Rancho Cordova’s recent ordinance banning certain businesses including tattoo parlors and check-cashing businesses also targets thrift stores. According to the Bee today, Salvation Army had recently planned to move into a new location in Rancho and is now being banned by that ordinance and is gearing up for a fight, including possible legal action against Rancho.

The ban is aimed at improving the “public health, safety and welfare” of Rancho Cordova. I suppose a gently used blazer or a macrame picture frame touched by an elderly woman might contain deadly biotoxins.

Also, is the irony of banning Salvation Army to improve the welfare of Rancho’s citizens lost on Rancho’s leadership? And no, I don’t mean “welfare” like food stamps, I mean in the sense of the general well-being of its citizens who might benefit from Salvation Army’s drug and alcohol rehab programs and business model of allowing people to put their consumerism to good use by recycling used items. Maybe Rancho considers those individuals a threat to the public health and would like them moved?

This subject always reminds me of the Simpsons bit where inner city improvement turns a homeless man into a mailbox.