Ordinances should be accepted

The city of Moses Lake feels like it is being progressive by enacting guidelines to deal with residential and abandoned vehicles.

Some residents feel like the same guidelines attempt to curtail citizens' rights and milk the citizens for more money rather than taking progressive stabs at a better standard of living.

Who's right? Hard to say, however, the closest thing to the truth is neither option A nor B, but somewhere in between.

Is the city being progressive? If we take at face value the fact that they took an important step in enacting what city leaders admit are two very basic ordinances to control and restrict residential and abandoned vehicles and junk, then, yes, they are being progressive. It is better to do something about this problem than to let it fester. Under that perspective, Gavinski, Covey, Alvarado and Co. deserve our congratulations.

However, let us not forget that these guidelines come at a point when certain citizens have grown hoarse asking the city to do something about the decaying quality of life of their neighborhoods. Two years ago, a citizen with tears streaming down her face told many of the council members who approved the ordinances on Tuesday that she was tired of living in a cesspool.

Under that perspective, what comes to mind is not proactivity but instead a big "it's about time," especially when all the talk is about revitalizing the central areas of the city. Moses Lake is not just downtown.

To be fair, many of the problems predate the city's annexation of some of these neighborhoods, and yes, the ordinances have been a constant item on the city's to-do list.

Still, when people start comparing their home and their neighbor's home to the home of your unfriendly disease-carrying bacteria, something is wrong, and that was two years ago. Action was definitely overdue.

On the other hand, comparing what the city is doing to the deeds of a tyrannical regime is thoroughly unnecessary rhetoric for a topic that is meant to bring improvements to the quality of life of the citizens.

There is no need to be an American history scholar to realize what private property means to this nation. To say it is a pillar of our way of life is an understatement. However, the same way not every car missing a wheel qualifies as junk, not every tiny slab of government involvement in our lives qualifies as tyranny.

Government has a role in our lives, like it or not. From lighting up our roads to protecting bank deposits to delivering our mail, to granting homeownership to war veterans, the hand of government has not kept America's capitalist economy from surviving and at times even thriving.

This is another one of those instances where government involvement should be, if not welcome, at least accepted. This is not a first step towards turning a rural town of 16,000 into a Stalinist gulag with nice sunsets and good schools. This is just a small government doing what governments all over the world have been doing for years: Telling its citizens to keep its streets clean, folks.

Sure the ordinances are going to chafe some skins and it is not going to fit everybody just perfect. But then again, that is the same way a seat belt works. The government has been telling us to wear those for years and we have accepted.These ordinances should not be taken any differently than that.

Sebastian Moraga is the city reporter for the Columbia Basin Herald.