You Will Work for Food

Valdosta - AP - The Lowndes County Board of Commissioners scored a two-fer last night at its regularly scheduled meeting by taking care of two issues with just one new law. The county now has an ordinance that sentences all vagrants to "work for food" by shoveling horse manure at the new Horse Arena.

Citizen complaints about the increase in crime and harassment by vagrants caught the County without a law on the books that would give the Sheriff's Department the legal tools to detain vagrants. At the same time, county officials have been burnt by numerous complaints about the costs of the new horse arena.

The Outgoing High Sheriff noted that the department faced potential budget shortfalls with earlier proposals to jail offenders for 90 days. "They'll eat you out of house and home," said the Sheriff, "and it costs a fortune to handle common medical problems like STD's, intestinal parasites, and cooties."

County staffers noted that the free labor would offset most of the cost of feeding the jailed vagrants. The food budget would be supplemented by the county road crews collecting fresh road kill and off-duty deputies shooting wild game at night over baited fields.

"We could have tapped the food bank", said one staffer, "but we felt like the vagrants would prefer not to radically change their diet. If you've been dumpster diving for months you might go into convulsions and die after a meal of Warm Mousseline of Sussex Chicken stuffed with Cave Matured Roquefort and Fresh Harvested Walnuts with a Sauce of Sorrel Hollandaise and Julienne of Russet Apples." A meal, the staffer noted modestly, like the one he recently ate in Atlanta on an expenses paid business trip for the county.

In discussion before the vote, Commissioners felt that housing the vagrants in unused horse stalls and using them for common labor would be an improvement over their current situation. Commissioners preferred housing the vagrant population in cheaper, existing, low-security facilities like the horse arena as opposed to building more expensive beds at the County Jail.

One commissioner, speaking anonymously after the meeting because he'd like to be re-elected, told reporters that if the vagrants escaped and ran out of the county "it would be alright by me."

A citizen, requesting anonyminity because his wife would "cut him off" if she knew he said it, blamed the situation on "bleeding heart do-gooders" who kept giving food to homeless people "even though they know it just encourages them".

The citizen expressed satisfaction with the new law saying, "if word gets out that you really have to 'work for food' in Lowndes County we might quit being a varmint magnet".