchfield Woman's Club came up with the let's-pretty-up-The-Square idea. Nearly everybody, including this newspaper, jumped aboard, not with work but with verbal and written support. Elbow grease was in short supply then, too.
Since then, the project has evolved into what these things usually evolve into - upkeep and planning get turned over to taxpayers as soon as the bill for the elbow grease arrives.
Well, that's happened here, and we have politicians and bureaucrats, people who barely know the difference between a chrysanthemum and a zucchini, trying to figure out what to plant, who pays for it, who maintains it and who supervises all that.
A budget has to be drawn up, of course, but that process is on a fiscal year basis. June 30, the end of the fiscal year, and July 1, the beginning of the new fiscal year, is no time to be starting any kind of garden. And the budget has to compete for funds with dozens of other things that used to be good ideas. Gardens aren't a priority when budgets are finalized, and talking about pansies and property taxes at the same meeting.... Well, FDR couldn't pull that off!
There is one bright spot in the black hole of The Square's landscaping dilemma. Kevin Collard and Carl Suk over at Pine View Nursery have volunteered to ride in like the Lone Ranger and Tonto and put their considerable expertise in what will grow and won't grow to work. Collard learned as a kid from his grandmother what grows well here and why, and Suk has overseen the natural wonders of Bernheim Forest.
(Kevin has a soft spot for native trees, and Carl has a definite bias for holly trees, but neither would go so far as planting either in a spot the trees wouldn't like.)
Why the city and county haven't grabbed these guys and given them the tools they need is beyond belief! Or maybe it isn't. Officeholders tend to try to please everybody, never learning in the limited time they spend in office that this always has been and always will be impossible. Some like trees on The Square; others hate them.
Both are a problem. Those who want trees want those wimpy, too pretty, phony pear trees that can't recover when a too-heavy bird lands on a limb. They are trees that don't fit the climate, blooming at most for three days in the spring before a frost turns them brown. And forget fall color.
Those who don't like trees say the thick foliage covers up their advertising, plugs up the gutters and floods their offices. But, these are some of the people who never shovel the sidewalks in front of their businesses when it snows or they can't hit the mouth of a dumpster with a bag of garbage, so the stuff sits on the sidewalk in front for days. To save money the city and county turns pruning and weeding over to inmates who don't and can't be expected to know the difference between crab and monkey grass.
It is hard to turn things over to the experts, to people who are going to think past the next budget cycle or the next election, but for The Square to ever look presentable to visitors and homefolks alike, it has to be done.
And when it's done, the future of The Square has to guide what's done. We need to look toward a day when The Square is a walking space, a park with businesses and government offices and perhaps four handicapped parking slots in each corner and accessed by the same old U.S. 62.
We'll have to become accustomed to stretching that umbilical cord that attaches us to our cars. Buildings on The Square that are beyond reasonable expense to renovate, and several have passed that point, will need to be replaced. The city and county will need to forget landscaping and go back to their natural responsibilities of repairing sewers, gas lines, water lines, power lines, street lighting, storm drains and so forth.
All of it should be designed to pull people back to The Square so that commerce will follow. This requires a reversal of the current trend toward luring people to wherever it is that commerce wants them to be. In this way, the city becomes a place for people. Ultimately, it is people who pay the taxes that keep good ideas and cities alive, and they need a front yard all of them can see and take some pride in.
If we don't do this, we'll end up like so many of those memorial plaques that we've stuck around the city in which we remember somebody with a tree. It's just that the tree was in the wrong place and died. Looks goofy.
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