Environment
La Crosse council passes $270K for security, cleanup due to homeless
Just weeks after a camping ban took effect on La Crosse property, the city council approved Thursday $270,000 to pay for added security in two parks, as well as cleanup from homeless encampments.
Of that funding, $195,000 would pay for security, including efforts to limit camping on city property. The other $75,000 would pay for cleaning up areas where damage occurred or garbage was left behind.
Some council members questioned whether spending money on security would mitigate the camping problem in the future.
La Crosse Parks and Rec. director Jay Odegaard told the council that a new encampment was recently found in the marsh.
The original request for cleaning costs was much as $100,000.
The changes in spending are partly intended to set aside about $20,000 to cover costs from camping that happens in the future.
Kevin
September 13, 2024 at 6:30 am
I am glad the vote for cleanup passed. I wish we wouldn’t even need to have this vote.
If we actually had a council that could plan, if we actually had a mayor that would treat the voters and their concerns with the same respect he has for his ‘special interests’, then perhaps there would have been a place prepared for the homeless/shelter less/disadvantaged peo0ple in a park where they could reside, whilst awaiting ‘bridge’ housing. All of this of course provided by the taxpayers, which, don’t forget have their own plans for the money that ‘they’ earn. Do not forget the city council and all the whizbang city planners do not have a right to that money, they didn’t earn it, they appropriate it (some call it thieving).
I walked through the area that needs cleaning last evening. I wouldn’t walk through that area as a hiker/walker/explorer until the half life of the needles that LaCrosse gives away has elapsed. My fondest hope is that the city hires someone with a metal detector to go through the area and digs up all the needles, and yet there will still be one. If just one person gets hepatitis, or aids, or some other needle born disease, the city is at fault!
The other thought I had as I walked through that area, where did these folks go? What did you, the whizbangs of the city planning/giveaway group do with them? Which new area of the city & county did you decide to blight? Don’t get me wrong, I don’t consider the people themselves a blight, i consider the city and counties ability to plan the source of the blight.
Here is an idea for our whiz bang bleeding heart, reduce the harm folks: Biodegradable needles!
walden
September 13, 2024 at 9:26 pm
Nope. Done with it. We have capacity to keep a certain number from freezing to death this winter. The rest are to get a one way ticket to warmer locales. Send them to Springfield Ohio where the Feds are ramping up grift for Catholic Charities and other grifters (grifters gotta grift) so the U.S. homeless will be taken care of along with the 30,000 Haitians.