An OU alumnus writes a letter about Athens' laws and the importance of public art.
During former city law director Garry Hunter’s long tenure at his position, he said, “Free speech (is allowed) on sidewalks,” and he “ruled these sidewalks were city property.”
Athens City Code forces property owners to repair/maintain the city’s sidewalks. I’ve seen the city’s 2.5-ton truck parked half on the street, half on the sidewalks. The same goes for AT&T and Frontier and construction, delivery trucks and cars parked this way on the west side. The property owner oughtn’t pay for the city’s sidewalks, which are part of our city infrastructure — street/road, curb, sidewalk.
Additionally, all our income and/or property taxes already pay the city workers to tend to their sidewalks. City council needs to amend this section of the code so the city funds repair, replacement and maintenance of the CITY’S sidewalks. Their repair would be consistent with property sidewalk maintenance on a regular basis — not waiting YEARS before a property owner repairs the city sidewalk in front of their house.
Another matter Mayor Patterson is responsible for is to enforce the city’s garbage law whereby all residential garbage cans in the city can only be 30 gallons in volume. Recently, I sent a letter to our new mayor, Steve Patterson, saying that he is responsible for enforcing all laws — city, state, federal. The city garbage law was implemented in 1985. Not since then has any Athens mayor enforced the 30-gallon rule? Mayor Patterson must be and will be Athens’ first mayor to enforce this 30-gallon garbage can rule — 31 years after city council made the law.
Last year, I traveled all over Athens. Many cans larger than 30-gallons are used. The large ones on wheels, 48-gallon, dumps 60 percent more garbage into our two-county landfill, but its owner is not charged for the excess, and people like us who use the legal size are forced to subsidize the larger can users. That’s “selective enforcement” and is illegal. Plus, larger cans defeat recycling.
HEY, it’s only 31 years late that the city’s 30-gallon rule is followed. So I sent along with my letter a simple plan to make the legal conversion citywide: all for all larger cans to be deposited at the fairgrounds where a plastics industrialist will buy the plastic cans. The city buys those resident's new 30-gallon cans, because the city for 31 years was guilty of selective enforcement of that rule — a violation of the fifth and other amendments to the U.S. Constitution — as I proved in Municipal Court under the late, great Judge Douglas Bennett.
For years, the city police had been exempting churchgoers from tickets for parking against the yellow curb. I challenged that with videos of cars not ticketed. Judge Bennett ruled for my charge the uneven application of the law was “selective enforcement.”
It’s also time that the city arts commission create a handbook of operations, so everyone knows how to propose art works on city property, and how to get funding (Ohio Arts Council, National Endowment for the Arts, Pollock-Krasner Foundation, Guggenheim Foundations, countless other funders of “community/public art” projects.)
From 1980 to 1982, I taught art at Cleveland State University as an assistant professor. I am a member of the 16-artist member Organization for the Arts. First, I created a handbook so all members — numbering only 40 in 1982 — and other artists would know how to propose art projects to NOVA, which administrated them for Cleveland.
Athens City Arts Commission — a lighter, peppier title than Municipal City Arts Commission — should follow suit. And much larger commission fees for artists must be developed by appealing to art funders outside Athens.
The next ACAC project is to be a mural around the exterior of the beautifully sculptural Skate Bowl, as “Athens Skate Bowl Mural.” When finished, it could be a visual magnet — posted on the Internet — to draw bowl skaters from across America for starters. All the components are there: the concrete skate bowl, Athens area artists, mayor/local funding and painting the mural.
And sending a call for skaters nationally to create Athens’ first skate bowl championships and competitions that would evolve to annual calls for skaters to attend.
And bring their families, friends and interested folks with them for the three-day weekday event. And bring all their money with them to spend, and improve our city coffers.
Public art equals financial development: for a city, its area artists (who need JOBS), and all the attention Athens would begin to receive from across planet earth, from all the skate bowl aficionados. Our artists will bless you, our art environment grows, benefits everywhere arising from art in our public places.
John Spifforth is an Ohio University alumnus. This is his 62nd year as an independent modern artist who still practices his trade.
