Boring Enough for You?

We recently had occasion to travel into Detroit, and as we progressed along Route M10 into the city, I couldn’t help noticing the streets named “Ten Mile Road” and “Nine Mile Road” and so on. Somewhere in the heart of downtown there was probably a street named “Baseline” road, until it was named something more interesting, and each of these other Mile roads were one-mile increments coming away from the “baseline” where the surveyors started their map. Since the city was originally founded over 300 years ago (by a French explorer whose last name was Cadillac, of all things) it’s a fair bet that the original survey information is no longer all that relevant, and the only real reminders of it are these rather blandly-named streets. On the other hand, there’s a story online today that suggests that this may be just as well…

According to an article from The Press Association UK by way of Google News, McIntosh County in rural Georgia is considering changing the names of some of its streets to less interesting things in the hopes of deterring thieves. It may seem trivial to us, but street signs cost money (somewhere between $10 and $100 in most municipalities, plus the cost of installing the replacements), and the County estimates it is losing about 550 copies of the street signs for Green Acres Street, Boone’s Farm Lane and Mary Jane Lane each year. By the time you get into $50,000 or more each year, it’s not just a nuisance crime anymore, and none of the usual countermeasures seems to be helping. But if the county re-names these thoroughfares with names that don’t suggest a popular TV comedy, a low cost brand of wine, and an old-fashioned slang term for marijuana, respectively, it seems possible that people will stop stealing the signs. There’s no guarantee that the people on those streets won’t rise up in protest, however…

Now, I’m not suggesting that the people who originally named these streets did anything wrong; the odds are good that both the names pre-date both the television show and the wine, and it’s possible that they ever predate the drug slang. Nor am I suggesting that cities and towns should cave into to criminal influences by re-naming things. I am suggesting that this may be the best approach in terms of creating the best results for the lowest possible cost. The county authorities could attempt to prevent the crimes through the use of high fines, strict punishments, and aggressive law enforcement, but all of these things would ultimately cost more money, and the existing laws and enforcement have not been able to prevent the thefts. Changing the street names to First Street, Second Street and Third Street (or something equally run-of-the-mill) could eliminate the whole problem (including the $50,000 + dollars of replacement expenses each year); the county could even raise some extra money by auctioning off all of the remaining street signs, or offering copies for sale (the way the City of Paris does with some of its world-famous street signs)…

I call all of this to your attention, not because I believe there are any local civil leaders reading this blog (although you never really know), nor because I believe any sign thieves might be turning in, but rather to suggest that there’s a valuable lesson here about management and the art of the possible. The McIntosh County Supervisors clearly have the choice between spending several million dollars to prevent the loss of 50,000, or changing the names of three streets, eliminating the thefts and making a potential revenue stream available (the souvenir signs). The next time you’ve got an expensive problem on your desk, you might want to take a moment and consider alternative solutions. Are you spending a million dollars to save 50,000? Is there an easy way to prevent the losses and make money, too? Maybe you should think about it…