Sometimes it's the littlest things -- the ones you think are unimportant and can safely be set aside until you can get around to them -- that come back to bite you the worst.

Because I spend so much of my life doing what I call "putting out fires" -- working on deadline with more work than time, running from place to place and phone call to phone call -- I have developed the very bad habit of procrastination with any issue that doesn't appear to be flammable. The problem is that if you ignore any issue for long enough, eventually it catches on fire and it generally takes much more effort -- and sometimes expense -- to put out the fire than it would have to deal with the issue in the first place.

As this week's news demonstrates, I am not the only one who does this.

Someone in the Avonworth administration or on the school board must have had a little niggling thought that the names-on-football-jerseys issue was not resolved. Someone must have said to themselves, "Didn't the boosters already pay for those nameplates?" Then they forgot to follow up, and, sure enough, all of a sudden they're looking at a little brush fire. Now the solicitor is involved, and the boosters have a lawyer, and it's taking a lot more time and money to fix this than it ever should have.

And let's face it, it was a pretty dumb issue to begin with. If the football team wants names on their away jerseys and it doesn't involve spending tax dollars, does anyone really care? This was one of those issues that begs the question, "Don't you have anything better to do with your time?"

Then there's Bellevue Council. For months now, four members of council have been voting against payment of the bills because of some advice given by the prior solicitor. The old solicitor advised, correctly, that the lame duck council in December could not legally bind the new council to an agreement hiring a new solicitor. There's all kinds of case law to support his advice. In January, someone on council asked whether the new solicitor needed to be reappointed by the new council. The new solicitor -- who no doubt was still in shock over the reality of dealing with Bellevue Council -- said no.

That turned out to be the wrong answer, regardless of the legal arguments to be made on either side of the issue, because those four members of council had been advised that they could be personally assessed for any payments made to the new solicitor, so they weren't about to vote to pay the guy.

Unfortunately, it also meant they would be voting against payment of all the bills. And given the erratic attendance records of some officials, it was only a matter of time until there weren't enough votes to pay the bills -- ALL the bills.

Bellevue dodged the blowtorch last week because the mayor was present to break a tie vote, but at some point this issue is going to explode in their faces and some critical bill is not going to get paid. All they have to do is properly appoint the new solicitor, whether they think they need to or not, and the problem goes away.

Don't make the citizens of Bellevue pay for any more fire extinguishers.