The St. Albert Gazette article "City partnership tackles graffiti," (May 22) describes a new city bylaw that apparently imposes a fine of $1,000 on first offence onto the owner of any property that was vandalized with graffiti, unless said victimized owner removes the graffiti within 24 hours.
What is next? Will St. Albert council bring in a bylaw by which "a pedestrian run over in a crosswalk must pay a fine of $2,000 on first offence, unless he removes his broken body from pavement in five minutes"?
Will they bring in a law by which the victim of a robbery is punished for carrying a wallet?
I never thought our council would accidentally or even wilfully come up with such total injustice to punish victims of crime, especially just before an election. Kindergarten attendees could come up with better ideas.
It further appears that the head of city bylaw enforcement apparently agrees this bylaw is necessary to prevent the city from being overwhelmed by an excessive amount of graffiti.
Maybe it did not occur to any of them that if bylaw enforcement (instead of helping design city laws that punish victims) were to actually go on patrols trying to protect property from being vandalized or actually take time to investigate and lay charges against any perpetrators, we would get less graffiti.
Lastly, the time limit of 24 hours to remove graffiti is totally inadequate. If council does not believe it, they should make this experiment: spray one-foot-tall black paint letters onto a brick wall of city hall or the bylaws office building or you can try a white stucco wall at the city engineering department, then appoint any one of the city councillors to try and remove it, time limit 24 hours after spraying. If spray-on is discovered only 10 hours after application, you got just 14 hours left. You are allowed to work on it during the night. You could never find a contractor to do it in that.
A.K. Zimmer, St. Albert
