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As a Clevelander one of the things we’ve come to expect is the inability of our elected officials and those in positions of power (the Intelligensia) to accurately account for their use of public funds.  In recent years that’s meant that the Cleveland Public Municipal Metropolitan Memorial Regional North Shore Insert Name You Think Fits Best Here School District as well as many other schools and governmental entities have been unable to pass tax programs at the local ballot box (hence the reason two of our three county commissioners have decided that they’d like to increase our already TOO high sales tax rate by another 1/4% without a vote of the people).  People just don’t trust these folks with our money.

Then this morning as I was perusing Mike McIntyre’s column in the fishwrap I was struck with a brilliant idea - hire these guys:

With more people, and their pets, living down town, pedestrians have to watch their step walking in the Warehouse and Gateway districts.

The Downtown Cleveland Alliance, which employs about 60 full-time “ambassadors” to keep downtown clean, reports it has cleaned up 736 doggie deposits since April 21. That’s a lot of careless dog owners.

The solution is in the bag.

Mark Lammon, special-projects coordinator for the alliance, said plastic-bag dispensers will be installed near residential buildings in the Warehouse District and at Gateway. Soon, city garbage cans will be moved near the bag dispensers, making it easy to do the right thing. The dispensers will carry a reference to a city ordinance that demands owners clean up after their pets.

“If you’re going to have a dog, cleaning up is something you have to do,” Lammon said. “If you can’t handle it, don’t get a dog.”

Humans could stand to pick up after themselves, too.

This year alone, ambassadors have used a special device called the “gumbuster” to remove 3,315 pieces of chewing gum from city sidewalks.

And since they began cleaning up in May 2006, they’ve picked up 232,291 pounds of litter from city streets. The alliance helpfully notes that’s “20 elephants worth of trash.”

Thank goodness for all of us that none of the bag-less downtown pet owners actually owns an elephant.

736 piles of dog crap, 3,315 pieces of spit out gum, 232,291 pounds of trash - wow somebody really knows how to count over at that DCA - maybe they could loan out their Offical Sanitation Accountant to the Intelligensia.  At least we’d know how and where they’re wasting our money.