MESSY PROBLEM IN LOYAL STILL WITHOUT SOLUTION
Wednesday, October 26th, 2005 -- 8:37 AM
Ideas are piling up in Loyal as they try to prevent horse manure from Amish buggies from piling up on their city streets. The Loyal Police Committee met again Tuesday night. No action was taken, but some new ideas emerged.Loyal Mayor Randy Anderson introduced a proposal for an ?Adopt-a-Highway?-like program where city residents ? possibly members of the business community ? would get together and voluntarily clean up horse manure from the city streets.
But Police Committee member Dan Campbell said he wanted to talk directly to members of the Amish community before making a decision. He questioned why they decided not to be part of the discussion. Anderson explained the Amish community prefers not to engage in public forums. It was agreed that individual members of the Committee would meet with members of the Amish community in advance of the next Police Committee meeting on the topic.
Campbell questioned why existing ordinances against animal waste weren?t being enforced. Police Chief Matthew Kubista explained the Amish?s horses and buggies present a nearly impossible enforcement problem for his officers. The buggies are not marked and, unless a police officer caught a horse in the act, it would be difficult to prosecute anyone for breaking the law.
This is no laughing matter for the community of Loyal. It was described by at least one Police Committee member to be ?tearing the community apart?.
Lining up on one side, the business community. They fear strict ordinances would drive the Amish to neighboring communities, presenting chilling problems as they already operate on slim profit margins. Anderson said this concern became a reality back in 2002 when the Amish threatened, and then followed through on threats, to shop elsewhere as the city discussed the problem.
"Three years ago, they stopped coming to the city quite a bit," Anderson recalls. "I'm just worried if we alienate the Amish, we're going to drive their business out of the city. We have a grocery store that depends on their business - the banks, the hardware store."
On the other side of the issue, residents who believe inaction against the Amish amounts to a sort of reverse discrimination, and a feeling the Amish are thumbing their noses at rules, simply because they can.
Campbell said he didn?t understand why a manure-catching device, also called a horse diaper, couldn?t be encouraged as at least a voluntary measure.
"I try to understand their point of view. They have their community and lives to live and own set of rules," Campbell says. "The problem is when they have an outside community telling them what they can't do, they get very stubborn with it."
No future date was set to possibly act on the issue.
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