Did we really need to spend our precious dollars on these "sharrows" (the road markers designed to inform drivers that there might be bicyclists on the road)?

Don't the signs on the roadside already cover that possibility? Or even a bicyclist?

As a recreational bicyclist in the city, I don't feel any safer. In fact, with all these signs and markers everywhere, I'm afraid a driver will hit me while he's busy taking in all the reminders.

How about all those little medallions on each storm sewer opening? If it weren't for those, well, I might have been dumping gallons of unused paints and pesticides with the ignorant notion that they all somehow ended up in a perfect processing facility somewhere in Wyoming.

Come on! With or without these medallions, the people who are too ignorant to figure this out, or could not care less, are the ones who dump into these drains.

Very green, but not very cost-effective.

Lastly, and my favorite, is our street-sweeping program. Countless tax dollars have been spent sweeping the middle of our city streets for years.

If lucky, residents are treated to the deft maneuvering of the lumbering beast as it tries to navigate between cars looking for that pesky open curbside.

Of course, even with a space or two between cars, there's rarely enough room for the curb to get the once-over. A schedule might help, but that appears to be too much of a hassle.

Is cleaning 10 percent of our roadsides really worth the money spent on this equipment?

T. Schuyler Sweet

Fredericksburg