Do you remember the old kid’s song lyric, “here we go loop di loo, here we go loop di la”. Those silly lyrics always meant to me that the revelers were going around in circles. That is the way I feel about government in Martin County sometimes. Stuart has lately become simply enraptured by the thought of creating traffic roundabouts which is another name for circles. If you have some sort of real or perceived roadway issue, Stuart has only one solution.

Want to slow down traffic; make a circle. Want to spiff up a road; make a circle and add brick pavers. Want to justify a contract to a favorite consultant; ask him to draw a road with circles. And do you want to give out a lucrative road contract; make sure to include circles.

While the rest of the U.S. is abandoning this idiotic traffic approach, the Stuart city fathers are embracing the need to go round in a circle. Perhaps to some of them the circle represents an earlier more quaint time. A bygone era when roads were uncluttered and the alternatives such as a stop light were unappealing. What better way to say “Old Stuart” than by adding a circle at Colorado and Martin Luther King.

Or perhaps Stuart wanted a more cosmopolitan approach mirroring the Piazza della Republica in Rome or the grandeur of the Place de la Concorde in Paris. Maybe Piccadilly Circus which leads to Regent Street, an upscale shopping mecca in London, is the look they were striving for leading to Flagler and Osceola. Isn’t our Arc de Triomphe the Sailfish statue? Two meaningful cultural symbols located in the Place du Carousel and the Sailfish Roundabout respectively.

Sometimes roundabouts are the best solution such as with Confusion Corner. For the most part, especially on straight roads or where two streets intersect, roundabouts are planned idiocy. To my knowledge, the only city in America where roundabouts or circles are truly entrenched and embraced is Washington, DC. To say that Washington is a city of circles would be an understatement. I hope Stuart is not trying to emulate that metropolis.