River City Writer

City Council has decided that ticketing property owners who have been the vicitims of vandalism is a good idea. Because, you know, fining the vicitms of crime makes perfect sense. Maybe the federal government should adopt this approach, and fine the families of murder victims.

Obviously, I’m going to the extremes of hyperbole here, but you get my point.

I have a number of issues with this new bylaw, including questions about how do we define art vs vandalism. Is all graffiti inherently ugly? Is it all vandalism? What if I, as a property owner, like the graffiti that has been sprayed on my property? If I consider it to be art and decide that I don’t want to remove it, shouldn’t I have that right? It is my property, after all.

Then, there is the issue that I mentioned at the beginning of this post: that this program punishes the victim. There is a story in the Edmonton Sun today about a 77-year-old woman who is facing a $250 fine because she hasn’t removed graffiti from her garage.

Good job, City Hall, charging a senior citizen for being unable to clean up damage to her property that she did not cause (it should be noted that she did attempt to clean it up, but was unable to get the paint off of her stucco).

The politics surrounding graffiti have always been a bit grey. Questions about what is art, about whether graffiti harms a city’s streets or makes them more vibrant, and about who should be responsible for cleaning it up have never been easy to answer.

These are not easy questions, but the City of Edmonton has certainly choosen the wrong answers.

I will be revamping this site in the very near future. The focus of the city will be changing a bit, but it will still be about Edmonton, so don’t worry. I think you’ll like the changes. I don’t want to say much more until everything is ready to go. It will likely be about 2 weeks, since I am going on vacation soon and won’t be able to work on the site while I’m gone. Please be patient, and you’ll soon see a new and improved River City Writer.

In the meantime, expect some weirdness as I will probably be doing some work before I leave on vacation.

In my previous post, I stated that The Works festival ended this past weekend. In fact, the festival ends on July 6, 2008 (this coming Friday). I apologize for the error.