Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Clean-up the bridge

Front-page of the Shuttle web-site is town councillor Jamie Shaw discussing the graffiti on Stourport Bridge. As we know it was a £1.5m refurbishment programme that appears to have been left to rot. I've already mentioned the dip exiting Stourport, which thankfully at least seems to be stable, but the graffiti 'artists' are out in force.

Now far be it from me to encourage yet more surveillance, but this does seem an ideal example of where it should be applied - the main arch not being visible from the main town footpath a CCTV camera positioned on the nearby vendor building or erected in the corner of the skate-park would cover it. Fit a cowling such that it cannot be determined which way it is pointing and you're covering a large area that at the moment is only covered at extreme range by a camera on the Tandoori which also has a bad angle on the arch.

The other thing to note is that the touch-up required is a County decision, not a Town decision, not a District decision. Now call me on this if I'm wrong, but if a  private resident fails to clean something up, the council will do it then bill them; so Town Council if the County don't get back to you have the work done then send on the bill.

Another interesting point is the working group set-up to deal with graffiti a clever idea that makes a named person responsible for a street in the town so you know exactly who to deal with; has this been published anywhere or is it an internal 'this person deals with this so I'll put your through'? Is the person responsible expected to examine his patch at regular intervals? Hey no negative criticisms here I think it's a good idea I'm just curious as to the mechanics of the situation; for instance Mr Shaw represents Areley Kings so is it fair that he is responsible for a town street when he is already responsible for streets on the other side of the bridge, or should it be the responsibility of only those councillors who represent that area? Assuming it is councillors who are the named people.