Rhino Capital of Kansas”? “The Town Between Two Lakes”? Try “Semi Capital of Kansas” and “The Town Between Two Tractor-Trailers” instead.

Facing a tough choice between neighbors’ rights and a landowner’s rights — a dispute that the city itself contributed to with ill-advised past statements and actions — the City of Marion bizarrely chose Monday to take a mess that had been confined to one area of town and inflict it on the entire community.

The landowner has a case — legally and morally. The neighbors certainly have one related to safety and quality of life. Even the city is on the side of the angels in not wanting to treat one area, too often wrongly regarded by many in town as a step-child of the community, as being any different from any other neighborhood.

However, the idea of dealing with the situation by eliminating all restrictions on truck routes in the city is, at best, emblematic of the depth of thinking too often exhibited by Marion city leaders.

As the city’s own public works superintendent points out, a road not built to handle big rigs very quickly fails under their load. You need look no farther than Roosevelt Street, adjacent to Casey’s General Store, to see how quickly big rigs from last year’s Cedar Street reconstruction exacted their toll.

Sharing the burden of semis on all city streets has the foresight exhibited by this writer’s cat. Cats, it seems, like to place special things in safe places, and my cat has an abiding affection for things small and twisty — like twist-ties from bread wrappers and, unfortunately, expensive, almost invisible hearing aids, like my mother’s.

Cats like to protect their special things by putting them in special places. At home, I’m accustomed to finding twist-ties in my toilet. My mother is not quite so accustomed to finding $4,000 hearing aids in hers.

Let’s all hope that the City of Marion’s latest attempt to demonstrate the wisdom of Solomon hasn’t left the rest of the town in the same place as my mother’s hearing aid.

— ERIC MEYER