CID To Hire Pied Piper For Commercial Street Bums
FairCityNews.com | Jun 17, 2009 | Comments 3
Springfield, MO—A half-cent sales tax along Commercial Street is closer to becoming a reality after the City Council voted Monday. Money generated from the proposed tax would go toward building a web site that would market Commercial Street, with funds also used for additional police patrols, snow and trash removal, business recruitment and retention, transportation to and from downtown on First Fridays plus a pied piper to lead away the bums, hobos, and hippies who call the area home.
Major Jim O’Neal said, “the piper has accepted and thus will play a musical pipe to lure the undesirables with a song into Jordan Creek, where all of them will be drowned.” Depending on his success, the people of Springfield, MO may renege on their promise and refuse to pay the rat-catcher turned bum-herder. Presumedly, the man would leave town angrily, but would returned some time later, seeking an unknown vengeance.
As it currently stands the CID would generate up to $203,300 in its first five years. However one business plans to leave the area thus reducing the available funds to be raised. If this happens, not enough money would be available to pay the pied piper. “Oh I could see the pied piper coming back to town, with more hobos in tow than you’ve ever seen. He’d probably play Big Rock Candy Mountain for every neer-do-well to follow in a 10 state radius. We’d be overwhelmed with bummage,” said local resident Herby Shiffer.
The historic district‘s registered voters would have the final say in the matter with a vote on the ordinance possibly in September. The Greene County clerk’s office reports 378 voters within the district. According to voter turnout in the past results show only about 10% of eligible voters actually show up to vote in elections so at most 37-40 people will decide this election.
This select minority will decide the fate of Commercial Street: thriving retail district or something to the tune of:
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains there’s a land that’s fair and bright
Where the handouts grow on bushes and you sleep out every night
Where the boxcars are all empty and the sun shines every day
On the birds and the bees and the cigarette trees
Where the lemonade springs where the bluebird sings
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains
Filed Under: Business
There is nothing valid to the argument I'm about to make, but I still think that you ought to tell the Piper not to lure Hobos along with the other street people. I like to think of Hobos as the "cultured" homeless, what with their songs of yesteryear and their tall tales–please Springfield, if you can, don't take away the Hobos too. –Concerned resident.
the pied piper has already been here. it's called the missouri hotel and the kitchen, they lure in the homeless drug addicts and make them stay with their free handouts. get rid of them, and everything will return to normal.
i'll sorta miss the hippies.