Doing Time

George Carlin liked to point out there are still some guys in hell doing time on a meat rap. The moral logic underpinning this odd reality is that at the time the offenders did the crime it was indeed a crime. That it is now no longer a crime does not absolve them of deliberately doing what they knew to be wrong. We have something similar with city hall politics though it is neither moral nor justifiable. 

At issue is visual pollution in Dunwoody Village. City bureaucrats and some on council are for expanding unsightly signage and are no longer content with on-the-QT support and negligence in enforcement. They now intend to allow by ordinance the promotion of their previously clandestine Uglify Dunwoody campaign. This was announced in a public notice in this week's Blue Bag Rag, the city's official organ, as an addition to the previous notice a week prior. Reports indicate that on Monday the mayor sent a resident a terse message indicating that a matter of egregious sign violations would be addressed that day. Perhaps Mayor Tardy was referring to this notice and the actions sure to be taken at the upcoming meeting on 10 August. 

Of course if you go to the City website to get the specifics of the text changes presumably allowing all manner of visual clutter you will come up empty:

Could They Be More Opaque?

Not a single link, not even to the items in the public notice a week prior. Let the open records requests begin and rumor has it they have. Rumor further has it that these requests are for communication between city bureaucrats and elected officials. Good, but not good enough. Yes, citizens do need to know which elected officials are behind the Uglify Dunwoody campaign if only to cast a more informed vote. 

Citizens also need to know, and deserve to be told, specifically which bureaucrats and businesses are involved in these community defacing activities. To know who made first contact. Know where contact was made, what records have been made and what actions were taken to avoid discoverable records. Citizens deserve to know who, and there may be more than one, is championing this through the process. To know who is responsible for drafting these changes, to know who has input and who approves the drafts. Citizens deserve transparency around the actions of the economic development group within the city which acts as little more than an unconstrained internal chamber of commerce free from any community consideration or oversight. After all, they can run a poll asking for community input on arts, why not do the same for their negative arts, their visual pollution? Is it because they really do not give a hairy rodent's rectum what you think when the businesses tell them to do something? 

Rest assured, this mayor and this council will pass the changes provided by their bureaucrats to align the ordinance with their deliberate acts and their passive-aggressive inactions. Nonetheless this will not, this cannot absolve bad actors of their prior bad acts for which they must still be held accountable.