To the editor of the Chattanooga Times-Free Press:

If Mayor Littlefield is unafraid to make unpopular political decisions, I have a better one for him.

Instead of putting Marty Rutherford on the city payroll for three days in order that she may collect some benefits from her time on the city payroll, he could make an unpopular political decision that would eventually mandate curbside recycling.

Such a decision would anger fewer people than his recent decision; it would make more people happier; it would make the earth happier; it might take the pressure off the landfill expansion in Harrison; it would ensure more people will remember him for recycling trash than for recycling Marty Rutherford.

I am a resident of District Six, and no matter how long officials have winked at council members living out of their districts, it still remains the law that council members live in the district they represent.  Ms. Rutherford may have been an excellent representative, but that does not absolve her of responsibility to live under the law.  It was not forgetfulness or an oversight that made her live outside the law.  It was arrogance.