Traffic signals in the shopping areas around Butler that normally are in a blinking mode overnight should not have been allowed to operate that way for the early morning hours of "Black Friday."

For example, many motorists on New Castle Road near the entrance to the Moraine Pointe Shopping Center, who encountered blinking red lights, often found it difficult to cross because of a steady flow of traffic exiting Route 422. The potential for accidents there and at other locations was high because no one thought to have the lights operate as they do during the daytime.

Those with the power to ensure safer travel by way of such an obvious precaution should implement that change for next year and beyond.

The Butler County commissioners deserve a thumbs-up for not allowing anything — or anyone — to get in the way of approving a site for the proposed Merchant Marines Memorial in Diamond Park, now that the mariners have agreed to a separate memorial.A dispute had been ongoing for years over whether there should be recognition for the mariners on the front of the existing World War II Memorial in Diamond Park, rather than what currently exists on a plaque on the back of the memorial.The mariners were unsuccessful in their attempt to get recognition on the memorial's front, but the site now approved for the mariners memorial — the grassy area to the left of the existing memorial facing Main Street — will provide the honor that the mariners deserve.The size of the mariners memorial has not yet been determined but, whatever the size, it should complement the main World War II Memorial.

The Butler County commissioners have opted for what can be regarded as the cheaper, most-efficient approach to reorganizing more than 200,000 files from the clerk of courts, register of wills, prothonotary and orphans court.Instead of tying up valuable county employee time — which might have cost the county more over the long run — the county has contracted with Iron Mountain Information Management to reorganize the files, some of which date back 50 years or longer.In addition, the company will relocate the many boxes and docket drawers to a larger vault at its underground Cherry Township site. Iron Mountain also will label all boxes with bar codes to increase efficiency of access.In terms of county taxpayers, the best part of the $145,060 contract with Iron Mountain is that no tax dollars will be expended. The cost of the work will be paid out of a fund derived from fees collected by the row offices.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission failed miserably in terms of quick handling of the safety issue involving drop-side cribs made by Stork Craft Manufacturing of Canada between January 1993 and last month.That safety problem has over the years claimed the lives of at least four infants through suffocation. In addition, the commission has acknowledged that there have been 110 incidents of drop-sides detaching from the cribs, putting infants in further danger.Only now has a recall been initiated for 2.1 million of the cribs in question — 1.2 million in the United States and about 1 million in Canada.According to reports, the Stork Craft cribs have had problems with their hardware. There have been instances of breakage, becoming deformed, or detaching from the cribs and becoming lost.Under the leadership of Inez Tenenbaum, who has been the safety commission's chairperson for only a few months, the laxity exhibited by the commission over the years in regard to the cribs in question must not be allowed to happen regarding other products that are suspected of having safety problems.In response to a question about why federal regulators had not stepped in before now, Tenenbaum said, "We have just not been acting as quickly as we should have at the Consumer Product Safety Commission on these types of incidents."Her response raises the question of what her agency has been doing, if it hasn't been doing what it was mandated to do.<B><I> — J.R.K.</B></I>