Town meeting tonight

Tonight we are going to have a town meeting for any who wish to go. My wife(Harelipfrog) and I will be going tonight if any want to meet up.

The agenda tonight is filled with the standard rezoning issues and a few housekeeping issues. Only one stands out that is of interest to me. A proposed graffiti ordinance is being put forward and one that I find a bit worrisome.

The issue of graffiti was talked about last month during the August town meeting. They talked briefly about graffiti and how to best deal with it. The only two options that were brought up was the business/land owners dealing with it, or the city.

In the audience was a group of boy scouts. Loren Dennis, a friend of mine, was one of the scout leaders. We talked after the meeting and he asked me why the city had not looked into other options on dealing with the problem. He said scouts would be a good idea. A service to the community badge or Eagle project would be the perfect platform for organizing regular donors of gear, and paint and worker scouts to go and eradicate graffiti every two weeks or so.

If the idea of scouts is worrisome from a legal position then that leaves the gates open for groups like VFW, Lions, or The Rotary club for example. With the plethora of private service groups in Smyrna, why does the city reach for a blank form to create an ordinance before reaching out to the community?

As a small government advocate I hope the city will pause and look at all of the options before passing this ordinance.