If there's anyone who believes it was a good idea to dismantle the state's MDC and fold it into the Mass Highway Department, look no further for contrary evidence than the northbound ramp to the Expressway at Neponset Circle. There, a road sign directing drivers to Morrissey Boulevard has been lying on the ground for months, ignored and unattended. Would you guess that's just another example of Bain & Company's Mitt Romney's efficiency in government?

More infuriating for local youth and coaches are the condition of the state-owned ballfields. Ventura Park, for example, was finally mowed last Thursday - two days before the baseball season ended - after more than a month of complaints from Cedar Grove Little League officials, who say it's been years since the playing field was so badly negelcted. The rationale from beleagured state officials who fielded the angry calls: Go tell it to Romney, who's chopped the maintenance budget down to ridiculous levels. One state official, we're told, advised Cedar Grove's all-volunteer staff to go get some parents and cut the fields themselves. So much for our tax dollars at work.

•And speaking of roadways, is there anyone on the Romney payroll who looks at changes in traffic patterns and makes assessments for alterations from time to time? It has been a full year since we last wrote in this space of the need to alter the timing of the lights at Granite Ave and Gallivan Blvd., an intersection that's become even more dangerous with the heavier volume of traffic. (Mitt: That's state highway route 203.)

A simple change: add a delayed green for vehicles turning on to Gallivan from Granite, so as to avoid the hand-to-hand, bumper-to-bumper warfare that plays out there on a daily basis. Here's a vote to bring back the old watchful ways of the MDC. While not perfect, the MDC always responded when neighborhood concerns were raised.

• Where is it written that motorcyclists have the right to the loudest engines and the fastest speeds? There are a couple of bikers now habitually riding our Lower Mills street at all hours, motors blasting and speeds well in excess of the allowed 30 mph. During these warm evenings, with the windows open, their roars can be heard all across town.

• Just when the local police union was beginning to gather some support for their demands for bigger pay raises, its leaders announced this week they're going to stage their own "Welcome to Boston" reception at Florian Hall here during the Democratic convention. Saying that more than a third of the conventioneers are "labor delegates", the union is demanding they boycott other events and descend instead on our neighborhood. Let us hope that Tom Nee and his boys show a little more respect to Dorchester than has been shown to other parts of town during the union pickets.

Nee should know that most people admire and respect the police for the tough jobs they do for us day in and day out, but some are getting a little weary of the relentless demands and the self-centered strategies of the union. In these times of high terror alerts, residential neighborhoods do not need the additional anxieties that could be caused by several thousand strangers being re-directed to our neighborhood. Here's one wish that the union would sit down at the bargaining table with the Mayor and resolve this dispute through binding arbitration. Reasonable people should sit down and resolve their differences, and here's the hope that they do just that.

- Ed Forry