Muscatine

Ok, I understand that graffiti looks bad, but really issuing tickets and fines to property owners for something they did not cause is just a little ridiculous. 

 According to the Journal and KWPC  if the following plan is voted on by the council it will victims and penalize the property owners.

Their proposed plan includes: 

* The Muscatine Police Department or Building Department being notified of graffiti and issuing tickets to property owners.

* Property owners being issued fix-it tickets and having 10 days to clean up/ paint over graffiti. At that time the owner would also receive a brochure from Muscatine Safe Streets and Keep Muscatine Beautiful volunteer programs, stating that they can help with volunteers and limited colors of paint and supplies. They would not be able to help if the graffiti was on brick because they do not have supplies to fix that surface.

*Officials checking the property after 10 days and scheduling court
dates and assessing fines for owners who have not cleaned up graffiti.

* After the court date, officials would check the property again and if the graffiti still exists the owner would get a second ticket and an increased penalty and the process would start over again giving 10 days to correct the nuisance.

The committee also suggests that if the vandal is caught he or she would be required to clean up the graffiti.

We can all be sure that the vandals being caught will rarely occur.  I think the thing that really got me was the comment that Kas Kelly made on the radio that if the graffiti was gone it would discourage gang activity.  Is she that naive?

Where I work there is graffiti added daily which must be painted over, not an easy feat in the dead of winter.

Only muscatine officials would come up with something as dumb as penalizing the victim.........what if u have an older person or couple living on a fixed income..and not able to clean up the graffiti...or even pay to have it done.....or people with a disability............we need to stand up to these idiot lawmakers that we have...we need to stop being passive and vote these morons out!

In order to make such a law "stick", they need to be specific.  I would like to see their definition of "grafiti"????   In order to give someone a notice or even a fine, actual grafiti has to be identified as grafiti.

I know it when I see it, but isn't it kind of like pornography?   In other words, one man's grafiti could be another man's art work?   What if I paint what I consider beautiful symbols on my garage?  Is that grafiti?

Don't get me wrong.   I think something does need to be done about stopping the grafiti, but focusing on the property owners is one of the dumbest moves I've seen yet.

There are areas around here that are prone to grafiti.  In other words, the probability of grafiti showing up there is very high compared to other locations.   Why not do some kind of robotic or actual survaillance to catch the actual perps?

I emailed Bynum earlier and the only response i got was it was about keeping muscatine looking good...so i replied back to him and asked the question "since when does a committee of 5 or 6 over rule the majority"....i seriously hope that who ever votes for it ...loses thier election bid the next time around....we really need to eliminate the stupidity in our government.....