While the City Council obsesses on scatology in local parks, the far messier question of how to best address the homeless issue seems to grow more malodorous with each passing day.

Reduced to measuring the distance between park poop and the people who hang out there, it's safe to say the city is not flush with answers to this complex problem.

In other communities, homeless trust funds have been created to help beef up programs and assail difficult issues in a coordinated campaign. It's a plan that has created common ground among government, the social service system and the business community.

Would a trust fund be successful in Southern Nevada?

It might if the business community got behind it.

If a recent Strategic Surveys poll of local business bosses is an accurate barometer, that's about as likely to occur as Mayor Oscar Goodman camping out in a city park. The survey on "Corporate Giving," created late last month for the Southern Nevada Regional Planning Coalition's Subcommittee on Homelessness, spells out the business community's view of the issue. In its way, it reads a bit like a Dickens short story.

To put it bluntly, homelessness is a problem -- just not their problem. And it's nothing they're likely to dig into their pockets to support.

While 93 percent of local business people surveyed believe homelessness is a serious problem, and 69 percent think it will only get worse over the next five years, just 21 percent said they might be likely to contribute to an official trust fund. Only 20 percent said they would encourage their employees to contribute.

Message: We have other priorities.

But is that smart business in the long run?

Preventative maintenance and aggressive treatment (and, yes, policing) can help separate the needy from the ne'er-do-wells. The city, strapped with most of the problem along the homeless corridor on the edge of downtown, has had no problem getting tough. But getting tough is the easy part.

Many business owners who responded to the survey were skeptical about government's ability to solve the problem, but that shows a misunderstanding of the problem. You don't solve homelessness. You gather together as a community and make a collective statement about it by structuring a service system.

Like other social service conundrums, the real challenge is creating a balance between doing too much and not doing enough. Addressing the issue without creating an industry can be taxing. But the city's recent attempt to ban feeding the homeless in city parks, and its new focus on excrement in the great outdoors, shows this community doesn't run much of a risk of being accused of coddling the great unwashed.

"I don't think that you see that they don't care," Strategic Solutions President Terry Murphy said of the survey. "I think you see that they have other priorities. ... We have a fairly good charitable community here, although homelessness is lower on the ladder than other causes."

With 87 different businesses responding to the e-mail survey out of 537 requests, some will argue that the study didn't include enough samples to give an accurate portrait. But the survey wasn't meant to be comprehensive. It was designed to give a snapshot of what business owners were thinking about the issue, and to that extent I think it's extremely valuable. It cuts through a lot of the hot air and haze that so often obscures the issue.

It illustrates what I'll bet most of us think about homelessness in Clark County: It's not my problem as long as it's not in my backyard. Contributing a few bucks or bags of Thanksgiving canned goods is one thing; devoting time and real money to addressing the issue is another.

The survey strongly suggests that businesses do give to charity through cash donations and in-kind contributions such as volunteerism. Whether they might be persuaded to give to the SNRPC Homelessness Trust Fund is another matter.

Education is a favorite area of giving. Homelessness ranks slightly higher than protecting dogs and cats, and both are well ahead of contributing to clean up the environment.

In other words, Mr. Homeless Guy, you're basically on your own. So watch your step.

And while you're at it, be careful where you poop.

Big Brother might be watching.

John L. Smith's column appears Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. E-mail him at Smith@reviewjournal.com or call 383-0295.