Thoughts on traffic violations and taxes

Tonight, while riding my bike in the Fairway Meadows Addition, I watched in amazement as eight cars went through a 4-way stop, some of them without even touching their brakes. I’m sure I could have witnessed the same thing at any other residential intersection in Lakeland.

Sure, we could call the Sheriff-the Shelby County Sheriff has always provided outstanding service-but then they wouldn’t be available for other areas where we (Lakeland) or another area for more serious crimes.

If motorists didn’t speed, the City wouldn’t need “speed humps” (at a cost of $8,000 and up depending on the road etc.) and we could spend the money we spend on “traffic calming” on such things as better streets, parks, trails etc.

This train of thought made me think of a paper I did in graduate school (I still have it) on “citizen participation”. The concept is that the citizens take action to perform some of the services government normally provides, so that government has the resources to provide other services.

Probably this course and paper is one of the more thoughtful and “new” theories I learned in graduate school (it was a course on “Political Philosophy” and I had an excellent instructor who made me actually “think”!-sometimes a difficult procedure!)

Certainly one way Lakeland residents can continue to benefit from no property taxes is to “participate” in restraining themselves so the Shelby County Sheriff can continue to provide public safety services for Lakeland. If we have to call them for such violations as people running stop signs-a very dangerous practice, especially in a high traffic/high child area or for meaningless, but dangerous speeding on a residential street (how much time do I REALLY save by going 50 miles per hour in a 35 mile per hour zone for one mile?), they may not be available for more serious crimes.

I’m going to try to increase my “citizen participation” in public safety by watching my speed and stopping at stop signs etc. I hope residents will join me in this citizen participation effort!