In the law there is a concept called "forum shopping." This basically means that if you don't like your chances or options in one court, you try to find a better court by whatever means possible. The other side, of course, does not want you to be in the better court, which would be worse for their client, so they accuse you of the horrible offense of "forum shopping." The principle is that the case should be heard in the proper jurisdiction, otherwise people are jumping all over the country trying to find a judge or jury they can snow. Law enforcement has the tendency to forum shop when at all possible, in an attempt to get a judge more sympathetic to their case. Defense attorneys are appropriately appalled when they sadly point this out to the court.

It's kind of like when a mother tells a child "no" and he runs to dad with the same request.

Bellevue has found a way to accommodate a little forum shopping of its own. When the public works department went to council's public works committee earlier this year, they were told in no uncertain terms that street sweeping parking restrictions would not be extended throughout the year on the off chance someone might want to fix a curb or clean a roadway in February.

Suddenly, however, the issue of street sweeping became a matter of public safety, and the issue was taken up by council's public safety committee.

Darn near anything can enter the arena of public safety, of course, if you stretch it far enough. But this issue has been stretched to the breaking point, and the residents of Bellevue are getting hit by whiplash en route to the new forum.

We are talking about a town designed in a day when no one had any cars, which today is being forced to accommodate multi-vehicle households. During the warm spring and summer months, when real street sweeping requires residents to park elsewhere for a time, many people end up hiking a considerable distance in order to find a place to park. It's kind of a pain even when it's not 10 degrees and the roads and sidewalks are icy.

The argued utility of extending these parking restrictions is incomprehensible. No one is going to be fixing curbs in the middle of winter. It won't allow for better snow removal unless someone in Bellevue government has the power to make the snow fall just on certain streets at certain times.

The mayor told council that, right now, there are leaves from last fall lying on one Bellevue street. That is not an argument for extending parking restrictions. That is an argument for firing someone because street sweeping has been in effect for the last two-and-a-half months.

Although, if Bellevue really wants to make this a public safety issue, having someone spray water on brick streets in January would just about do it.

But the public safety committee refuses to recognize that the inconvenience and potential danger to residents far outweighs the slim possibility of finding a day in mid-winter when someone can pour concrete for a curb. So unless Bellevue residents send a strong message to the public safety committee forum and council as a whole, they should prepare themselves for some ice skating this winter.