We happen to know the energy and leadership skills of the chairwoman of Baton Rouge’s new task force focusing on litter, because she’s our boss.
But The Advocate’s publisher Judi Terzotis is going to need a lot of help from her colleagues and, most importantly, from the people of Baton Rouge to make a dent in one of our chronic problems.
The unsightliness of litter is only the surface issue. Underlying that is a sense that quality of life in the state’s capital city is not what it should be.
Who’s going to invest in a city that doesn’t take care of itself? And who among the best and the brightest that we want to attract to LSU and Southern and other local institutions will find in the landscape of litter and refuse a sign of a place that has its collective act together?
A short ride from the airport won’t miss the junk on the side of the road. That first impression is all too often confirmed elsewhere in the city.
The Baton Rouge Area Chamber has been working on the city’s talent issues for years, and the quality-of-life concerns that envelop our traffic-clogged and unsightly community remain a challenge to address.
Picking up litter, for example. It’s expensive to deal with after the fact, but as many who have traveled elsewhere note, there are irresponsible people everywhere. Other cities manage to do it. We ought to question why it doesn’t seem possible here.
But as Mayor-President Sharon Weston Broome and Terzotis emphasized Tuesday, government can’t do that alone. The broad-based new committee of business and civic leaders wants to better coordinate anti-litter efforts.
“It will certainly take a village for us to do that, so we need all of our citizens to get involved,” Terzotis said.
Original source can be found here.
