By JANE LOTTER

I have before me a fascinating little booklet, published by the City of Seattle. The booklet is 20 pages long, it's free at your local library, and it's called Neighborhood Safety Concerns: Who to Call for Help Within the City of Seattle. Well, I mean, right away the title tips you off that something's amiss. Readers of this column, grammarians all, know perfectly well it should be whom to call. Perhaps the City is checking for survivors of the Seattle Public School system.

Anyway, whom indeed are you going to call when you have a neighborhood safety concern? Your mother? Your attorney? Your best friend? If your mother is also your attorney that could cut down on the number of calls you'll make. But you'll still have to call your best friend because your mother, no matter how much she loves you, can never be your best friend. If was your mother, after all, who gave you the gift of life. Would a best friend give you such a dubious gift? I think not.

Depending on your particular neighborhood safety concern - the booklet suggests you call various City agencies, including the Fire Department, the Police Department, and even Animal Control. (By the way, isn't "Animal Control" an oxymoron?)

"If you are unsure of who to contact," says the booklet in yet another grammatical lapse, "please refer to the alphabetical list of common citizen concerns." Common citizen concerns. For me, this was a real eye-opener. You'd think common citizen concerns would be things like "The Monorail: Just Build the Darn Thing" or "Your Next Door Neighbors: Serial Killers or Simply Annoying?"

But, no. According to Neighborhood Safety Concerns, the most common citizen concerns are things like "Animals, Vicious or Biting" (apparently there's a difference) and "Partying or Disturbing the Peace." (I'd hoped this would be a sort of how-to guide - but no such luck.)

Another common citizen concern is "Tree Trimming." Tree trimming is overseen by Seattle City Light. I like to think if you're a common citizen with concerns about tree trimming what happens is you call City Light deep in the month of December. They dispatch a crew of workers to your house. The workers knock on your door and you let them in. At first everyone is shy and a bit awkward, but then you pass around the rum cake and hot toddies and things loosen up. While you fetch the tinsel and the hand-blown glass ornaments, the workers string popcorn and cranberries. The atmosphere becomes downright festive. The workers laugh and tell jokes and a few of them even cajole you into playing the home version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. Just before the evening is over, they lift one fellow high up on their shoulders. Carefully, he puts the angel on top, somebody hits the lights, and, by gum, it's a beauty and it's finished. They've trimmed your tree.

Okay, back to the booklet. Let me now draw your attention to the series of surreal black-and-white photographs found on pages 18 and 19. These photos look like the kind of pictures that get snapped when the lens cap is left off and somebody accidentally bumps the shutter release. One of them is of a fellow standing next to a child's wagon; I'm not certain, but I think it's Forrest Gump. The rest of the photos are basically indecipherable. All, that is, except one of them, one of them, that is not to be believed. It's a photograph of a dog urinating. That's right. The City used your tax dollars to publish a picture of a dog peeing.

Can you imagine the individual who perceived this as a Kodak moment? "Hey, honey, that pup is lifting his leg! Quick! Get a shot of that! Use the wide-angle! Boy, let's send that one to Grandma! I'm gonna scan it and post it on the Internet! Maybe we can sell the reprint rights to the City of Seattle!" Come to think of it, perhaps that earlier entry was supposed to read "Animals, Vicious or Voiding."

My favorite page, however, is page 14. For it's on page 14 that we come to the very heart of common citizen concerns. And to think somebody presumably wrote page 14 with a straight face. Page 14, you see, is titled "What if the City is the problem?"

Well! You'll have to answer that one for yourself. Once you do, however, you'll find that (despite what the booklet says) there are few people to call for help and even fewer who'll listen. Except, of course, your mother.