SITe FOR SORE EYES… Squid is put off by some neighbors’ tastes. Like the dancing gnomes in one yard and the McCain-Palin sign in another.

Squid might assume quaint Pacific Grove is easier on residents’ eyes, but P.G. tidepool protector Jim Willoughby sets Squid straight. In a letter to Councilman Dan Davis, Willoughby complains that the city has slacked off regarding code enforcement while his neighbor has been “maintaining public nuisances which have reduced the value of my property and interfered with the comfortable enjoyment of my home.”

Davis admits the city has not been proactive on code enforcement: “If no one complains, the city doesn’t try to go out and look for violations.” And Willoughby has found little recourse. The City Council rejected his non-enforcement claim and city officials have ignored his lengthy letters.

Last year the council approved a hearing board for code complaints, with the hope that the new process will keep nuisance disputes out of court. But Willoughby worries that the system of “peers judging peers” will lead to cronyism and neighborhood implosions. He’s threatening to file a Grand Jury complaint if the code enforcement program isn’t implemented by the new year.

With the shootings in Salinas, the foreclosures in Seaside and even the multimillion-dollar CalPERS question in P.G., neighborhood aesthetics seems rather low-priority. May Squid suggest a fruitcake?

TIME FOR LUNCH… Squid likes to eat– a lot. Fish, shrimp, other squids, thin-skinned city managers, you name it, Squid’ll eat it. Sometimes crow, even.

Last week Squid inked Salinas City Manager Artie Fields, who, according to a tipster in the know, wants new badges for Salinas P.D.: “Because he doesn’t like the lettuced edging on the current ones.”

Fields responded to Squid in an e-mail. “I have never asked that the police officer badges be redesigned,” he writes. “I believe that the miscommunication could be that I asked why the police officers do not have their names on their uniforms and I was told that the names are embedded in the badges.”

And, “The new City Hall carpet was budgeted and ordered by the former city manager, not me,” Fields writes. “The ‘whole’ City Hall did not get re-carpeted, as stated in your article, only a relatively small section on the first floor… I believe the former city manager made an appropriate decision… was installed in 1964… the carpet was badly soiled and faded beyond its original luster.”

Squid is looking for new carpet. What happened to the City Hall carpet? Squid likes orange, Squid likes lackluster– especially if it comes with a side of beer-battered calamari.