July 09, 2003
(Updated) City Continues Assault On Livability, Targeting More Murals In Southeast
Note: This post has been updated. Any and all updates appear at the end of the original post.
Yesterday, I directly referenced a question that is ultimately the question in which I have the most interest: Livability for whom?
If you take a tour through the archives here, you'd likely find that much of what I try to follow somehow relates to this question. And often weaving through this question is a tension surrounding truly local do-it-yourself culture versus some institutionalized process of permission.
One of the continuing examples of this tension is the ghastly way in which the City's sign code, in its laudable desire to restrict overly-obnoxious commercial messages, manages to squash community art in the process.
And so it should come as no surprise that today's Oregonian, describes yet another battle over murals, involving two stores on SE Divison Street:
However, attempts by these two small businesses to improve their surroundings have run afoul of the city's Bureau of Development Services. The city says the murals are "signs" and wants them painted over by Thursday.
If the murals aren't gone by then, the city says it will impose a daily $50 penalty.
...
The revised sign code is bitter news for small businesses on streets such as Division, said Jean Baker, president of the Division-Clinton Business Association. Given narrow sidewalks and buildings that are rented or leased, business owners have few choices for improving their storefronts, she said.
"About the only thing left to pretty it up is to do some artwork," Baker said. "What else can you do?"
Meijer and the Hanrahans never heard that anyone objected to their art.
And, in fact, one of the asinine and infuriating aspects of this is that these particular violations of the City's sign code were investigated as the result of citizen complaints.
The reason, of course, for the problem is that the City determined that Oregon's constitution -- which is widely considered to be among the most protective (if not the most protective) of free expression -- prevents them from protecting community murals while banning commercial signs.
All of which may indeed be true. But what irks me about this continued assault on murals is that I don't see any overt concern on the part of the City that banning murals under the City's sign code (regardless of its possible necessity under the Oregon constitution) is hostile to true community-based livability -- an ideal to which the City otherwise gives much lip service.
Comments (4)
Dave Lister on 09 Jul 2003
Evidently, if you grease the right palms and have the right connections you can put up those nauseating animated billboards, but if you're a small business owner and want to pretty up your property with some artful decoration you can't do it. Typical City logic. Money talks, I guess.
The One True b!X on 09 Jul 2003
As far as I understand it, you can't put up any more of those animated billboards in Portland, but they let the existing ones remain in place.
Alexander Craghead on 09 Jul 2003
Sad. Just sad. I can't think of anything else to say, and I don't really see any alternative for these guys to keep their works intact.
I can imagine how the artists feel. Probably a mixture of depression and being royally pissed off. Glad it's not something of mine they want to paint over. AAL would become the "Freedom For Muralists" blog 24/7/365.
Randy Leonard on 09 Jul 2003
B!X and Readers-
The first I heard of this issue was when I read the paper today. As the Commissioner in Charge of the Bureau of Development Services (the Bureau that orderd the murals painted over) I ordered the Bureau to not require the murals in the Oreogian story painted over. More over, I ordered the bureau to suspend enforcing that ordinance. It is my intention to sort this thing out and draft an ordinance that allows such artistic experessions as illustrated in the two pictures in the Oregonian.....
Commissioner Randy Leonard