Are bottle and can scavengers Public Enemy No. 1 in our town?

Should we help them with their chore or shoo them away?

I don't generally read the local version of Nextdoor, but a friend pointed out a long and detailed complaint about a contentious issue in our town that appeared there, so I looked it up to see what all the fuss was about.

It's not important who wrote the Nextdoor piece, other than he is a resident of Davis. So I'll just call him "Bill" to protect his identity.

His real name is Art, but in the interest of confidentiality, let's keep that between you and me.

"This morning, Friday, I awoke early to the sound of the trash collector emptying trash bins in my cul-de-sac neighborhood," Bill begins artfully.

Sounds like Art, I mean Bill, has a Friday pickup schedule just like the one we have in our humble East Davis neighborhood.

You regularly hear politicians of all stripes bragging about how many years they have been in public service, but as far as I'm concerned, the folks driving those big trucks on their early-morning routes are the true public servants in our town.

Always helpful, always accommodating, and even willing to pause on their rounds if you're backing out of the driveway while taking a kid to school.

But I've interrupted Bill before he's had a chance to make his point.

"It was 8 a.m. and as I walked out to the street, I noticed a scruffy bearded guy with a bicycle and cargo trailer, going through my neighbor's recyclable bin looking for stuff he could turn into cash."

Better than stealing bicycles, I say.

But as far as being a scruffy bearded guy, Bill, would you have felt any differently if he was clean-shaven?